TM - April 2008 - (Page 41) Creating a Culture of One Michael Rosenberg Across the globe, talent managers are asking themselves how to manage performance, increase employee engagement and address the increasingly diverse needs of the workforce. Regardless of enterprise or industry, the issue is the same. Corporate culture is one of the main differentiators between organizations. Thus, it’s imperative to engage each member of the workforce right from the get-go, said Bonnie Nixon, director of human resources for the government of Alberta, Canada. “When you hire people, they come with lots of enthusiasm — they want to build the organization and work with positive people,” she said. “How do you sustain that engagement?” In an entirely different industry — finance — Nancy Gustafson, manager of organizational effectiveness at a large southeastern bank, said the same thing. “We have a talent shortage in senior positions,” she said. “People can and will go anywhere, and we are not enough of a niche that we can retain talent without working at it.” Despite their fundamental business differences, each of these talent leaders approached solutions to this management issue by putting the focus on individuality. They attempted to create a culture in which employees are appreciated for who they are and what they have to offer. That way, workers could feel like they were a part of the organization’s overall growth. Further, building this “culture of one” attitude effectively reduced turnover and increased engagement enterprise-wide. Build on Strengths “We redefined our basic performance management systems and the annual reviews that identified the weaknesses and gaps in individual performance,” Gustafson said. “We don’t need everybody to be well-rounded. We realized that it is OK to have pointy people, people with strengths in certain areas. Let’s allow people to build their career around what they enjoy: their strengths.” Empower Nixon said one of the best tools she used to improve performance and boost retention is the employee survey that allows talent managers to identify areas for Michael Rosenberg is a principal with OYG Consulting Inc., author of The Flexible Thinker and co-author of The Flexible Thinker: A Guide to Extreme Career Performance. He can be reached at editor@TalentMgt.com. improvement, as well as positive aspects of culture. She said it’s important to circle back and include the employees when planning initiatives based on survey results. For example, after she conducted an employee survey in her government office, Nixon helped form task teams of employees who would be directly affected. The short-term task teams were given well-defined, achievable outcomes, realistic time frames and appropriate resources. “The idea was to set them up for success,” she said. “They would make concrete recommendations to the [supervising] executives, and they would then work with the executives to create and implement their ideas. The strategy was simple: If you are working on employee engagement, what better way to solve the problem than to engage them in finding a solution?” Many companies talk about how much their people matter, but there’s often not enough focus on the individual employee development, Gustafson said. “When we really started to turn our values into actions and became more flexible toward developing the individual, we started seeing results in our turnover ratio,” she said. Recognize Nixon said ensuring people succeed and then recognizing them for their success helped transform her organization’s culture into one of ownership and collectiveness. “People felt like they were part of the solution, and not just part of the problem,” she said. “It helped raise their self-esteem and grounded them in the environment.” The results of this multi-part management strategy were significant for both organizations. The bank’s senior-level turnover rate went from 25 percent to zero during a two-year period, while the public sector’s turnover fell to less than 5 percent. By embracing employee diversity, each organization was able to engage talent one-on-one and utilize skills most effectively. talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com 41 http://www.TalentMgt.com
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