Are You Ready?
Are you ready for the talent challenges of 2008? Last week I participated in a fantastic event, the Cisco HR Forum in Vail, Colorado. The focus was retention. Everything I heard reinforces that effective leaders are practicing Success With People system - including my closing comments!
You may ask, “Why focus on retention and it looks like we’re going into a recession?” The reason is because whether economic uncertainty is on the horizon or not, every one of Success With People’s active Clients is still very busy serving other successful businesses. Retaining your key employees during possible down times enables you to have the strongest possibility of profitable growth and quickly respond to client needs as their business firms up and accelerates once again.
I was inspired by a friend of mine recently, Joe Everly. I’d like to leverage his perspective to give you three quick areas to focus on to improve your retention rates and fully engage your people.
- Belong: Whether you are hiring or just working to fully engage your people make certain they feel like they are incredibly valuable assets to your organization.
- Believe: Never assume your people fully believe in your company. Take the time every week one-on-one and in groups of employees and/or clients to passionately share real-life stories of how your company is changing people’s lives for the better. The only way to fully engage your employees is to make certain they believe they are doing meaningful work.
- Become: Every one of your employees wants to become someone better. It’s not about doing something. It’s about being someone. Their identity should not be totally wrapped-up in what they do for your company, however, how you reinforce their value as an individual and how meaningful they find their work greatly contributes to their fulfillment in life.
Let’s make 2008 our best year ever. Have an awesome day!
