The Optimized People Development System

Tag: Employer of Choice

  • Lean Principles Applied to the People Development System

    Lean Principles Applied to the People Development System

    A people development system has some unique characteristics, so applying lean, continuous improvement requires some thoughtful use of the lean principles. The first principle requires the stakeholders to think about who the system serves and what those customers would find valuable.

    Lean Principle 1 – Define value from the customers’ point of view.

    You may have noticed the plural possessive use in the subheading. That’s because there’s more than one customer to consider. In fact, there are four distinct customers that require something from the PDS:

    • Team members – current and future
    • Organization teams – the department that the applicant will join
    • The organization as a whole, and
    • The customers who buy your products and services.

    Team members

    The person thinking about joining the organization needs to see clearly the value in doing so.  There’s value in understanding what the company stands for, what opportunities exist, and exactly what the organization is looking for. Several functions of the PDS are instrumental in creating and sustaining these values.

    If they are offered and accept the job, there is value in connecting – feeling valued, knowing where to start, having someone to help get them on the path. There is value in growth opportunities – seeing the pathway for development, having a say in how the path is laid out.

    After they’ve started, there’s value in having their view heard and appreciated, having good communication, meaningful work, and the ability to contribute. These are just some of the things that would be valued by this PDS customer.

    There are many benefits of ensuring that this PDS customer can see the value the organization has to offer: clarity around expectations, opportunities, and potential; consistency in communication, planning, and development; and a system that will engage with them all the way through their development process.

    The teams 

    The person you’ve hired is going to join a team. These organizational teams are important customers of the PDS and have certain expectations.

    These customers value:

    • Qualified candidates.
    • People with the right knowledge, skills, and abilities.
    • Getting talented people when needed.

    When the team receives the new member, they want:

    • An onboarding experience that establishes foundational relationships with new team members.
    • A robust training program that matches the team’s needs and supports their mission.
    • Retention efforts that keep the team stable.
    • Performance management efforts that expand the capacity of each team member.
    • Reliable tools for PDS administration.
    • Reliable data to gage and improve the system.
    • Leadership development that also helps continuously improve the PDS.

    The benefits of a well-run PDS for these departments and teams includes better matching of talent to their needs; broad, ongoing support as the whole team grows and becomes resilient; and leaders that can help ensure that the PDS is working for all stakeholders. Is your current PDS laser focused on this customer’s needs?

    The Organization as a Whole

    Defining value for this customer of the PDS requires a holistic, long-term viewpoint.

    Collectively this customer values:

    • A stable, growing workforce that buys into the culture, vision, mission, and business objectives.
    • Data that informs decisions about people, in the near term and the future. 
    • Tools across the PDS that make the process efficient, cost effective, and easy to manage.
    • Leadership development that continuously improves the PDS.
    • Help in becoming a premier employer.

    An optimized PDS that offers this customer high levels of value in these areas affords the organization more precise control over this people focused system, improved ability to predict PDS performance, increased engagement, and greater capacity to make sound personnel decisions, among many other benefits. Are this customer’s value demands being met?

    “The” Customer

    The fourth customer of the PDS is directly impacted by all the values delivered to the first three customers. A PDS that develops and takes great care of their workers, ensures that teams are well supported, and provides the organization with better people-centered support, has greater focus and fewer distractions in pursuit of its business objectives. The external customers of the organization benefit greatly when this is the case.

    Applying this first lean principle should start with all the PDS stakeholders learning more about the different customers that the PDS serves and what they value. Then closely evaluating the current system. Does our PDS provide these values to each specific customer? Are these values clearly defined and presented? Define the really important questions to consider and then find answers to them.

    The second lean principle seeks to make the system visible so that gaps and opportunities are identified. That’s for next time.

  • Finding the Starting Point

    Finding the Starting Point

    Finding the Starting Point

    The optimization process for the people development system is no different than any other system improvement journey. Start by thoroughly understanding the current system. Mapping the current state of the PDS with all the stakeholders can help uncover the “why” and “how” parts and allow for more precise improvement efforts.  

    Here’s an article that I wrote about one company’s mapping efforts.

    https://tmep.cis.tennessee.edu/wire-company-creates-map-improve-their-people-development-system

    Image by TheAndrasBarta from Pixabay

  • Make Sure Your System Can Sustain Your Status – Tip #4

    Make Sure Your System Can Sustain Your Status – Tip #4

    There’s fierce competition in all industries to find, train, and retain the talented people that thriving businesses need. In recent posts, we’ve been looking at four tips to help organizations win or improve their performance in this competition. The fourth tip is about staying power.

