Racecar Drivers Have A People Strategy. Do you?

Imagine if Martin Truex, Jr. or Kevin Harvick had the fastest race car in NASCAR and a map of the course at Talladega Raceway but didn’t have a finely tuned, experienced pit crew. The time Martin or Kevin would lose on pit stops could cost them the race.

Or even worse, imagine if the crew chief of one of their pit crews had an emergency and couldn’t perform his/her duties and there was no alternate plan to put in place. The only person available to step into the role would be one of the tire catchers. What happens then? The driver may continue the race but what would the results be?  Disastrous.

Now picture yourself as a business owner with a great product and a well thought out business plan but no people strategy that maps to the growth of your company.  As your business grows, it needs some higher skilled employees or those with entirely different experience. Employees currently in positions may be high performing but not exactly what’s best for your business or ultimately your customers if they don’t have the appropriate experience or skills for future growth.  A People Strategy helps your employee base evolve as your company grows.

What is a People Strategy?
A People Strategy is a plan to assure that a business has “the right people, in the right jobs, at the right time, for the right reasons.” It’s a plan that is reviewed regularly alongside the business plan and has action items after each review. The plan has short, mid and long-term goals that may change or need to be adjusted as the business evolves. The management team is involved in the development and review of the strategy and committed to the resulting action plans that will ultimately help attract, develop and retain the right people for the business.

Just as important to defining a people strategy, is to identify what it isn’t; it is not a human resources department solution. Every supervisor or manager in an organization is responsible for owning the people strategy because they are closest to the needs of the business in their areas.

Elements of a People Strategy
A good People Strategy consists of three major components. I’ll call the first one a “People Schematic”. The second factor is the People Planning and the third one is the People Metrics and Performance.

  1. The People Schematic is a graphed representation that shows the number and type of employees that will be needed over time against the business metrics that are used. The business metrics are different for each business. It could be the number of widgets necessary to be produced or the revenue needed to be generated. The metric could be the number of patients that need to be reached. It could be anything that the business deems to be its goal. The key point is that the People Schematic uses information derived from the business plan.
  2. The People Planning process uses information from the People Schematic to answer the question of how the business will achieve the numbers and types of employees identified. This answers the question of how the business will be able to adequately assure that the number and types of positions are filled in the time frame identified in the People Schematic.
  3. Finally, the People Metrics and Performance encompasses those measurements and actions required in the first two processes to ensure a successfully integrated people strategy process and allow you the opportunity to make modifications as other dynamics change.

Continued success of your business
Most successful companies, new or well-established, have a strategic or business plan that has helped guide the direction of the business’s actions and activities. Often overlooked, the People Strategy is one of the most important derivatives of a company’s Business Plan.

Just as an experienced NASCAR pit crew and back up plan is vital to the success of the driver and the rest of the team, your People Strategy is crucial to the continued success of your business.

In future articles, I will be breaking down each of these three key elements to show how and what needs to be done to assure a successful People Strategy.

Contact Paradise Workplace Solutions to get more information on People Strategy.

Grow Your Talent, Create Value For Your Company

Your employees are your number one investment. Their actions, skills and knowledge are going to help your grow your business or sink the ship. Assuming you would choose the former, now is a good time to take a look at how your people match up with the future growth of your company.

Most likely, your employees’ performance can be bucketed into three categories. Some are still not up to speed in their current role, others are comfortably meeting your expectations and some may be outperforming. It’s important to know where your employees are in their development because you and they need to come up with a plan for their growth to keep them energized and engaged in supporting your business.

Various stages of performance
The new or struggling employee
Obviously, employees not performing up to standards in their current work need to focus on the skills to do their job, enhance their knowledge or change behaviors. It’s their manager’s responsibility to identify those undeveloped skills and get them the training they need. They will need a development plan to get them on track. Make sure your expectations fit the development need. Sending someone to outside training that has a skills deficiency is like trying to row a battleship with an oar; it’s not going to happen. The real development of the skill or ability comes with combining the outside training with perfecting the skill on-the-job. Repetition, coaching and feedback are the real ways that employees enhance skills.

Your consistent, dependable employee
Employees who are meeting your expectations are golden because they are helping to sustain your business. This is a good time to find out their development goals. Do they want to stay in their current role or do they want to learn a different part of the business? Take the time to point out other positions or work they can do to contribute to growing your business. Match them up where you expect to need strong consistent team members in the near future. This group of employees can be your strong core. They can move through various positions to get a solid understanding of your business and customers. They need a plan that encourages them to grow through being successful and satisfied with their work.

