Recruit, Inspire & Retain

Be Efficient, Whatever the Budget

A recent white paper from KnowledgePool, a U.K. training consultancy, said organizations with staff of 2,000-plus can reduce learning and development expenses by 30% by following best practices and working efficiently.

It recommends:

Careful supplier management, including adherence to an authorized supplier list and discount bulk purchasing. Automating training administration. More efficiently managing course scheduling to maximize occupancy and minimize empty seats and canceled sessions. Reviewing and modifying training offerings. Course content offered in the past doesn't always have priority today.

Here are some other ways to operate more efficiently:

Tie training to specific business initiatives and job tasks. The more talent managers can make training job-specific using workplace examples, the better. Balance internal trainers with outside suppliers during peak times. The "day cost" will be higher when using a vendor, but companies will come out ahead if they limit use. Offer flexible delivery. Ten years ago, more than 50 percent of TRACOM's business was for training programs of two days or more. Today, most are shorter than one day. The availability of modular training, pre-study and follow-up allows people to develop their skills in a more effective manner that requires less time away from their jobs.

At Gates Corp., a manufacturer of industrial and automotive parts, today's environment has meant constraints on training travel. "It's forced us to look for more creative ways to deploy training content," said Kathy Wojcik, Gates' manager of leadership development and learning.

"We're doing more Web-based training, webinars and consolidating training in the field to focus on what's really needed by the business. Self-paced and on-demand learning are also on the rise. We're evaluating the impact of these changes so we can make smart long-term decisions about training deployment."

Support People
One of the biggest challenges organizations face in a down economy is waning employee engagement. Organizations typically don't lose many people during a recession because external opportunities are limited. But slow-growth and a shrinking opportunity pool can cause employees to lose motivation.

If layoffs occur, the remaining people likely will experience fear and stress from the change and risk overwork from picking up extra responsibility. It's important to support employees through training and development.

Communication may initially take precedence over training in the early stages of cutbacks. But once people understand the situation, don't overlook how training and development programs can help.

Consider:

Building core skills such as personal effectiveness, team performance and conflict management. Providing new functional skills training for employees with new responsibilities. Assessing employee engagement to uncover areas of concern.

"We know our learning and development activities have improved employee engagement. People feel emotionally connected to the business because we invest in them," said O'Toole.

Just as a stock market decline presents an opportunity for investors to regroup before future gains, a down economy presents an opportunity for training and development.

"It's the challenges that teach the best lessons," said Wojcik. "The decisions we make today will shape our future.

Excerpted from Talent Management Magazine, Jan 2009

GENERATION Y: Get More Work and Better Work Out of Fewer People

by Bruce Tulgan

Help Them Keep Score
You might think a generation raised on mantras like "we're all winners" and "everyone gets a trophy" wouldn't be particularly competitive. But that is not the case. While the self-esteem movement was chipping away at Generation Y ers' competitiveness, the testing movement was building it back up. Still, testing breeds a different kind of competitiveness: competition against standards and benchmarks, against averages and means, and against one's own past performance.

Think about a video game that a Gen Yer might practice and practice, beating one high score after another, set by himself. He wins every time, and nobody has a reason to feel bad. That's the kind of competition Gen Yers are looking for: they want to compete against themselves in a safe environment where they can try over and over again to improve on their own performance benchmarks. When it comes to competitiveness at work, this is what one Gen Yer had to say: "I'll do whatever they want me to do. Just tell me someone is keeping track of all this stuff I'm doing. Tell me I'm getting credit for it, that I've been racking up points here like mad. Tell me someone is keeping score."

When Gen Yers know you are keeping track of their day-to-day performance, their measuring instinct is sparked and their competitive spirit ignited. Keeping close track of their work tells them that they are important and their work is important. The process motivates them to perform because they want to get credit, score points, earn more of whatever there is to earn. "I was managing this very young team of programmers," a senior manager in one of our nation's intelligence agencies started to tell me. "For the first few months, our weekly team meetings were great, but after every meeting, the programmers would come up to me one by one asking for feedback on their individual work. I kept trying to address this in the team meetings by asking each of them for status reports in our meetings. But one by one, they would come see me after the meeting to ask for individual feedback. Finally, in one of the team meetings, I asked the group about it point-blank. They all said, 'We all want to know how we are doing, individually.' So I said to them joking, 'Do you want me to give out gold stars when you do a good job?' And they all nodded affirmatively. They were very cheerful about it, but I was having a hard time with it. But I started giving out gold stars to them, individually, in the team meetings, and they loved it. They started asking all the time, 'Do I get a gold star for that?'"

