Calculating Best Route: Building A Process to Improve Engagement and Impact through the Employee Life Cycle

"If you expect an employee to be loyal and stay with you, you've got to give them something worth sticking around for." –Brittney Helt

"The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.2 years in January 2016, down from 4.6 years in January 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today." – www.tenure.pdf, Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S. Department of Labor.

The business world isn't what it used to be. Gone are the days when the majority of people were hired for a specific job, clocked in at 9am and clocked out at 5pm. Gone are the days when it's expected that someone will stay in one job for the majority of their adult life. Gone are the days when a manager could assume that once a hire was made, the job would be filled for the next 15 years.

It's not an easy market. Today, the good candidates already have a solid position. The great candidates are sought after and courted by several organizations. It's expected that professionals will hold a role for a few years, not a few decades. The current job market is a jungle and recruiters and managers are constantly battling to attract and retain the best employees possible. The million-dollar question is, "How do you retain the best?" There's no magic wand — sorry. But there is hope.

Navigating Careers

A young college graduate entered the workforce a month after the recession hit in 2008. Her degree was basically a formality — unrelated to any industry in which she planned to job-hunt. Like many people in that moment this young lady, who we'll call Beth, found herself without a purpose, without a plan, and without a job. Thanks to the tough economic climate at that time, though, she also found herself, like many Millennials, open to new possibilities.

Beth was introduced to a company that was on the brink of a rebuild. Their CEO was looking to grow the organization after a rough few years and was searching for a project manager with many of the strengths Beth brought to the table. Looking at the job market, Beth thought "What the heck!" and jumped into the world of learning and development. This was a long way from her degree in telecommunications, and a subject she knew nothing about, but Beth was lucky enough to have a mentor willing to invest in her growth.

Beth settled into her role as project manager and grew to love the industry. After a few years as a project manager, she was given the opportunity to learn more about the organization from the business development side of things. A few years after that, she was challenged to take more opportunities in front of customers and clients. After seven years in the field, she's totally immersed in every aspect of the business and completely engaged in the industry.

Seven years. And let's not forget — she's a Millennial. A recent statistic showed that the average tenure of a Millennial in a specific work role is two years, and Millennials consider themselves loyal after giving an organization seven months of time. So, what is it that's made Beth such an outlier?

• Impact. Since beginning work with her organization, she's been shown exactly how her role contributes to the overall success of the organization. She knows that what she does has an impact, and that gives her purpose.

• Communication. Expectations have been openly and honestly communicated to Beth. When she finds herself in doubt or rethinking her path, there's trust built into her relationships that allows her to openly discuss next steps and any potential problems or issues coming down the path.

• Feedback. Feedback is given often and in both directions. Very early in her career Beth was given a voice and encouraged to give open and honest feedback. That's very empowering and very effective.

• Investment. The owner, the employees, the facilitators, and the industry all invest and highly value their people. Each team member knows without a doubt that they're uniquely important to the organization. Beth knows the more she invests in herself and the success of the organization, the better the company functions. Among other things, that gives her a sense of pride and belonging. Beth is excited to see where the company goes next and is happy to think of the personal impact she'll have over the next five to ten years.

Goals of the Chapter

In this chapter, you'll be challenged to start thinking about the process you use with your employees from hire to retire, which includes:

• Establishing a reality for the current work world, your team, and your current organization

• Creating a communication plan that will encourage engagement throughout the entire career lifecycle of each person who reports to you.

• Outlining a flexible process that will live and evolve through the entire career cycle of your employees

• Choosing tools and guidelines to help you move your employees through the process, decreasing bias, and increasing communication and engagement with your employee

In the following chapters, you'll learn that many managers and supervisors are struggling to map a route for their employees that works well from the time they've hired the right person until that person retires. Two common challenges arise:

1. Engagement: employees feel good about their role and therefore give to it all their effort and attention during most of the time they're "working."

2. Talent: employees meet the competencies and roles required of the job as well as the cultural fit of the organization. Roles are changing and so are candidates — it's hard to find a good fit.

In many cases these two things are discussed separately. If that's you, stop immediately. Think about it: if an organization can find the right fit for the right role, engagement will increase. Keeping your employees happy, growing, and engaged increases the likelihood they won't get bored and they'll continue to grow and build their roles within your organization. The key is keeping both engagement and talent in mind in each decision during the lifecycle of a person's career by creating a simple, clear, and cohesive process. Both challenges we've discussed can be met by strategically aligning your team members with their roles and building a process that all employees can follow during their tenure.

Starting Point. In our Talent GPS diagram you saw in the Preface, there's no end — it's a continuous process. An employee either stays or retires. You may be wondering: who owns this process? Many will jump to the obvious answer — Human Resources (HR). Not so fast. While HR can play an important role in the success and progress of employees, the importance of engagement with you — their manager — shouldn't be overlooked. It's easy to believe the only person responsible for your employee's happiness and success is your employee — and in many areas of a job this is true. But don't ignore the fact that part of the success and happiness of your employee(s) is dependent on their relationships within the workplace — i.e. their relationship with you. It matters. A lot. Who wants to have a horrible relationship with their manager or supervisor? No one. It's likely you may be accountable for your employees' work product, even if they're responsible for it. It's imperative that the relationship between you and each of your employees is clearly established and respected to ensure that engaged employees are producing successful work.

Before discussing what to do, let's define a few terms that are very important to this chapter and to beginning your journey.

Engagement: This is a buzzword that's thrown around a lot when discussing careers. For our purposes, engagement refers to someone being "all-in" — a person is committed to their craft, involved in all aspects of their role, brings ideas to the table, and plays an active part in their career journey.

