Make the Time to Keep Your Talent
By its nature construction is fast-paced and those who manage it are chronically overworked. So it’s no wonder that things like performance reviews, mapping plans for advancement and employee training are often just simmering away on the back burner waiting for that miraculous day when the schedules clear and allow people to spend some time on them.
Over at SuccessFactors they spend a lot of time on the people equation of business and they use an inspiring new word for these “human resources” – talent. In their white paper, “Wasted Human Capital: The Looming Talent Management Crisis in Corporate America,” they analyze and draw conclusions about how well America is managing its talent. The report card isn’t very good.
Seventy-two percent of respondents were not very satisfied with the performance review processes in their companies. In three out of five categories related to organizational goals employees faced challenges and more than half of all employees had a hard time meshing their personal goals with the company’s and in tracking employee and departmental progress toward goals. Worse, slightly more than half of the respondents thought fewer than half of the employees in their companies were compensated or rewarded on their performance and on achieving goals.
I read the report and I’d sum it up by saying that if you want your company to be successful at making sure it has the right talent at the right times then you should be focused on:
- Aligning employee and company goals;
- Developing employee talent;
- Motivating employees; and
- Keeping employees, especially by offering pathways to advancement.
You also have to absolutely make time to do these things.