I've heard stories like this over and over again from managers of Gen Yers in a whole range of industries. Yes, they want to earn gold stars. Just remember that if you are going to give out gold stars or points of any kind, you have to make it very clear every step of the way exactly how those points can be earned-or lost. You need a system.

The Point System
One outstanding system I've seen in action is used in the warehouses of a large beverage wholesaler. Every day, hundreds (or even thousands) of boxes come in one end of a warehouse and hundreds more go out the other end. All day long, boxes are being moved from one end to the other, meticulously accounted for by bar codes scanned each time they are moved. Everybody in that warehouse is on a point system. One of the warehouse managers told me, "The only way you get points around here is moving boxes. If you drive a delivery truck, you get points by delivering boxes. You break bottles, you lose points. If you work in the loading dock, you get points by loading boxes onto the truck. Points are how everything gets done here. That's how you make extra money. That's how you get to leave early or get extra days off."

How does the system work? The warehouse manager laughed: "Everybody is always trying to get points, especially the young guys. We've got a very young group in the warehouse. These guys are practically climbing over each other when a truck pulls in. The young guys want to get their points. Some of them want to work all day and make more money. Some of them just want to get their points and get out of here for the day. But they all want to get those points. I just sit back and let [the points] do most of the management work."

Similarly, the founding partner of a small advertising firm told me that she started giving out "extra points" to associates "for above-and-beyond performance on very difficult projects." She told me, "At first, I didn't even know what I really meant by extra points. But I'd usually come back with a bonus check, so the points came to mean something." The practice was so popular among the younger associates that the partner started attaching points to projects in advance. "After a while, just about any task, no matter how small, was eligible for extra points. If you get something done very fast, you might get extra points. If you really do a fantastic job on something, that's extra points. It's for above-and-beyond performance. And it's worth money."

Am I saying you should create a point system or start giving out gold stars to your Gen Yers? If you can think of easy ways to convert the performance you need from your young employees into a point system, then maybe you should consider it. I promise you, a point system will get Gen Yers focused like a laser beam. If you want them to start showing up earlier for work, attach points for every minute they arrive early, and take away points for every minute they come in late. If you want Gen Yers to meet quality standards, give them checklists of every detail and specification, and give points for every detail and specification completed-and take away points for every one missed. If you want Gen Yers to speed up, set a realistic quota of tasks per hour and give points for every task done over the quota-and take away points for every task under the quota. And so on.

Keeping Track Informally
Formal gold stars and point systems are not always necessary. You will get a similar result as long as you make it clear that you are paying close attention to what they are doing and keeping score, one way or another. Have regular one-on-one conversations where you ask for an account of what the person has done since your last conversation: "What concrete actions did you take? Did you meet the expectations we spelled out? Did you do all the items on your to-do list?" Then offer credit for the items done and take note of the items not yet done. You might say, "You did a great job on A, B, and C. But on D, you fell a little short. So that's three out of four for today. Let's talk about how you are going to do D next."

Another approach is to help Gen Yers keep track of their own work by using self-monitoring tools like project plans, checklists, and activity logs. Gen Yers can monitor whether they are meeting goals and deadlines laid out in a project plan, make notations within checklists, and report to you at regular intervals. Activity logs are diaries that Gen Yers can keep, noting contemporaneously exactly what they do all day, including breaks and interruptions. Each time he or she moves on to a new activity, the Gen Yer might note the time and the new activity. By using these tools, Gen Yers can document their own hard work every step of the way and build their own track record of success.

Negotiate Special Rewards in Very Small Increments
Today we live in a world in which relationships are governed by an increasingly short-term and transactional logic. That's true for people of all ages. But Gen Yers have never known it any other way. Segmented as a market from birth and armed with credit cards, they have been taught to think of themselves as customers in virtually every sphere. Even in their roles as students, most Gen Yers think of themselves as buying and consuming the learning services sold by schools. Meanwhile, their parents have been negotiating "choices" with them since they first uttered "I want" as toddlers, trading short-term rewards for short-term desired behavior.

