Keep Investing In People (Part four of a five-part series
on Managing Talent through the Downturn)
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Now is an important time for organizations to reduce unnecessary costs. Make
no mistake: Investing in your human capital is absolutely necessary, now
more than ever.
QUICK UP-TO-SPEED TRAINING
Don't expect new hires to learn slowly over time by osmosis. Orientation is
not a pro-forma exercise. It is a critical opportunity---don't waste it. Use
it to set the tone of high performance and stoke the euphoria of the new
employee's new experience. How? Create an intensive---boot-camp-style---introductory
training program: Don't just share the organization's mission; show every
person the connection between his/her role and the mission. Then quickly and
aggressively build the skills each person will need to take ownership of his
or her role immediately. If the role is too big for a new person to assume
100% immediately, you'll have to narrow the role. Remember, what makes a
role meaningful is 100% ownership, not complexity.
SUPPORT ONGOING TRAINING
Help employees acquire new technical skills and knowledge as needed, build
transferable skills to increase overall effectiveness, retrain quickly for
reassignment, and cross-train for more flexible assignment options. How?
Create a just-in-time learning infrastructure: (1) Make available to
employees online, self-paced training programs. (2) Build a work-product
resource library so that employees can continually improve on each other's
hard work rather than reinventing the wheel over and over again. (3) Develop
an intranet-driven, knowledge-sharing network so that employees can ask each other online to
answer front-line questions via email, bulletin boards, or in real time. And
archive the responses in a well-indexed information database.
COACH PEOPLE TO SUCCESS ONE DAY AT A TIME
Even in flush times, most managers struggle to balance supervisory
responsibilities with other tasks and projects. With fewer resources right
now, a lot of managers will be tempted to spend less time on their
supervisory responsibilities figuring, "I'm just too busy with my own work."
But when managers spend insufficient time supervising, here’s what happens:
Fires start that never would have started. Small fires are not extinguished,
so they get out of control. Resources are squandered. Employees go in the
wrong direction for days or weeks before they are put back on course. And
managers spend too much time on tasks that would be better delegated to
others, which leaves these managers with even less time to supervise others.
No organization can afford to let its managers lose focus in the current
business climate. Now is the time to redouble every manager's commitment to
hands-on coaching: That means negotiating to set ambitious goals with clear
parameters and realistic deadlines and then cajoling, motivating, and inspiring great performance.
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Managing Talent through the Downturn |
For a limited time only (we hope),
Bruce Tulgan is offering a special presentation addressing workplace
issues in the current economic downturn. For more information, see our
Web site at
http://www.rainmakerthinking.com/downturn.htm, or contact
Mark Kurber via phone (203.772.2002 x110) or
email.
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