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Click here for the free report "61 Questions To Transform Your Workforce" |
David
Lee
Consultant
Speaker
Author
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AR
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Your
First Task As A Recruiter:
Recruit Senior Management
Onto Your Team |
| By
David Lee |
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| Originally
Published by ERExchange.com |
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If your job is to recruit
the best employees possible, here’s
what should be at the top of your “To
Do” list: recruit senior management
onto your team. You can increase your efficacy – and
your value to your organization – by
helping them recognize that the responsibility
for recruiting talent doesn’t lie
in the recruiting department.
Recruiting talent is everybody’s
job and should be on everybody’s
mind. Recruiting is everybody’s responsibility
because every person, every decision, and
every action influences whether your organization
is a Talent Magnet or a Talent Repellent.
Any management team serious about their
organization being a Talent Magnet should
think about how they, and their actions,
influence their Employer Brand, and then
heed the advice of Starbucks’ Chief
Coffee Buyer, Dave Olsen. Mr. Olsen was
asked by Scott Bedbury, author of A New
Brand World: Eight Principles for Achieving
Brand Leadership in the 21st Century, about
the secret to Starbucks’ powerhouse
brand. What was the key to Starbucks’ ability
to get people to come through the door
again and again. Was it their unique blends,
their happening ambience, their hip baristas?
After thoughtfully considering all the
variables, Olsen responded with two words
that should be engraved on every manager’s
consciousness: “Everything matters.”
Everything matters when it comes to your
Employer Brand. Everything matters when
it comes to your ability to recruit – and
more importantly, to attract – the
best employees. Every interaction your
organization has with your customers and
the marketplace, every interaction your
managers have with your employees, every
operational process and employee policy
matters. Each moment of truth shapes how
your Employer Brand is perceived in the
labor market.
Just as importantly, every moment of truth
influences whether your recruiting efforts
are limited to your recruiting department,
or whether your whole workforce engages
in recruiting. Research shows that the
best source of quality applicants comes
from an organization’s employees – or
more accurately, from happy employees.
If you don’t have happy employees
who are proud of their employer, don’t
expect a stampede of employee referrals.
If you do have happy employees, you’re
in the enviable position of Don Kemper,
CEO of Healthwise, a Boise, Idaho company
that produces health information for both
consumers and the medical community. “For
every open position, we get one or two
employee referrals,” notes Kemper. “In
fact, the stories our employees tell about
working here… they’re our best
recruiting tool.”
If you can’t say the same thing,
you’re like most organizations: your
recruiting engine is firing on only one
cylinder. When you compare what the majority
of people say about their previous employers
with what comes out of Healthwise’s “volunteer
PR firm” – its workers – you
see why Everything Matters.
To unleash the recruiting power of your
workforce, you need to have an organization
that inspires loyalty, passion, and pride.
To have this kind of an organization requires
a unified effort with everybody recognizing
that Everything Matters. It means that
everybody understands that every policy,
every process, every interaction, every
decision matters. Whether deciding on how
much to involve employees in a new initiative,
communicating to employees about new developments,
or simply following up on an employee’s
request, managers should examine every
decision, action, and process through the
lens of “How will this affect our
Employer Brand?”
To begin this exploration, here are four
questions for your senior management team:
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Does
Your Reputation In The Marketplace
Warrant Pride?
Your reputation in the marketplace,
your corporate brand, affects your
ability to attract talent. Employees
want to feel proud of their employer,
to believe that they are part of
an organization that produces world
class products or delivers world
class service. Thus, managers who
oversee your organization’s
interface with the marketplace would
be wise to scrutinize every marketing,
public relations, and customer service
process and ask: |
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“How does the
way we do this affect our Employer
Brand, our appeal in the labor market?” |
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“Does this process inspire
pride in our workforce (and therefore
their ability to speak highly of
us)?” |
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| When considering a
change in these areas, an important
part of the conversation should be
how the change will affect your Employer
Brand. For instance, if you make
a change in your customer service
process or policy that is less customer-centric,
expect a diminution in employee pride
and corresponding decrease in employee
generated positive PR and referrals. |
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Does The Way You
Run Your Organization Warrant Pride?