By the time Gen Yers arrive at the workplace, short-term transactional thinking is second nature to them. They are still thinking like customers. Sometimes when I point this out to managers, they'll say, "Yeah, well, they're not paying us. We are paying them. So what currency do they bring to the transaction? They can do as they are told." I agree with that 100 percent.

Of course, you want to get more work and better work out of every one of your Gen Yers. For their part, Gen Yers want to earn more of what they need and want. The best solution? Plug into Gen Yers' transactional mind-set. Stop paying them and start buying their results, one by one. The more you trade results for rewards, the more reliable their performance will be. The smaller the increments you buy in, the more effective it will be. "I had this manager who would always say to me, 'What do you need from me?' a Gen Yer told me. "I'd always know she was going to get me back with, "Great. Here's what I need from you.' She did that with everybody. She knew I needed the money and went out of her way to help me make more money, which was really great of her."

The critical element when it comes to rewarding Gen Yers is letting them know that rewards are tied to concrete actions within their own direct control. This might remind you of the old-fashioned pay scheme called piecework in which individuals are paid an agreed-on amount for each defined unit of work they produce. The seamstress might be paid per stitch or per finished garment. The accountant might be paid per tax return prepared. The computer programmer might be paid per line of new code written. And so on. The key to your success will be defining those measurable pieces of work and setting a price per piece.

Traditional Compensation Versus Short-Term Rewards
"Oh yeah?" one manager interrupted to ask in the middle of one of my seminars, "Then why do Gen Yers push so hard for more when it comes to traditional compensation and benefits? It's not like they are saying, 'Don't give me health care, don't give me the 401k, and don't give me the salary. I'll just take the short-term rewards.' Are you telling me they just want more of everything?"

This was no doubt a fair question and one that is on the minds of a lot of managers. Perhaps if given the choice, many Gen Yers would actually opt for a safe lifelong employment relationship with secure, long-term vesting rewards. The problem is that you won't find any Gen Yers who actually believe that this is a real option in today's world. To them, it sounds like an absurd claim on its face-largely because it is. Therefore, most Gen Yers are concerned about all the rewards they might be able to extract from their immediate boss in the short term. However, Gen Yers are also acutely aware that the compensation systems and language of their employers almost always revolve around the traditional elements of compensation and benefits; pay scales or salary, health care plans, eligibility for 401k or pension plans, and the like. They often ask about traditional rewards because they are aware that you only know how to talk about traditional rewards-they figure at least the conversation will make sense to you. They also want you to think they care about the reward system you seem to care so much about. Finally, they figure they might as well get everything they can out of that system, even as they are making their other more idiosyncratic requests.

The answer, then, is, sure, they want more of everything. But the real performance drivers for Gen Yers are the short-term, special rewards you negotiate in exchange for their short-term above-and-beyond performance. A senior engineer shared this story with me: "One of the engineers on my team, a young lady who talked about little else but flextime and work-life balance, pretty much dropped everything for two months and lived here around the clock working on a killer deadline for me. Why? I arranged for her to take six weeks off, two unpaid, in a row after the project was finished. That was all it took. She was here around the clock for two months, then she disappeared for six weeks and came back happy as could be. The other two guys on that team? They just wanted a bonus check." He concluded, "They all want something different. But they all want something, and most of them are willing to work for it."

Negotiating Rewards in Small Increments
So when that Gen Yer knocks on your office door and asks if you have a minute to discuss his special need or want, you could roll your eyes and think about beating your head against the wall-or you could realize that this need or want might just be the key to driving this employee's performance to a whole new level, or at least the key to getting more work out of him better and faster for the short term.

The best approach is to negotiate these special rewards in very small increments. You want to be able to say, "Okay. I'll do that for you tomorrow if you do X for me today." Work a particularly undesirable shift? Work longer hours? Work with a difficult team? Do some heavy lifting? Work in some out of the way location? Clean up some unpleasant mess? Then deliver the reward in question as soon as you possibly can. Immediate rewards are much more effective with Gen Yers because they provide a greater sense of control and a higher level of reinforcement. Gen Yers are likely to remember the precise details and context of the performance and are therefore more likely to make the connection the next time the desired performance is called for. Plus they won't spend time wondering if their performance has been noted and appreciated, and they will therefore be less likely to lose the momentum generated by their short-term success.