Accountability: In this case, we're talking about having the authority to accept responsibility for yours or someone else's actions. In the career journey you may often be accountable for others' successes as well as your own.

Responsibility: Think of this as the next level in accountability. When you're responsible, you own your decisions and have the authority to choose the correct path for that task or decision. In some cases, your supervisor or manager may be the one held accountable, but you're the one who's responsible.

There are two key needs your employees have:

1. Clarity around the purpose of their work. Why am I doing this?

2. Ability to measure and make an impact. Does what I do matter?

When you and your organization recognize this, it's an important step in investing in the growth and engagement of your employees. Think about ways you're supporting your employees in fulfilling these needs. It starts from the time you post a position until that employee's time with you is complete. What are some things your leader does or could do that would make you take notice? Are any of those things you could implement with your own employees?

In the new "normal" work life most people (from individual contributors all the way to the top tier of leadership) are addicted to juggling multiple projects, multiple processes, and multiple tasks. Employees pride themselves on cramming as many meetings and tasks as possible into a single day. Communication technology has improved, but research suggests communication is impossible to do well while multi-tasking. Knowing that you're multi-tasking and that your employees are multi-tasking should trigger a red flag when it comes time to communicate. Take care to stop and have intentional communication through the entire life cycle of each of your employees' careers. Build a communication plan to help guide the conversation through each leg of the career journey. Here's a list of different times you may identify the need for intentional communications with your employee. Take time now to work on a communication plan to help address different conversations that can help build trust and appreciation.

• Job Posting

• Interview

• Onboarding

• Employee Development (annual performance review, quarterly performance check-in)

• Succession Planning

It's a process. Think about your current method for hiring and retaining talent. Do you struggle to keep employees engaged? Do you talk to them about their role and their path? What happens when an employee moves on or moves into a new position? Do they get additional onboarding sessions to help guide them in the right direction?

The talent engagement process should be just that — not an event but a process. The word "talent" might sound impersonal or abstract, but think about talent as something very personal and the most important resource your organization can have. When one of your employees is having issues or concerns over their career path, it's impacting their lives. It's no secret that when you have to make the tough decisions about a person's future in their career, you're also making a huge impact on their life. They take what you say and the decision you've made home with them to their family. This makes it even more important to stay active throughout their entire career path to help keep the lines of communication open and the engagement high.

Building a talent roadmap to guide your employees also helps guide a conversation with employees who may not want to take the traditional route. Below is a typical career path for the Learning & Development field:

Training Coordinator > Training Specialist > Instructional Designer > Learning Facilitator > Learning Manager > VP of Learning > Chief Learning Officer

What happens when one of your employees decides they don't want to follow the traditional path? While it may seem there's a clear and direct path to "success," as a manager, it's important to remember that that path is unique for each person. While you may enjoy your interactions leading a team, you may have an individual contributor who has no desire to lead anyone. Instead of following the traditional career path that you, your predecessor, HR, or the leadership team has laid out, take the time to understand what success means, looks like, and feels like for your employees. A great tool for doing this is a Career Map. This is different from a Career Plan — there's not a right and wrong path, rather a Career Map gives space for alternate routes, slow drivers, and delays. In Chapter Four, Career Maps are discussed in more detail, but for now, the important things to remember when thinking about your employees and their paths are:

• Not everyone takes the same path — giving employees room to grow and change their minds is important.

• Your definition of the path to success may be vastly different from that of your co-worker, boss, or employee — and that's okay.

• Implementing and creating a Career Map (See Appendix D and Chapter 4) can be an uplifting and enlightening experience. Take the time to discuss this with your employee(s) and ask them to complete their own. Block out dedicated time to do this exercise yourself to demonstrate just how important this is to your team and encourage each of them to do the same.

Once an employee has created a Career Map and has their individual plan, it's time to start considering the next steps. Over the last several years, Succession Planning has been something of an afterthought, most certainly not a priority. As you've likely guessed from the high-level look you've already had at the Talent GPS process, it's important to continue to include your employee in the conversations surrounding their next move. It's clear that moving one of your employees to another job leaves a hole in your team, which can cause disruption. Encourage your employees to be ready to replace themselves. You'll learn more about this in Chapter 6. For now, it's essential to remember that the Career Map that was created earlier in the process informs and builds into the Succession Plan.

It's easy to see how important building on the process and following that process through the entire lifecycle can be. One challenge you may still be thinking about is how to implement all of this. In the remaining chapters, you'll be able to practice with different tools and templates and take those to your employees to help open the lines of communication and foster engagement and empowerment in your team.

TTI Talent Insights TriMetrix Assessment Suite®

In our practice, we prefer to use a tool to help prevent bias and allow the candidate to reference their report and progress through the entire process. The TriMetrix assessment measures the candidate's Behaviors (what they do), their Motivators (what drives them to action or the why), their Acumen (world view), and their Competencies (skills). (Refer to Appendix B for samples of these powerful tools.) Each candidate completes this assessment, along with an Emotional Quotient assessment during the hiring process. Their results follow them throughout their career to help inform each area of the overall process. In each of the following chapters, you'll learn more specifically about how this tool is used. If you have an assessment tool you already use, you'll also learn ways to adapt your tool to work in each area of the process. To learn more about the TTI Success Insights Assessment Suite®, contact info@russellmartin.com. If you do not have assessments or the budget to get them, we have also included paper worksheets in Appendix D.

What happens if you skip this?

Without an engaged and loyal workforce, organizations will experience high turnover and will be forced to focus on finding new candidates, instead of growing and maintaining those they already have. Turnover is expensive. Recent studies suggest it costs up to three times the salary of an employee to find, replace, hire, and train a new employee. Wouldn't you rather use that money in your budget on something else?