Hagel and Company Human Resources Blog - California, Idaho, Washington State HR News

Could your organization respond quickly to the sudden, surprise departure of a key employee? How long would it take to find a quality replacement?

Unfortunately, there is no way to predict when or if a key employee will leave the company due to death, disability, or resignation. But there is a way to prepare for these possible scenarios: succession planning. You can recruit, identify, and develop high potential employees to fill each role within the company so that when key talent leaves, you aren’t caught off guard.

Human Resource Executive notes, “These days, succession planning is no longer a question of deciding who’s ready to step into the executive suite – it’s about ensuring that every sector of the organization has a strong bench of players ready to step into new roles.” Many companies today are turning to succession planning tools as part of a larger talent management system to help prepare for changing economic conditions and future workforce needs.

Succession planning tools capture critical information about your employees so you can determine their potential, risk of leaving, and possible talent pool placement. Industry expert William Rothwell, Ph.D., SPHR, describes talent pools as, “A group of people being prepared for more challenging responsibilities.” With talent pool-based succession planning, your company can:

• Cultivate high potential employees to meet strategic plans
• Establish groups of promotable employees for all key areas in your company
• Increase employee engagement and key talent retention

You are Invited to Attend
the 2013 Hagel & Company
HRMS CUSTOMER CONFERENCE

Join us for this exciting event!

Friday, August 23rd, 2013
10:00 am – 5:00 pm
at Safeco Field
1250 1st Ave S, Seattle, WA

Topics Include:

• HR & Payroll Legal Updates
• Affordable Healthcare
• Sage SQL
• Cloud Options
• Management Tools

Registration Includes:

• Admission to the Conference
• A Group Suite Ticket to the Game at 7pm
• Snacks and Beverages
• Dinner

Well-trained employees are one of the keys to organizational success. They are productive, highly engaged, and keep your customers happy. According to recent SHRM research and the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), there are several workplace trends that point to a “major shortage in future organizational leadership and overall skilled works.” However, during lean economic times, employee training and development is often one of the first budgets to be cut.

A recent article in Entrepreneur discusses the importance of training as a tool for both employee and business growth:

• “[Formal] training gives individuals the opportunity to solve some business issues and find new ways of generating revenue.” Jeffrey Hull, director of learning services at Employers Group
• “The more you know, the easier and faster you can do your job.” Dr. Tracey Wilen-Daugenti, managing director of the Apollo Research Institute

So how can you develop and maintain an effective training program that both improves employee skills and fosters business growth? Many top performing companies utilize training or learning management systems to help meet their goals. If you feel overwhelmed by the cumbersome processes you use to manage employee training requirements, a training management solution can help you track details easily and help you maintain compliance. A web-based solution such as CyberTrain offers a self-service portal so employees, supervisors, and training staff can access information such as requirements, enrollments, certification tracks and more.

Other forward-thinking companies have implemented a complete employee performance system that includes best practices in learning management. Halogen Software’s award winning Employee Performance and Talent Management Suite offers a complete suite of web-based products that automate, simplify, and integrate employee appraisals, 360 degree feedback, compensation management, succession planning, and learning management.

Arm yourself with a better, more effective employee training program. Leverage solutions like CyberTrain or Halogen to help your company identify and close skill gaps, empower employees, and measure the effectiveness of your training programs.

Hagel & Company can help you find the best training software to suit your company’s needs. Contact Terri Gresham at terri@hagel.net for more information.

Did you know that it is worse to give employees no feedback at all than to provide negative feedback? In fact, a workforce.com study reported that the feeling of being ignored leads to employee disengagement. Industry research has shown that companies with high levels of engagement have better financial results because employees are more productive, customer-focused, and loyal. How can you boost engagement at your company?

A Towers Watson Global Workforce Study reported that “employee engagement rises when people experience a combination of effective and caring leadership, appropriate development opportunities, and a feeling of empowerment that comes with the ability to control one’s work situation.” A Talent Management System can help improve the way you manage employee performance by giving you the tools you need to build and support the best workforce possible.