Most managers have more discretionary resources than they realize at their disposal. These are often resources that can be deployed as special short-term rewards. What extra funds are available to you that you might be able to use for special short-term bonuses? What can you do to improve work conditions in the short term for your employees? How much latitude do you have to make special short-term accommodations in employees' schedules or paid time off? How much control do you have over extra training opportunities? Can you offer exposure to decision makers? How hard is it to have a written commendation added to an employee's file? There are many extra rewards managers have in their control, and you need to use every resource at your disposal.

That does not mean that everything is open to negotiation. You should be rock solid on your basic standards and requirements. What is not negotiable? What is essential? What is not acceptable? That's your starting point. From there, take control of the ongoing negotiation and help Gen Yers earn those special rewards they want so much. In the process, you'll get so much more, and better, and faster work out of them, one day at a time.

Used with permission of Bruce Tulgan, Founder/Chairman,
RainmakerThinking, Inc., brucet@rainmakerthinking.com

April 2-4, 2009
Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 24^th Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA, http://www.siop.org

April 19-22, 2009
ISPI The Performance Improvement Conference, Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel, Orlando, FL, http://www.ispi.org

April 20-25, 2009
International Association of Facilitators North American Conference, Vancouver, BC CAN, http://www.info-world.org

April 20 - 22, 2009
Christian Leadership Alliance Conference, Hilton, Atlanta, GA, http://www.christianleadershipalliance.com/conference/2009

April 29-May 1, 2009
95^th Annual Multicultural Business Conference, Orlando, FL, http://www.diversitybusiness.com

May 19-23, 2009
American Counseling Association Annual Conference, Charlotte, NC, http://www.counseling.org

June 28-July 1, 2009
SHRM 61^st Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, LA, http://www.shrm.org

July 1-3, 2009
National Career Development Association, St. Louis, MO, 866-FOR-NCDA

August 15-18, 2009
Excite: ASAE’s Annual Meeting & Exposition, Toronto, CAN, http://www.asaecenter.org/AnnualMeeting

Dick Knowdell’s Career Development Training
Creator of the wonderful Motivated Skills, Career Values, and other Card Sort tools for managers & career counselors has the following training dates set up. Email him at rknowdell@mac.com to get more information.

• March 17-25, 2009 Charlotte, NC Conference

• April 6-25, 2009 Melbourne, Australia Conference and Coach Workshop

• April 28-30, 2009 San Antonio, Texas Conference

• May 25-28, 2009 Atlanta, Georgia Coach Workshop

• May 31-June 3, 2009 Minneapolis, MN Conference

• June 29- July 5, 2009 St. Louis, MO Conference

• July 19-26, 2009 Detroit, Michigan Coach Workshop

www.AmericaSupportsYou.mil has a list of hundreds of organizations that support the military. The Yellow Ribbon Fund is one such group and focuses on injured service members and their families.

PODCAST: MORE GREEN TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE OFFICE, http://www.Inc.com/keyword/jun08

EASY TO BE GREEN!

RECYCLING

Donate Old Cell Phones
911 Cell Phone Bank provide free emergency cell phones to needful people through partnerships with law enforcement organizations, http://www.911CellPhoneBank.com 

Recycle PCs, cell phones, printers, CDs diskettes, etc., with GreenDisk. For $29.95, they send a 70-pound-capacity box. When it’s full, you download postage from their website and ship it back. Your “junk” then goes to workshops for the disabled and are refurbished.  http://www.greendisk.comm

Donate PCs to National Cristina Foundation, http://www.cristina.org; Goodwill, www.goodwill.org, Salvation Army, www.satruck.com/MakeDonation.asp.

Recycle PCs and other computer products at Hewlett Packard and Dell. See their websites for details.

Several other places to recycle old PCs: www.earth911.org, www.eiae.org.

Find local Electronics recyclers at http://www.earth911.org and http://www.ebay.com/rethink