TM - October 2007 - (Page 56) productivity, how productivity links to ROI, how everything is moderated by the learning climate or the transfer climate that people return to. This is very dependent on the people leader, the immediate leader on those participants. The measurement piece is obviously a challenge, as well as having the business leaders buy into that amount of ROI. So, if we say, “This leadership program will bring you a 300 percent, 400 percent return on your investment,” it’s getting the word out and putting those numbers in front of business leaders, who are always a bit skeptical about the monetary returns. But we’ve shown those — we’ve shown revenue generated, we’ve shown cost savings via training. I don’t think many companies are doing that right now. How does your company develop organizational culture and employee attitudes to optimize workforce performance? panies, to find out if our selection methods are actually predicating high performance. We’ve done some great validity studies to show we’re actually bringing in top talent, and when they do get here, those people scoring high on their selection test are also those who are more likely to succeed at American Express. TM: From the HR perspective, we want employees to be engaged and motivated. We engage them and feel they will go above and beyond if we concentrate on their development, their personal and professional aspirations, and we make it understood that we are the leaders, and we want to do this through great leadership. And through that great leadership, we inspire and motivate, and pull everyone together. This is coming from a leadership person, so take that for what it’s worth. Leone: We have what’s called a ninebox rating, which kind of puts people in a high-potential category or not. We have some clear communication on how you can navigate through the best boxes among the nine. Other than that, we’re concentrating on direct report-manager communication to drive development planning. One of the big pushes we had this year and last year was really concentrating on good development planning and determining the exact behaviors and expectations of your leader. What does improvement look like? What should your development plan include? Should you want to be developed as high potential? These are things one has to look at. We also found that development planning and leaders’ interest in your development is one of the biggest predictors of employee engagement. When you’re talking about a succession plan, we’re talking about leaders moving from one position to another, and when they move to a higher position, there’s often a three- to sixmonth critical transition period when they are a flight risk because, obviously, they’re great leaders, they’re used to being high performers, and now they’re in a role where they need to upscale again. If they leave in the first few months, it could end up costing the company five to 10 times the salary it was paying them. We have a program to help people with that transition. Not only have we shown that it cuts down attrition rates during that period, but we’ve also shown that we can accelerate a transition period. Some of our research indicates that if you can accelerate your transition and get up to speed quicker, it can end up saving the company money, whereas a delayed transition can cost the company. TM: Leone: How do you handle succession planning? How does your company work to change or create leadership and management behaviors that lead to optimal workforce performance? TM: We do that primarily by putting out our leadership curriculum. How we do that is, first, we try to acquire the right talent. We have assessments to acquire, and we have assessments to develop. And I should say the acquiring of talent is probably just as big a deal, if not bigger, than evaluating the talent we already have. We have rigorous assessments around evaluating the top talent that comes into American Express, and we also have best practices in terms of assessing people as new employees and as they move through the company. That’s a slightly separate piece than developing people. Leone: What processes or programs have you established to attract, recruit and retain top talent? TM: TM: What’s next in terms of talent management and workforce performance development? We have comprehensive, cognitive assessments that people go through as they’re coming into the organization, and we assess against competencies that we believe create successful American Express employees. We have also done validity studies, which is also rare in com- Leone: We are going to continue with a strong focus on leadership, but I think we’re going to integrate innovation into that leadership. Obviously, we have to stay adaptable to the market and among our competitors. I think a big step is putting some big emphasis around innovation as a leadership competency. Leone: 56 October 2007 talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com http://www.TalentMgt.com
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