TM - March 2008 - (Page 55)

their career goals and to discuss their development needs and opportunities. Our longer range plans include implementation of mentoring programs and online knowledge banks. Our intention is to have professionals document their processes and capture any information pertinent to people who will come in and fill these positions later. Our goals are established based on annual key leadership objectives for the organization and for individual business units, and the goals are tied to incentives as well as built into our annual performance review process. TM: Hinson: TM: Hinson: How is performance management linked to Butterball’s strategic objectives? We post all of our jobs internally, online and through our local employment security commission. We also make regular site visits to the Employment Security Commission to take applications and conduct interviews. We have a competitive compensation and benefits package, a college recruiting program, behavioral-based interviews, an orientation and training process, employee development programs and incentive programs. Hinson: TM: Hinson: How does Butterball measure workforce performance? What type of challenges impact talent management at Butterball? Well, as I mentioned, in 2006 our organization grew significantly when we acquired the Butterball brand and additional facilities, and since that time we’ve been working to establish standard systems and processes across all the facilities. Now we’re in the process of implementing the succession management component as well as including some of the existing processes into the software we purchased from Cornerstone to manage our talent. How does Butterball work to change or create leadership or management behaviors that lead to optimal workforce performance? We measure workforce performance against key results, expectations and core competency expectations. Each metric is evaluated on a scale ranging from “does not meet expectations” up through the topranked rating on that same scale. That’s all of the exempt and nonexempt. It would not include our frontline, hourly production workers. The managers are kind of daily monitoring and having daily conversations with them. They don’t have a formal review process for the hourly production workers. We do have OTJ [on-the-job] training in some of our facilities for the production workers, but it’s more daily management as issues occur or performance corrections are needed. It’s on-the-spot type measurement. Do you use assessments to manage Butterball’s talent? You mentioned behavioral interviewing. TM: TM: Primarily through our annual training and development initiatives and through the performance management process. Our performance management process includes top grading, annual performance reviews, merit increases that are tied to overall performance, performance improvement plans and also employee development plans. Hinson: Hinson: We do have behavioral interviewing, but at this point we have not implemented any individual assessments. We have to identify the competencies first, and that’s part of our implementation plan for the whole talent management process. We just have the core leadership competencies defined at this point. You’re working on an enterprise-wide talent management implementation plan? How does your company develop culture and employee attitudes to help optimize workforce performance? I would imagine, since you’re growing so quickly, that is a concern. TM: TM: Hinson: Yes, absolutely. We have built a system of accountability that fosters the expected culture and performance. We drive expectations through the performance management process, employee training and development initiatives, and we ensure our leaders know what is important to the organization through our annual review process. Our leaders are measured on what they achieve and how they achieve it. At the same time, our leadership programs are also built around the culture and performance expectations. Hinson: What processes and programs does Butterball use to attract, recruit and retain top talent? TM: Yes, we’re actually doing it in stages. We’re going to start the bulk of it with our senior leaders, and then roll it out through the rest of the key leadership positions and professional and technical positions, and right now we have a lot of pieces around performance management that we’re currently converting and loading into the Cornerstone software. We’re going to roll out some of the succession planning pieces this year. We’ll do career profiles with all of our exempt and nonexempt employees and performance appraisals through our new system with all employees on the merit-based pay system. Then the senior leaders will do a talent assessment of their employees in the second half of the year and identify successors for their positions. After we do the talent assessments, we’ll hold talent review meetings with senior leaders and really discuss and finalize the succession plans, and then we’ll begin rolling the process out through the rest of the organization at the talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com 55 March 2008 http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - March 2008

TM - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance - The Paradoxically Gifted Leading Edge - Reverse Engineering: Shifting Focus to HR's Cause Learning Connection - Sharing Talent On the Hunt for Talent Unlock Employee Motivation Through Personality Testing HR Crucial to Executive Compensation Process Downtown Management: Surfing May Not Be Slacking Think Tanks Aid Government in Talent Management Creating Consistency: Enterprise-Wide Succession Plans Battle Retention Deficits With On-Boarding Sunbelt Rentals: A Mid-Level View of HR From the Trenches Butterball: No Chicken When It Comes to Talent Management Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Full Potential - Choosing Change

TM - March 2008

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