Talent Management - September 2008 - (Page 55)

LEARNING continued from page 41 • Tailor communication style. Hiring and department managers need to practice a new style of communicating with Gen Y employees, who respond to humor, passion and the truth. Direct and timely feedback, frequent encouragement and recognition of efforts are important to 18- to 30-year-olds. While this may feel like pampering to some, the outcome is a set of employees that is engaged and motivated to show great work. • Rework management training. Talent managers are urged to re-evaluate their standard procedures from training to goal setting to performance reviews. Reviews should become more frequent, reward and incentive programs should be re-examined and other elements of organizational design will need to be reconﬁgured. • Adjust lifestyle beneﬁts. Employers need to make an extra effort to meet Gen Y’s needs by treating these team members as a special class of employees. Employers should bring them together for meetings and training sessions, combining entertainment and learning. This creates the feeling of community desired by Gen Y while emphasizing an expected investment in individual performance. Employers also are getting more creative in the worklife balance arena by offering perks, such as one-month sabbaticals after ﬁve years of service. “It’s about maximizing the opportunities in whatever time frames you have and being spontaneous, as well as planful about it. In many cases, this isn’t a real target of formalized training, and it can be incorporated in some of the base training that we do to set people up to be successful in their positions.” Randall said Rock Bottom managers and leaders operate in an extremely fast-paced business, one that operates at a high volume and demands they interact with guests 80 percent of the time. The remaining 20 percent of leaders’ time is devoted to administrative and management responsibilities, and it can be important to leverage time management tools to help streamline common or repeated business activities. “You arm people with some of the basic tools you would imagine,” she said. “We’re a big proponent of Franklin Day-Timers and the systems around that. Something that basic — when it’s universally adopted throughout the company — can help each individual adopt rigor and discipline because that’s just the way the day operates. “We employed the Kronos hiring system so our managers aren’t knee deep in the administrative minutia involved in being able to assess, screen and hire candidates that come in. The restaurant has a turnover rate somewhere around 80 percent. Almost every position turns over once during the year. That can be a very heady responsibility from an administrative and time management standpoint,” she explained. Randall also said Rock Bottom partners with The Ken Blanchard Cos. to help build a time managementsavvy culture. This includes promoting a class called “What Matters Most” that discusses how employees can plan their days according to priorities. “We want our managers to have a balance of what’s personally and professionally important to them, and time management does bleed over into how you preserve work-life balance,” she said. When developing employees’ time management skills, Randall also advocates an individual approach. “It’s this whole mentality of — and this is around training in general, too — one size ﬁts all. You’ve got different work styles to accommodate, and that’s why [training] can’t be one online system or one class. We’re exploring ways to employ user groups to continue the network when you get out of a class like ‘What Matters Most’ or a speciﬁc time management class. You would be able to join user groups, and use that network as a resource to continue learning. “We’re also trying to explore and implement a mentor program,” she said. “Time management is something that requires people to bend and change their way of thinking. That one-on-one relationship affords the kind of mentorship and coaching that makes a big difference and provides more customized training to help time management stick.” Even the most experienced, stalwart talent management professionals occasionally shudder when considering how to best gather metrics. • Offer distributed work environments. The ofﬁce will no longer be the hub it once was. Working remotely will become standard, leveraging technology and virtual relationships. Gen Y is at the core of this trend because, for them, meeting and interacting online is just as comfortable and real as face-toface meetings. This will beneﬁt companies greatly as the need for global teamwork and ﬂexible work hours continues. Recruiting and retaining the right person can bring signiﬁcant beneﬁts, including revenue generation, to an organization. Consider how best to recruit a more dynamic, culturally cohesive and competitive organization. Utilizing targeted outreach to attract well-qualiﬁed candidates is a good start to maximizing recruiting ROI. The alternative can be costly. Jennifer Floren is founder and CEO of Experience Inc. She can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com. September 2008 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com 55 http://www.talentmgt.com

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

Talent Management - September 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance: Stop Wasting Money on Training Leading Edge: No Whining, No Excuses Learning Connections: Do You Get It? The Untapped Resource Reinventing HR Doing Compensation Right: The Winning Spread Managing Performance in the Knowledge and Innovation Worker Age Stop-The-Clock Time Management Preparing for the Future in the Public Sector SAS: Connecting People, Process and Products Talent Transformation at Textron The Price of Finding the Right Gen Y Candidate Advertiser's Index Editorial Resources Full Potential: Do What You Love, Love What You Do

Talent Management - September 2008

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