Category: Featured

“DOING A GOOD JOB HERE IS LIKE WETTING YOUR PANTS IN A DARK SUIT. YOU GET A WARM FEELING, BUT NO ONE ELSE NOTICES.”

Does this quote above describe your company, department or job function? Is this how your employees feel?

This was a sign posted on the wall of a fundraising office of a major university, where annual turnover exceeds 400%. In an average three-month period, the entire staff quits, causing hiring and training costs to skyrocket.

“A growing body of research shows that end users – customers, clients, patients, and others who benefit from a company’s products and services – are surprisingly effective in motivating people to work harder, smarter, and more productively,” claims the article. “Outsourcing inspiration is not about eliminating leaders from the picture; it’s about creating a partnership that can enhance the meaning employees derive from their jobs and move them to do their best work.”

“Failing is not a result of overly developing a strength,” claims HBR. “It’s a lack of attention to related leadership characteristics. In the same way that Michael Phelps might improve as a swimmer, not through swimming more laps but by developing complementary strengths such as weight training, running, and other cross-training activities, people can improve leadership strengths by straightforward development of strongly correlated companion skills and behaviors.”

According to research, the reality about job hopping is that it often costs employees far more than it costs the companies they leave.

“People who had a minimum of experience of five years with a single employer typically got 8% increases in compensation a year compared with about 5% for people with a history of job hopping,” claims the article. “Short-term hopping is not advantageous to the employer or employee.”

The same research also found that people who stick with a single company are more productive and creative.

We all know that employee retention – particularly of star people – is profitable to companies. This research seems to indicate that it’s even more profitable to the people who stay.

Mentoring is secret ingredient of India’s high-tech success

An article appearing in the April 25, 2010 edition of The Times of India shares that mentoring and training are at the heart of India’s emergence as a global center of innovation and R&D.

“Training is a continuous process, not just in technical issues but also in management skills, quality consciousness, communications, foreign language and personal-effectiveness skills,” shares the article. “Mentoring by senior executives is another key Indian practice.”

The article explains that in 2002, India had 102,000 engineering graduates. Within four years, that number had rocketed to 222,000, and that mark is expected to double this year. To understand how a country could grow so many skilled people in such a short period of time, Duke and Harvard Universities sent research teams to study this phenomenon. What they discovered was that Indian companies first learned best practices of Western companies operating in India. Then, the Indians innovated and improved on that learning and reinforced it with mentoring.

“Many companies virtually became universities, employing hundreds of trainers,” shared the article. One example of this is an Infosys training center in Mysore which trains 13,500 employees at once.

“Employees get reviewed at the end of every project and are prescribed training if found to have weaknesses,” write the authors of this article. “Mechanisms such as 360-degree reviews (wherein you review your bosses and peers) and balanced scorecard reviews are widely used. Managers are evaluated on a variety of non-financial measures, including employee satisfaction, attrition rates and mentoring.”

The April 28, 2011 edition of The Wall Street Journal shared the results of a survey of 527 senior decision-makers, asking them, “What will be the focus of your company’s growth strategies in the next year?”  Here were the top six growth strategy areas named:

·         Expanding target markets in the U.S. (named by 56% of respondents)

·         Up-selling or cross-selling into existing customer bases (46%)

·         Expanding/diversifying product and service offerings (46%)

·         Expanding target markets globally (34%)

·         Pursuing/expanding third-party alliances within the U.S. (18%)

·         Pursuing/expanding third-party alliances internationally (13%)

In what ways can you apply the things you are learning to drive greater impact for your firm in these growth strategies, and others?