Employee Training, Workforce Development, Better Hiring Practices – they are all incredibly important to the strategic success of any business. However, they rarely reach a “bright fire” status that gets companies jumping to address them correctly. And, often problems are recognized so late to correct, it becomes a quick band aid fix instead of a long term sustainable and measurable correction. But that time is quickly approaching. What if you knew that three out of every four employees will leave their employer for a new job as soon as one becomes available? Would you like to get ahead of this problem before it happened? I would.
Strategy is only an intention until you start allocating resources to make it happen. In our case, the resources which we have to allocate are three fold; time, energy and money. How we allocate these resources is how we ultimately execute the strategy.
So, why are 74% of employees looking to jump ship? As we limp towards the end of the worst economic downturn since the great depression; very few businesses understand what lies ahead as we’re venturing in uncharted territory when it comes to the interrelation between the economy, workers benefits, workplace development, and employment opportunities. Due to these unprecedented conditions, several trends are emerging that you need to be aware of. Fortunately, the good news is there is still time to capitalize on what is going to happen and not only be in much better shape than your competitors as the economy improves, but actually get ahead of those companies who are asleep and numb to this forthcoming problem.
A cardinal principle of Total Team Quality escapes too many dealers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships with your entire team.
What am I referring to? I’m talking about your most valuable asset, the one item that if lost could shut down your operations overnight – your employees. I asked a 5 roof top dealer recently what he considered his greatest asset to be? His quite expected response was “well it’s my people”. My next question to him was; what is your monthly advertising budget? “$85,000″ was his answer. Finally, I asked; what is your monthly employee development and training budget? Answer; “Zero”. Not exactly what one would call investing in your greatest asset is it? If your greatest personal asset is your home, would you choose to maintain it (keeping its value) or would you let it rot away and depreciate? Same holds true for your employees. Let them depreciate and your business will go right along with them. Invest in them and they in turn will invest themselves and contribute to your company’s growth.
“The only thing worse than training your people and having them leave your employment is not training them and having them stay.” – Zig Ziglar
Finding, attracting and keeping solid and talented employees is difficult in any economy. The recession has significantly curtailed normal levels of job hopping for over six years due to diminished job opportunities. As the economy turns around, we’ll see an unprecedented release of pent up job-seekers flooding the marketplace to take new job opportunities. Those jobs whereby the company provides them with personal development and growth opportunities.
Due to the weakest job market employees have ever seen, those lucky enough to be employed have done everything possible to simply stay employed. Out of necessity, and to keep food on the table, employees have chosen to stick with their current job whether they like it or not. The lucky ones really had no choice – few other jobs were available and it beat unemployment. During this time, most companies have been cutting their workforce and stripping out employee perks – easy to do when the company is fighting just to remain afloat. From the employees point of view however, their employer simply sees them as a cost that can be trimmed. They’ve watched in anxious silence as their coworkers have been let go and their benefits reduced. Quietly, they’ve kept inventory of this – for years – and have been waiting for the economy to turn around so they can leave.
Most business owners may scoff at this idea, they believe their employees are loyal – and some may be. However, they are mistaken – the swell of discontent doesn’t discriminate. It’s there, right under the surface from the minimum wage worker right up to the executive team. A recent Harris Interactive poll recently found that over 74% of those employed are waiting for the right opportunity to jump ship. 74%! Studies have shown the costs related to directly replacing an employee can be as high as 50-60% of the employee’s annual salary, but the total cost of turnover can reach as high as 90-200%! Now multiply that by 3 out of 4 employees…wow!
As the economy improves, employees most likely will be leaving in droves creating perhaps the largest employment crisis we’ve ever seen. This mass exodus, resulting from years of pent up frustration of not being appreciated will result in an alarming brain drain for your company; and that isn’t all – how are you going to replace and retrain all the new employees? The impact of this situation will cripple organizations that don’t plan ahead; and you can prepare, and indeed be ready to benefit in the years to come.
It’s a simple process really, one that has both short term and long term benefits for the company and the employee. It starts with helping advance the personal, team as well as leadership development skills for all employees and this shows you value them. Part of this development should be applicable to their current roles, making them much more productive and valuable in the short term. Another important component of their development should be focused upon the skills, knowledge and competence the employee will need to continue growing within the company and as an individual. This is more strategic in nature paying dividends on three key initiatives – helping to create employees to handle more responsibility within the company while exhibiting the company’s desire to see them advance – this then can create a dramatic improvement on employee retention and lastly, it will identify those employees within your organization who will become promotable to positions which will assist in growing the organization.
Employees participating in company supported education programs increase their retention rate by 50%! The company should also strive to make better recruiting and hiring decisions in that making a poor hiring decision can cost up to 50% of the employees annual salary. It is much better to simply make better hires and this starts with better assessment of employees skills in the interview process. Skills Assessment tests can quickly and easily help to filter out candidates that may otherwise charm their way into a job only to cause massive problems later. We all know what that is like. Right?
So think about your employee training policies, your current recruitment methodology, and strategic vision for workplace and employee development. You’ll be glad tomorrow that you took care of this today!
Want to attract some awesome new talent to the industry? There are thousands of college educated unemployed folks out there who could possibly become your next great super star but you better have a solid professional growth and development program made part of your hiring package or you won’t get close to attracting them, much less keeping them. Most dealers would never think of telling their kids to drop out of school but have no problem cutting education funds to grow their employees’ skills which incidentally is how we grow our business. Employee development is commensurate with business development.
Individual talents are paled compared to the summation of those individual talents working as a cohesive team. Total team and company success is created by the sum of all the parts. Having one superstar is not enough because he/she cannot carry the load as we set our sights higher on increased organizational performance. This is why we must have a total team employee development initiative coupled with a solid consistent plan of attack. When this initiative is properly planned, implemented and executed with consistency you will have created a masterpiece that creates a rich business environment whereby everyone gets better and some even explode with greatness.
Need a few ideas on conquering this forthcoming dilemma? Send me an email (chuck@impactgroupcrm.com) requesting “How to fix it before it becomes a problem”.
Best to all!!!