The overachiever, high performer
The outperformers have likely already told you their development goals and are actively pursuing them. High performers need to be challenged to keep them engaged. Look at these employees to see if they have the skills for higher level roles in the organization either now or in the future. If you believe an employee can meet the requirements with some additional training, come up with a development plan that aligns with your business plan. High performers’ plans may include going elsewhere to achieve goals or gain experience but at least you’re aware of the person’s desires and can plan for it so your business is not disrupted.

It’s most important to have development plans for everyone, including yourself, so you know that your employees are working toward goals that will improve and increase your business growth.

People development plans
No matter which level of development is needed, a plan contains relatively the same components below.

• Identified skills, knowledge or behavior that will be the focus
• Actions the employee will take to learn
• Opportunities to apply the learning (practical application with repetition, coaching and feedback)
• Success measures

Each area for improvement should have a SMART Goal. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. Many organizations make SMART goals mandatory because they clarify the goals and get everyone on the same page. Peter Drucker is known for coming up with the criteria for SMART goals and George T. Doran for formalizing it back in the early 80s and still universally used today. You can find an abundance of information by looking up “SMART goals” on the web.

Hold your employees accountable
One of the most important points of a development plan is that the employee owns the plan and their development. You can help identify areas for improvement, fund training programs and provide opportunities for development but ultimately, the employee is responsible for their growth. As the business owner, you are responsible for opening pathways for them to meet their growth goals and provide feedback along the way.

Developing your people is just one aspect of a people strategy that aligns with your business plan and goals. A people strategy will benefit your business because your people are going to propel you to meeting your business goals.

Next up: People strategy

How The Labor Shortage Could Impact Your Business

For decades now, we have heard that there was going to be a labor shortage coming to the US labor market where there would be more jobs available than people to fill them. The shortage is here and it may impact your business.

Some of the headlines coming from the US Department of Labor recently include, Unemployment Rate Near 50-year Low,  7.3 Million Job Openings and 17thStraight Month Unemployment Rate Is At Or Below 4%.

On August 6, the US Department of Labor announced that for the 16thstraight month, the number of open and available jobs exceeded the number of job seekers.

Impact on your business

As a business owner, the most important asset your business has is your employees. But what happens if you don’t have enough employees or the people with the right skills? Here are just a few resulting issues that might impact your bottom line.

  • Missed customer order deadlines
  • Additional cost for overtime to existing employees
  • Expense for hiring temporary employees (if they’re available)
  • Quality errors because your employees are rushing to complete orders
  • Overworked employees can lead to more accidents and safety issues
  • Higher absentee rate from burnout and frustration

What can you do right now to mitigate the crisis before it hits your business?

Look at your employee engagement through employee retention, turnover rates and data. Are your good people leaving? These ‘keepers’ are the lifeblood of your business now and in the future. Simply stated you need to retain your star employees.

What can you do to assure you keep your solid contributors working for you?  One way is to have ‘Stay Interviews’ with your high performers.  The answer may sound simple, but will take time, thought and effort. 

Stay interviews

Stay Interviews help leaders and business owners engage in dialogue with employees they don’t want to leave the business.  The interviews uncover what keeps your strongest employees coming to work everyday and will help identify issues in your business that may be alienating these team members. You then have the opportunity to make changes and improvements—all to benefit your business.

5 steps to keeping your star performers

  1. Determine who your ‘keepers’ are. You and your managers should be able to quickly list them. These employees are those that not only deliver results, but they do so in a way that exhibits the culture of your business. These employees probably work collaboratively, conscientiously, diligently and carefully.If you suspect that any of them may be ready to leave, make them your priority.
  2. Schedule one-on-one time with your high performers to have the stay interview discussions. First, tell them that you want to hear their opinion on what’s working in the business and what needs to be improved.  Assure them this is a casual, friendly conversation and you will be setting up time with them.  The meeting should not be a tag-on to another one, but a special meeting to discuss issues they may have and to give you feedback on how your business is running. It also should not be done during a performance review discussion, unless it is as a follow-up to previously held discussions on the topic.
  3. Be prepared. Give some thought to what the employee could say. You need to be prepared for anything. Also have pre-arranged questions that you can ask to get to the heart of any issues. Be prepared to write down what they say, questions that you may need to get answers to and follow-up activities that might be necessary.  Click here if you’d like to request our stay interview questions.
  4. Have the discussions. Try to have the discussions in a ‘neutral’ environment, free from distractions. A small break room would be great. Try to avoid sitting behind a desk in a typical manager/subordinate situation. Level the playing field. Give the employee an environment in which they can be comfortable.
  5. Follow-up. Depending upon the outcome of the discussions, you should follow up on some action items. Be sure to circle back with the employee to assure that both of you are fulfilling any commitments made.

