Positive Employment Report Provides U.S. with Window of Opportunity CEO Offers Five Steps to Smart Growth
Brian Wilkerson, national talent management consultant and CEO of WisdomNet, Inc., reminds companies that effective hiring and management has an exponential effect on growth.
(PRWEB) May 7, 2005 - In surprising news today, the U.S. employment report
indicated job growth of 274,000 jobs, 100,000 more than analysts and economists
had projected.
The news resulted in raised optimism throughout financial
indicators. Stocks in such companies as Monster International and Robert Half
International, Inc. rose anywhere from 1 to 10 percent. The news sent Treasury
prices down and yields up. Most importantly, the strong figure - accompanied by
upward revisions to provisional figures for the previous two months - suggests
that companies are growing despite high costs and recent softness in the
economy.
National talent management consultant, Brian Wilkerson, reminds
companies that hiring smart has an exponential effect. Effective hiring and
management can build on growth, while overhiring or knee-jerk hires can lead to
a bloated organization.
Wilkerson advises companies to look at growing
human capital as they would look at growing other capital assets. Here are five
steps to smart growth:
Step One: Align people with your business
objectives.
In his consulting experience, Wilkerson has experienced any
number of organizations that have wasted talent resources. Many smaller
organizations have grown in the mold of the founding group and thus have a
similar set of talents throughout the organization, for example, “techies,”
marketers, salespeople or engineers.
Other organizations do not
systematically add to their base of expertise, hiring salespeople without
examining the growth objectives, or adding management that often are not suited
to the role.
Successful companies avoid this problem by aligning human
resources with the business goals. Expansion only begins once recruitment,
training and deployment of individuals is planned with growth in
mind.
Step Two: Take an Inventory of Current Skills, Talents and
Behaviors
There are a number of ways to assess a company’s current skill-set
including internal evaluations, talent management software, or outside
consulting.
Internal Evaluations
Most companies conduct formal
appraisals of their employees, and the more sophisticated will have a number of
different criteria for evaluation. The more in-depth the evaluation, the more
useful it will be in assessing the alignment of skills and talents with job
requirements.
Technology
Talent management software is becoming
increasingly popular, allowing human resources and company executives to track
all details pertaining to employees and their skill-sets and traits.
Professional Consultants
Another methodology for
assessing a workforce is to bring in a consulting firm that specializes in this
arena. Consultants provide an objective, professional opinion with regard to
staffing. They also provide a consultative document from which senior management
may glean information before making decisions that may affect the bottom line of
an organization.
Step Three: Undertake a “Gap Assessment”
Gap
assessment is the basic evaluation of where an organization is now, vs. where
they want to be. The evaluation of ‘now’ includes an honest audit of employees,
their true talents and their benefit to the organization. Additionally, it
should include an audit of the skills required for each job description. Once
complete, management must ask, honestly: “Can the current talent complete the
requirements of the job duties?”
Without an honest gap assessment company
executives make assumptions. Some assume (or blindly hope) that they have the
in-house talent to achieve planned growth. Others assume the opposite: they’ll
need to hire new and expensive staff that have the necessary experience and
savvy to take the company to the next level. Both or neither may be the right
answer, but without an honest talent assessment management may pursue the wrong
direction.
Step 4: Outsourcing
Like buying a car, management must
ask the question – to buy or lease? Much has been made of outsourcing, but
contract labor has its advantages: it can cost less, is far more flexible and
can be easier to obtain from a skills perspective. On the other hand, hiring
employees gives the company the final say over performance and costs.
Step Five: Close the Loop
So you have new employees or newly trained
existing employees. Now what?
In the human resources space, the hot term
is ‘succession planning’. But the bottom line for management is how to keep
employees productive and engaged. To do this, organizations must have the
processes and the infrastructure to ensure the work of their staff aligns to the
goals of the business, and that the right evaluations, structure, rewards, and
training are in place.
In conclusion, the overriding strategic
imperative is to consider talent as a key ingredient in business success – just
as important as other capital investments. And just as additions of hard costs
are examined carefully during times of growth, so should the additions of
personnel.
WisdomNet, Inc. creates consulting and innovative product
solutions for Fortune 500 companies. WisdomNet’s vast and varied consulting
experience in strategy, operations and human capital and their leading talent
management system, Revexion, generates metric driven results for
clients.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/5/prweb237779.htm