Here are six ways a Talent Management system can improve employee engagement:

1. Standardize the employee review process. With a process in place, your company can ensure employees are getting thorough, accurate reviews.
2. Maintain an ongoing, two-way dialogue on employee performance. Employees want to hear feedback about their work and be praised for a job well done. A Talent Management system can help you build regular reviews into the performance management process so you can give regular feedback and check progress. Plus, the system can automatically solicit and gather input from colleagues and employee peers.
3. Define personal goals and tie them to organizational goals. Employees perform best when they clearly know what is expected. Enter SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound) goals into your Talent Management system so they can be tracked and linked to organizational goals. Employees will benefit from seeing how their work impacts the larger business.
4. Give employees the support they need and use their strengths to your advantage. Make sure you are setting your employees up for success. Use your talent management system to assess employee skill sets and assign the right tasks that take advantage of these skills. Ensure employees have the right tools and training they need to perform (Creelman Research).
5. Recognize and reward. When managers need to make compensation decisions, they can view ratings in the system to ensure top performers are rewarded. A system can also restrict managers from assigning rewards that go against corporate guidelines.
6. Provide career development opportunities and succession planning. Using a Talent Management System, managers can include training and career goals with employee performance reviews. Employees can easily see their development path and access appropriate training activities. The organization can create talent pools of employees to groom top performers for additional responsibilities or promotion.

Thousands of HR professionals are using Halogen Software’s award winning Employee Performance and Talent Management Suite to increase engagement. Halogen offers a complete suite of web-based products that automate, simplify and integrate employee appraisals, 360 degree feedback, compensation management, succession planning, and learning management.

Confucius says, “The essence of knowledge is, having it, to use it.”

Writing an effective performance evaluation is about taking the knowledge you have developed about an employee over the last review period and putting into effective words. Words designed to help, to encourage, and to motivate the employee to produce valuable results.

The best performance evaluations are easy to write because the manager is an effective record keeper. With every opportunity the manager records achievements, successes, performance to goals, and work that went above and beyond. When the time comes to record the information in total, it’s readily available in a comprehensive file.

What about mishaps, screw-ups, or disciplinary actions? Performance evaluations should never be used as a disciplinary tool. Your company should have a disciplinary policy and procedure for use when an employee needs to improve performance. The performance evaluation is not that venue. Deal with problems as they occur, keep records per company policy, and unless it’s a major violation or the behavior continues, these incidents should not be brought up again during an annual evaluation. Giving positive feedback about performance improvements is definitely appropriate, however.

Performance evaluations should be straight forward, responsive, easily understood, specific, and encouraging.  Let’s look at each of these words or phrases individually:

Straight forward – the performance evaluation should look to the future with an eye on how past performance predicts future behavior. For example, if you have a major project coming up, discuss how the employee’s performance on a recent project or newly acquired specialized skills will be considered as you assemble the next project team. Let employees know that “best” performance is recognized and rewarded with new and interesting opportunities.

Responsive – the performance evaluation should reflect what the employee has done right and how you feel about it. Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “I can go for 2 months on 1 compliment.” Employees need to be validated and appreciated; telling an employee how you feel about their performance will have a positive impact on their performance.

Easily understood – performance evaluations should be clear and concise while avoiding flowery phrases or jargon that sound great but say nothing. The number of words is meaningless, but the quality of the content is priceless.

Specific – performance evaluations should address specific events, behaviors, accomplishments, and recognitions. Describe how these impacted the workplace and how you, as a manager, view the employee’s contributions.

Encouraging – without purpose and a sense of contributing, employees lack motivation and easily become disgruntled. Use positive words when you evaluate an employee. Finally, be sure to tell each employee how his or her contributions relate to the success of the team, department or company.

Evaluations should be fair, legally defensible and accurately record the employee’s performance. One trick to avoiding problems with documenting on the performance evaluation is to write in the third person, for example ‘Leo completed this project, on time’ instead of ‘you completed this project on time’. Avoid using the first person when writing. Writing what Leo does is more accurate that writing what “I” think about what Leo does.

Finally, you may want to consider software that helps you automate the performance evaluation process. Software can help ensure that:

• Evaluations are completed on time and not forgotten
• Managers across the company use similar methods to evaluate employees
• Your organization keeps good documentation from a legal perspective

Halogen software can help you meet your performance evaluation needs by providing tools for helping managers create a meaningful, effective evaluation in any format. Automated reminders prompt all the involved parties to action during the evaluation process. Evaluations can be accessed by multiple sources simultaneously, so multi-raters and peer reviews can be processed with ease. Content and authoring aides are available to assist the evaluator with language for writing an objective specific evaluation. Halogen offers a faster simpler way to deliver professional, effective performance evaluations!