Talent Management - July 2008 - (Page 23)

n troubling economic times, uncertainty is a way of life. Organizations must continuously reassess talent strategies to adapt to mounting ﬁnancial pressures and talent squeezes, and that means many are forced to downsize budgets, eliminate programs and even quickly and unexpectedly cut jobs. For example, to remain competitive in the face of growing industry competition and a sinking economy, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee (BCBS) — the state’s largest health plan provider with more than 2 million members — has undergone several restructurings. “[It was] a way of meeting business demands,” said Sharon Gilley, manager of organizational development. But whenever an organization experiences notable internal changes, whether for good or ill, employees are likely to feel fearful, confused and insecure. After all, they might lose the teams they’ve built and worked with, end up reporting to different managers or have new job roles or titles. “That’s unsettling to people,” Gilley said. “It causes a lot of anxiety, and that anxiety transfers over into how employees feel about coming to work. It impacts the amount of productivity they’ll have in the day. It also affects absenteeism and presenteeism, being at work but not really being checked in with what they do.” These types of individual and collective workforce changes must be dealt with quickly to avoid potential consequences related to organizational upheaval. These include tension among employees, negative projections of the future, distractions and lost productivity, all of which can have tangible effects on performance management, engagement and retention. I deeper with assessments tailored to speciﬁcally gauge emotional responses. One way to do this is to conduct a survey that breaks down questions into several pertinent categories such as awareness of emotional and physical health, selfcharacterization and employment attitudes. HeartMath clients use a survey like this, called the Personal and Organizational Quality Assessment. In the ﬁrst section, employees are asked how often they have felt certain emotions or physical ailments in the past month, including resentfulness, anger, anxiousness, gratefulness, peace, calm, rapid heartbeats, inadequate sleep or indigestion. In the next section, employees effectively characterize their emotional states by describing their daily thoughts and feelings, agreeing or disagreeing with such generalized statements as, “My life is deeply fulﬁlling,” “I feel optimistic about the future,” “It’s difﬁcult for me to calm down after I’ve been upset” or “I sometimes have a short fuse.” Finally, employees reveal their attitudes about their It’s important to facilitate targeted, localized efforts to get a handle on how each area and department of the organization is doing. jobs and employers by agreeing or disagreeing with statements such as, “The goals of my organization are clear to me,” “My efforts make a big difference in my organization,” “I am able to speak out without fear of the consequences” or “I’m aware of power struggles between co-workers that damage morale.” To ensure honest answers, talent managers can have the computer report only aggregate responses so no one answer can be attributed, Cryer said. Then talent managers simply explain the process to ensure employees know their responses are completely anonymous. To avoid damaging consequences, talent managers should conduct emotional assessments regularly, said Deependra Chumble, chief people ofﬁcer for Hexaware Technologies, a global provider of information technology and outsourcing services. “Lack of assessments puts “It’s hitting the bottom line in ways that [organizations] can no longer ignore,” said Bruce Cryer, CEO of HeartMath, a performance management services company. Though it presents a challenge, there are several ways talent managers can deal with the fallout from organizational change and maintain productivity and retention during tough times. Test Regularly Just as doctors would test regularly to catch an illness early, talent managers must perform regular assessments to prevent the spread of emotional uncertainty throughout an organization. Cryer said employee surveys are a start, but talent managers may want to delve July 2008 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com 23 http://www.talentmgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Talent Management - July 2008

Talent Management - July 2008 Editor’s Letter Human Performance Leading Edge Learning Connections Guest Editorial Passive Candidate Recruiting: Evolving with a Changing Workforce How Do They Feel? Sec Regulations and Executive Compensation Performance Management: A Retail Perspective Train the Non-Trainer Management-Go-Round: Developing Future Leaders Netflix Creates Its Own Script for Talent Management Intuit Spotlights Strategic Importance of Global Employee Recognition Make HR a Profit Center: Automate Technology to Gather Tax Credit Data Offshoring and the Impact on Talent Management Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources Full Potential

Talent Management - July 2008

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