Facilitating employee focus groups over the years has taught me one thing
above all else: employees notice everything. Ineffective processes, poorly
thought out decisions, nonsensical rules – they notice it all. These
observations form the basis for some pretty unflattering assessments of
management’s ability to run the organization. These assessments,
in turn, profoundly affect not only employee morale and loyalty, but also
what they say to others about their employer. Because management is usually
unaware of these unspoken observations and judgments, they don’t
see how they are contributing to a weak or weakening Employer Brand. To
prevent this from continuing, senior management would be wise to examine
all organizational processes and ask: |
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“Does the way we
do this process reflect a well run
operation, or a fly-by the-seat-of-the-pants
outfit?” |
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“Does the way we do this engender
pride?” |
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“Does this contribute, or detract
from, the Employer Brand we are trying
to create?” |
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Each manager should be
held accountable for asking these questions
about the processes he or she is responsible
for. Each process should be examined
step by step, because each step is
a Moment of Truth that either helps
or hurts your Employer Brand. For instance,
each step in your recruiting process
communicates to the job applicant something
about your organization – for
better or for worse.
Commenting on how Everything Matters
in the recruiting process, executive
recruiter Catherine Swift, of Swift
and Associates, a Portland, Maine recruiting
firm notes: “Little courtesies
make a big impression on candidates.
For instance, something as simple as
informing a candidate that their next
appointment is running late, so they’re
not just left hanging outside the person’s
office, wondering when the door will
open.” How such moments of truth
are handled speak volumes about how
much your organization respects people
and how competently the organization
is run. |
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Do you support, or
thwart, excellence?
Many organizations drive their most talented employees out the door, and
into the arms of their competitors, by subjecting them to inadequate technology,
insufficient logistical support, and creativity stifling bureaucracy. Although
nobody likes to have their efforts at doing good work thwarted, this is
even more of a deal-breaker to those who demand excellence of themselves
and others. When they’ve had enough and leave, they become part of
their former employer’s negative PR firm. Those who stay, simmer
silently, with no intention of ever making an employee referral.
For instance, I worked in an insurance company where customer service reps
had to do battle everyday with a Byzantine database system that’s
lack of usability was matched only by its sloth-like speed. Call after
call, customer service reps would attempt to wrest the needed information
from their computers, while their customer’s patience evaporated.
Think of how this affected not just job satisfaction – and therefore,
turnover – but also what employees told others about their employer.
Then compare their experience to the daily experience of Fidelity Investment
employees, who use a database and knowledge management system where critical
information is just an intuitive mouse click away. Then think of the recruiting
implications of both situations.
If you’re serious about being a Talent Magnet, your technology, policies
and procedures, staffing, logistical support, and training should be examined
through the lens of: |
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“Does this support,
or thwart, excellence?” |
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“How does this affect what
employees think of our organization
and what they tell others?” |
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“Does this contribute or detract
from the Employer Brand we want?” |
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Do Your Managers
Inspire Loyalty, Excellence, and
Pride?
Every interaction employees have with their manager shapes their impression
of your organization – for better or for worse. As most people in
the business world know by now, Gallup’s research shows that an employee’s
supervisor influences their level of satisfaction and productivity more
than any other organizational factor. Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham,
authors of the best-selling First Break All the Rules and consultants with
Gallup Organization, conclude that it’s better to work for a great
manager in a lousy company, than to work for a lousy manager in a great
company. However, the odds of having great managers are better if senior
management models, supports, and requires respectful, effective management.
This is perhaps the most important area where senior management can influence
the Moments of Truth that will either help you become a Talent Magnet or
be just another Talent Repellent organization.
