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Employee Development – Soul Searching Questions
by Dr. Rick Johnson
November 13, 2007
Many if not most organizations consider employees its most valuable asset. Unfortunately many don’t walk the walk. Anything the organization can do to retain and enhance those assets should be a top priority. Employee development is one of the most important aspects of building and maintaining a successful organization. Research proves when employees fail in their positions in more than 90% of the cases the failures are directly attributed to some aspect of human behavior. Individuals do not usually fail because of lack of education, experience, training, or skills. They fail because their personality and behavior is not compatible to the behavioral requirements of their particular position. If employees are not suitable for their position or if they do not achieve their potential, the organization can fail or never achieve its potential. Do an internal assessment of your organization. Start by asking the following questions:
- Are your employees success oriented? Are they:
- Ambitious, competitive, goal oriented
- Self-confident
- Conscientious
- Are your employees dedicated and cooperative?
- Coachable
- Trusting and trustworthy:
- Flexible
- Responsible
- Do your employees have leadership potential?
- Leadership
- Sociability
- Exhibition
- Nurturance
- Calculated risk takers
- Do your employees meet the intellectual requirements for their position?
- Alertness
- Structure
- Organization
- Control
- Do your employees have the required emotional maturity and discipline?
- Composure:
- Tough-mindedness:
- Autonomy:
- Do your employees have an inherent sales and/or management personality
- Sociability
- Endurance
- Assertiveness
- Tough-mindedness
These are extremely difficult questions to answer under any circumstance. But, the answers are critical to the success of your company. Simply put, it’s your employees that generate competitive advantage and they create profit. There is help available. I found the Winslow Employee Development Program. This is an Internet-based system to measure the personality, behavior and attitudes of employees. It provides feedback to organizations on the employee’s behavior compared to the behavioral requirements for their specific position. The user-friendly system enables management to administer their assessment activity and have total control over the process. E-mail rick@ceostrategist.com for additional information or just click on the link at the bottom of this article.
There is a lot of talk about employee development but very little specific training is available. It seems like success is dependent upon surrounding yourself with the right people and hoping they have the skills necessary to do the job. Compassion often prevents us from replacing those that don’t have the skills in a timely fashion and very little coaching and mentoring support is available within the company.
A sad commentary considering that employee development and teamwork skills are critical to the effectiveness of the management team. Success of your management team can be defined by what they accomplish as a group. A synergy within the team that creates unity, clarity of direction with a common purpose that is in alignment with strategic initiatives.
Many company executives pay far too little attention to this part of their businesses. Often the mindset is that this is the “touchy-feely” stuff that’s a non-revenue producing necessary evil. Maybe that thought process didn’t hurt the company in the 80’s or early 90’s when unemployment in some areas reached 10%, but that’s not the case today where the labor unemployment rate in many markets is less than 4%. When unemployment is that low, most people who are unemployed just don’t want to work. As a result, there is a lot of corporate raiding going on.
The question is not, “Can you afford to invest in this soft touchy-feely stuff?” The question becomes, “Can you afford to not invest in your most important asset, your employees?”
A bias that exists in many companies is almost as though admitting that employees are the most precious of corporate assets will lead to an anarchy on which owners and managers will fall at the mercy of the workforce. Well, shake your head in disbelief if you want to, but the reality of the situation is that you are at the mercy of your workforce. The rules have to continue to change. If you aren’t willing to admit that and get your head in the game then you won’t survive in the new millennium.
Take action now and deal with the biggest challenge that will face your industry for the next ten years ---- recruitment and retention. And I haven’t even mentioned the retirement of all the “baby boomers”.
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E-mail TonyDiRico@ProfitHunters.biz
www.ceostrategist.com – Sign up to receive “The Howl” a free monthly newsletter that addresses real world industry issues and receive complimentary copies of the “Lead Wolf Interview Guide & “Sales Training 101” . Rick Johnson, expert speaker, wholesale distribution’s “Leadership Strategist”, founder of CEO Strategist, LLC a firm that has helped hundreds of clients create and maintain competitive advantage. Need a speaker for your next event, E-mail rick@ceostrategist.com. Don’t forget to check out the Lead Wolf Series that can help you put more profit into your business.