While stay interviews are one way for you to show you value your ‘keepers’, don’t look at it as a one and done.  Be sure to re-engage with your star performers.  Let them know that you thought through what they said.  Ask specific questions to get more information.  Invite them to participate on teams outside of their area of expertise to show you value their input.  Let them know you want to hear what they have to say.

Click here to request a copy of our Stay Interview questions.

Look for our upcoming blogs on:

  • Ensuring your employees understand the changes you want to make
  • Enhancing your employees’ skills through training and development

Are You Overplaying?

How talented business owners may be stagnating their company’s growth

As a small or mid-size business owner, when was the last time you gave attention to your personal development? You probably have been growing your business and developing managers but putting yourself aside because you have other priorities. You’re too busy running your business, right?

You may be thinking that you’ve grown a great deal by leading and fostering your business, and you have. But could you be even more of an asset by looking at how you could improve? We all have strengths and shortcomings that we recognize in ourselves. Self-awareness is good. Have you ever considered that one of your strengths may actually have jumped the shark (remember that Happy Days episode?) and is getting in the way of you achieving more of your business goals?

How does a strength flip on you and why?

It’s called overplaying a strength. Overusing a strength is an easy trap to fall into. You’ve received rewards throughout your career for your strengths. You’ve received approval from someone who was important to you, won a new customer account because you persevered or a completed project because of your problem-solving skills. You may even have been positively influenced by people suggesting you’re skilled enough to start your own business. This all feels good and we innately want to continue to get positive recognition.

Now, compare the accolades you’ve gotten with the number of discussions you’ve had about one of your shortcomings. Typically, discussions on a person’s flaws occur infrequently, maybe once or twice a year if you had development discussions. No wonder you play to your strengths. Most leaders have been recognized and rewarded to continue the behavior as they make their way to the top position or establish their own businesses. And they do the same with their managers. Positive reinforcement is beneficial in many ways and isn’t bad especially when it’s balanced with talk of areas for growth.

What does overplaying a strength look like?

Some commonly overplayed strengths include taking action, perseverance, fairness, listening, and negotiating. On the surface, all good strengths to have. But when you’re running your own business, overusing these skills can confuse or annoy your employees, interfere with work getting done and hamper getting the best out of your employees.

I’ll give you an example involving perseverance. Do you know a person whose name immediately comes to mind when you think of the word determination? Do you have positive or negative feelings about that person? What do you and their co-workers think about working with them? If you have a positive reaction, the person probably is using their skill of determination appropriately. Overusing the skill may be in play if you have a negative reaction. You may feel the person is like a dog with a bone or won’t let up until they get what they want. This behavior may cause others to give in or shut down. In any situation, but especially in your business, the reaction of giving in or shutting down because of someone else’s behavior doesn’t end up serving the business well. Would you want your people to be prevented from providing their best information and advice because another co-worker was dominating the project? What if that person is YOU? Overplaying a skill can be harmful if not checked.

How do you know if you’re overplaying a skill?

It can be relatively easy if you look at the challenges you have in your business and have had in previous roles. If there are issues that keep coming up over and over again, then that’s where you need to look. In your current business are you unintentionally interfering with those issues getting resolved? You can ask your employees what needs to change to grow the business or the most challenging issue they have in getting what they need from you. You can do a leadership assessment. Or, one of the most helpful books I’ve used for my own and other employees’ development is FYI For Your Improvement. I’ve relied on this book and recommended it for years. If you’re a reader, this book will help you determine if you need to develop a skill, are at the right skill level or overplaying it.

What’s important is that you take the time to look at the skills you need to improve and then invest the time to develop or rein in those skills. It’s good for you and it’s good for your business.

Check out our Executive Coaching offerings.