    Becoming an employer of choice is about more than simply having people choose your organization over others from a list of prospects. A strategy for moving up the list of preferred employers should include a commitment to continuously improve your internal people development system.

    Embarking on an effort to improve your ranking as EoC would be an exercise in futility if the system you use to find, train, and retain people is not functioning effectively. Some companies striving to become EoCs often take time-worn steps such as training leaders, working on retention plans, or maybe offering training to high-potential team members. These are all good steps, but many times they have less-than-desirable outcomes.

    If you expose your leadership team to quality training then send them back into a PDS that is inefficient, disconnected, and practically invisible, how effective can they be with this new training?

    If you add new benefits and retention bonuses and then subject the people for whom they are intended to a PDS that does not facilitate strong communication and provide opportunities for relationship building, what are the odds that your investment in retention will pay off? You get the picture.

    The PDS must be strong enough to improve your position in the EoC race then help you hold that position and possibly climb higher. Here are some ways to strengthen this important system. To start, use systems thinking to help your team see the whole PDS – its connections and interactions and the opportunities for improvement; this is where lean concepts can be applied to make the system more efficient and effective. Then, strive to become a learning organization to drive engagement and create the stickiness that keeps people coming back.

    See The System

    The PDS is a non-linear system. It is complex and involves many people acting at various times and at various levels. Making it visible starts with a current state map. Get all the stakeholders to help build the map and identify gaps and opportunities. What data is being collected? What tools are being used? Who is involved at various places across the system? How is each area influencing what is happening in the other four areas?

    Once the map is completed, a strategy can begin to take shape to improve the PDS and its effectiveness.

    Lean The System

    Like most other systems, there can be waste in the PDS. Some of that waste is tangible, like money and lost opportunities. Some are intangible, such as time, effort, and potential relationships. Once the system is more visible, efforts can be made to reduce or eliminate waste.

    Waste can occur when a trainer is investing time training someone using poorly designed training programs. In the recruiting process, waste can come from job postings that are ineffective. If a company cannot launch new products or expand operations due to workforce issues, perhaps the fault lies with a weak PDS.   

    When a good recruit is mismatched in a job, the opportunity to maximize that person’s potential can be lost; often leading to their departure from the team. If the PDS does not support great retention and performance management activities, powerful, potential relationships might not develop. This is a type of waste with long-term ramifications. Lean thinking is about continuously improving a system. This particular people-centric system should not be overlooked when it comes to pursuing perfection.

    Make the System Sticky

    A learning organization attracts people and holds their attention. In such an environment, everyone understands the importance of learning, and everyone participates in learning. Development pathways and training matrices are prominent, learning is celebrated and rewarded, and engagement deepens.

    Team learning, personal mastery, and knowledge sharing are just some of the key elements engrained in a learning organization. The best employers understand this and constantly work on creating a culture of learning. The journey to become a learning organization requires a shared mindset whereby a team works individually and collectively to increase knowledge, skills, and abilities. The PDS is the mechanism that allows this mindset to take root and thrive.

    You’re Already in the Race

    So, how do you position your firm in the minds of your employees and potential employees as a great place to work? It takes a well thought out strategy that includes:

    1. Building a strong, continuously improving system to develop people.
    2. Understanding the nature of the competition.
    3. Helping stakeholders grasp the importance of their role in the organization’s success; and
    4. Recognizing that there are important choices to be made, and not just by the talented people the PDS will bring in.

    Decent wages and benefits that attract people are the table stakes in today’s labor market. However, in this instance, winning such a ubiquitous competition involves the idea that people will not only choose your company but will enthusiastically choose to stay and make meaningful contributions. And, leaning on a time-honored axiom, remember; that becoming an employer of choice is a marathon, not a sprint.

    Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

  • Who’s in? – 4 Tips to Win a Competition You May Not Realize You’re in

    Who’s in? – 4 Tips to Win a Competition You May Not Realize You’re in

    An employer of choice makes better choices about who to bring on board because they have made good choices about their people development system and the culture they want to build.