Managers should be coached to remember whenever they are dealing with a
Moment of Truth to ask: |
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“How does the way
I’m handling this affect employee
morale, respect, and loyalty?” |
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“Would this decision, would
this approach, lead to employees feeling
proud of, passionate about, and committed
to our organization?” |
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“Does this contribute or detract
from the Employer Brand we want?” |
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| Here are some of the
more critical Moments of Truth that
managers would be wise to examine,
because they’re so frequently
mishandled: |
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Whether or not employee
input is solicited about changes that
directly affect their jobs. |
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Whether employees hear about changes
in a timely way or at the last minute. |
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Whether management initiates and
executes changes in a well thought
out way or acts in an impetuous, fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants
way which they perceive as dynamic
and visionary, but which employees
see as careless and clueless. |
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Whether appreciation and recognition
efforts are “done to” employees
as gala events or whether appreciation
and recognition are a regular part
of the manager/employee relationship,
and management and employees co-create
events that are meaningful to both
parties. |
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Do You Have What
Today’s Worker Wants?
Knowing what your customer wants
and delivering it is Marketing 101.
Smart companies also know that to
keep satisfying your customers, you
must stay “wired into the voice
of the customer,” to use the
phrase coined by Richard Whitely,
Vice Chairman of The Forum Corporation
and author of The Customer-Driven
Company. Both principles should be
applied to your organization’s
recruiting efforts. To be a Talent
Magnet, you need to know: |
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What today’s employees
value most in an employer. |
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What matters most to the various
professions and demographics you desire
(e.g. What’s important to a 25
year old graphic designer will be different
from what’s important to a 50
year old accountant). |
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Whether or not you are delivering
what matters most to your employees. |
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Whether or not you are addressing
the eternal human needs that have always
affected employee performance and loyalty,
such as the need for meaning, the need
to be part of something greater than
oneself, the need to learn and grow,
and the need to experience mastery
and self-efficacy. |
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Are You Ready To Stop Competing
in The Labor Market With Only a Fraction
of Your Team?
Regardless of how effective your recruiting
department is, trying to recruit the best
employees without senior management being
part of your team is like a basketball
team trying to compete with only one player
on the court. To compete successfully,
you need everyone on the team playing in
the game. You need everyone to recognize
that Everything Matters and pull together
to make sure you actually deliver a “product” – in
this case, a work experience – that
the best employees want. With a product
that the best employees want, recruiting
becomes infinitely easier. More importantly,
when you create a great organization that
provides a great work experience, you unleash
the secret recruiting weapon of all Employers
of Choice: employees who love where they
work and love talking about it. |
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What’s Next?
For this to be more than wishful thinking,
you need to recruit senior management
onto your team, and together build
an organization that is an Employer
of Choice. To begin the process, here
are four actions you can take: |
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1. |
Share this article with
your senior management team. |
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Share articles from ERExchange.com
and other websites on issues related
to Employer Branding, attracting and
retaining employees, the role managers
play in retention and productivity,
the cost of turnover, etc. This doesn’t
just help recruit them to your team,
this increases your value to senior
management. Why? First, you multiply
your value exponentially if you’re
part of the process that gets everyone
involved in making your organization
a Talent Magnet, and therefore unleashes
your volunteer recruiting team (your
workforce). Second, by helping them
identify the factors that are impeding
your organization’s ability to
recruit and retain the best people,
you will help management save a tremendous
amount of money in recruiting and turnover
costs, not to mention opportunity costs. |
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Encourage your CEO or other senior
executive to facilitate ongoing discussions
around the principle of “Everything
Matters,” and to work with managers
on making sure their processes and
actions are contributing to a powerful
Employer Brand. |
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Start and maintain an Employer Advisory
Council. Involve them in exploring
the above questions. Work with them
regularly to stay wired into your workforce.
Doing so will help management make
decisions that strengthen your Employer
Brand. It will also inspire passion
and commitment, because instead of
being just hired hands, your employees
get to be players on a winning team. |
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About the Author: David Lee is an internationally recognized authority on organizational and managerial practices that optimize employee performance. He is the author of Managing Employee Stress and Safety, as well as dozens of articles on employee and organizational performance that have been published in trade journals and books in North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. For information on his programs and service, click here.
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