    In this blog series, we’ve been exploring how all employers are competing to be an employer of choice, even if they don’t realize they are in the game. To improve their position in this race, the first tip is to learn about other competitor organizations they are up against. The second, is that the stakeholders of the organization’s people development system should realize that the potential employee they are after isn’t the only one making choices.

    In addition to hiring decisions, stakeholders of the company’s PDS make crucial choices about the way the system is administered and supported. Those decisions feed back into the employer of choice calculus.

    The third tip relates to the people who own the PDS.

    Let the whole team in on it.

    “That’s HR’s responsibility.” I often hear responses along these lines when I ask leaders about their internal workforce development efforts. It takes more than just the HR team to make the PDS work well.

    There are many stakeholders of an organization’s workforce development processes. These include frontline supervisors, line leads, department heads, and senior managers. Unfortunately, we sometimes forget to tell many of those stakeholders that we are aiming to be a preferred employer and that we need their help in doing it.

    They don’t know what they don’t know.

    Leaders at all levels influence the culture. A great example is their attitude toward training. If they are unwilling to give their team members time to attend training or if they complain about the process, their team will be negatively impacted. By extension, if they do not understand and appreciate the need for a learning culture, they will short circuit efforts to build such a culture.

    Stakeholders are important connectors across the five functional areas of the PDS – recruiting, onboarding, training, retention, and performance management. Do we let them know this? Do we train them to be good stewards of the PDS and the people that this system serves?

    Recruiting great potential talent is wasted when those new hires are passed on to team leaders who do not play their part well. Conversations that begin in the recruiting phase should continue through the onboarding and into the training and retention phase. The PDS should allow this communication to happen easily and consistently.

    If all stakeholders do not know the extent of their influence, and how to make that influence positive in nature, how can the company become an EoC?

    Help them see their part.

    Much of the leadership development that is offered to frontline and mid-level leaders is focused on the leader and their ability to engage people. Making good decisions, communicating well, and thinking strategically are all important learnings for leaders.

    It is just as important that all the leaders and stakeholders of the PDS see the system and understand their role in its performance. They also need the training and development to help them fulfill that part of their responsibilities.

    Building a healthy and vibrant company culture depends on the efforts of all the players. Get them involved in the competition for EoC by telling them who they are competing against and why winning (or at least moving up the rankings of employers) is so important to the company’s future and theirs.

    Once the stakeholders on board and collectively pushing to win the competition for EoC, the system must be able to sustain your new status. Which is the topic of our next post.

    Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

  • Who’s choosing? 4 Tips to Win a Competition You May Not Realize You’re in

    Who’s choosing? 4 Tips to Win a Competition You May Not Realize You’re in

    Every employer is a competitor in the race to be a preferred employer, that employer that draws people in and keeps them engaged for long stretches of their careers. There are some leaders who have a watchful eye toward the goal of being an employer of choice. However, there may be quite a few who aren’t watching the race at all. If there is a list of 50 or 500 employers in your neighborhood, your company ranks somewhere on the scale of great, good, or bad places to work.

    My last post advocated that a good first step toward improving your position is to understand the nature of the competition. Recognize your competitors, get to know them, learn from them, and develop a strategy to move up the rankings. The second tip has to do with choices.

    It’s not one-sided.

    Most literature promoting the idea of becoming an EoC is written with the employee as the one whose choice is of paramount importance. While it is true that they are the focus of this competition, they are not the only ones making choices. Employers must also make important choices, and these decisions inform the EoC rankings by communicating with current and potential employees about the company’s attitude toward people.

    Consequences of choice.

    Bad hiring decisions can harm any previous efforts taken to become an EoC. If, for example, a poor choice of candidates is made because the organization’s people development system is unclear on the team’s needs, the new hire will likely leave prematurely and perhaps with a not-so-good review of the experience.

    Some choices made by employers are made well before the hiring process. Long-term decisions to support or not support training delivery will have future impacts on the morale of the existing team and therefore the atmosphere within the organization. Culture is the key to becoming (and continuing as) an EoC. Having a great benefits package within a poor culture won’t move your company up the rankings in the minds of employees. The point is that, in addition to hiring decisions, leaders and stakeholders of the company’s people development system make other crucial choices about the way the system is administered and supported. Those decisions feedback into the employer of choice calculus.

    Positioned to choose.

    The company’s PDS is the primary system within the organization that nurtures culture. It is the system that facilitates communication with employees. Ultimately, the PDS is the system that decides if you are an employer of choice or not. This is why it is important to ensure that it operates effectively and efficiently.

    Do the choices being made regarding the PDS support the success of all the functional areas (recruiting, onboarding, training, retention, and performance management)? Does the system provide data that informs decision-making? Are choices made from long-term perspectives or near term? Is culture at the forefront when decisions are made about developing people? Does the PDS accurately inform the hiring process?

    It is more than simply having people choose your organization over others from a list of prospects. An employer of choice is one who makes good choices and one who has made good choices. The best way for that to occur is to have all stakeholders engaged in the development of people. And that will be the topic of our next post.

    Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay

  • 4 Tips to Win a Competition You May Not Even Realize You’re in

    4 Tips to Win a Competition You May Not Even Realize You’re in

    There was no starting gun. No one approached a line waiting for someone to yell “GO!” It’s an age-old, ongoing competition and if you’re an employer, you’re in it. Whether or not you recognize it, you’re in the competition to be an employer of choice. And your success, long-term and short, is directly linked to how well you do in this race.

    Imagine a list of every employer in your area, each one scored and ranked from the best place to work to the worst. You’re on that list. Even if you put little or no thought and effort into this idea of being a preferred workplace, your company is impacted by its performance in this competition. Placement on that list has many implications for your team.

    What does it mean to be an EoC? It simply means that your firm is positioned in the minds of your employees and potential employees as a great place to work. Becoming an EoC is not a simple thing to achieve or sustain because it requires a combination of several dynamic factors.

    In this series of posts, we’ll explore four strategic tips to help improve your position and move up the ranks of the best places to work. First, to become an employer of choice, there’s a need to understand the nature of the competition. Then, stakeholders should consider who is making choices. It is also important to let the whole team in on the goal. Finally, make sure your system can sustain your status.

    Who are we up Against?

    Recognizing that you are in the competition is the first step. Then you must accept the fact that you are competing against all employers for talent, not just those you consider to be in your industry. This helps you look at the recruiting pools differently and informs the development of your training efforts.

    It would be great if we could hire the talent we need and just put them in play immediately. That hasn’t been the case in a very long time. Practically every company is working to train people to do the functions required for the organization to succeed. We hear it all the time, “If you can find me someone with desire, we can train them to do the work we need done.” That person with desire may be looking at other sectors and industries. Is your internal people development system (PDS) able to attract them, and more importantly, can you really train them (and do it well) if you do succeed in hiring them?

    Getting to know them…all of them.

    Sports teams watch game films. They study their opponents and try to develop strategies to win against them. In the competition to be an EoC, there may not be game films, but there are plenty of sources of information that will help you understand how your many competitors find, train, and retain people.

    Study your opponents and learn from them. Look at the job postings from other industries. Check out their webpages. Do they show their company culture? Do they make it easy to find job postings on their site? Are their job postings attractive?  

    Some companies are actively chasing the pole position as an EoC. They are committed to the race and are making improvements that give them a competitive edge. If this were a car race, there would be super sports cars, family sedans, and even some clunkers. Your company may not be at that sports car level, but that doesn’t mean you can’t compete well.

    There are large employers with deep pockets and many resources. Certainly, going up against them seems unfair. Still, you must stay in the game. To compete against them, look at the areas where you have some advantages. Things like flexibility in scheduling shifts, skills development opportunities you can offer, connections to the community, and giving employees opportunities to contribute at meaningful levels. Use the leverage available to you to improve your ranking.

    Good teams also watch game films on themselves. This is an area where teams might findF improvement opportunities. They look over plays and talk about what happened; if it went well, they probably don’t spend too much time on it. If things did not go well, that’s where they spend time talking through the failure and learning from it.

    Can you see your PDS…all the functional areas of it? Again, there’s no film to watch, but there’s lots of data and communication that should be going on within your system. Capturing that and regularly assessing performance is crucial. Where can the system be improved? Which of the five areas in the PDS is operating the best? Which area needs help? We’ll continue to explore this system in coming posts.

    There’s fierce competition in the race to find, train, and retain the talented folks we need to succeed. Choosing to look closely at the other competitors can help you make decisions about how your PDS can be improved. Other choices come with the title of Employer of Choice. And that’s the topic for the next post.

    Image by Annette from Pixabay