It's Not Just Gen Y, 65 and Older Workers is the Next Trend

There’s another trend besides Gen Y out there. Several industry reports show that the 65 and older group is the fastest growing category of job changers. (Newest buzzword: “re-careering.”) Interesting finding according to Trend Letter: they care less about pay and prestige. Growing fields in nursing, education, and social services already have an above average percentage of these folks.

Later-life career change appears to be an important part of the retirement process. Many older workers who change jobs, and especially those who change careers, downshift into part-time work that involves less stress and responsibility and more flexible work schedules than their previous jobs. More older job changers say they enjoy their new jobs than say they enjoyed their former positions, despite the fact that the new jobs do not pay as well and are less likely to offer benefits such as health insurance. Many older workers appear to place a high premium on escaping from the 9-to-5 grind that their flexible new positions often provide, even if it means a pay cut.

Additionally, many late-life career changers appear to be pushed into new lines of work involuntarily following job layoffs or business closings. Many older displaced workers who become reemployed suffer substantial pay losses and benefit cuts on their new jobs.

What does this mean for employers? This demographic offers a great deal of experience and productivity to the economy along with a willingness to learn and adapt to career changes. Employers need to be aware, however, that the 65 and older workforce wants flexibility for schedules and a work environment that encourages self management. For older adults with limited skills or little workforce experience, expanding public workforce development initiatives could improve their employment options. More training for older adults with limited education could give them the skills and confidence they need to move into new careers, enabling them to extend their working years, increase their retirement income security, and improve the quality of their lives.

Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y—Where to Start and What to Do

Today’s world is filled with labels from political groups, religious preferences and generations to low performers, high potentials and star performers. What does this mean? More importantly, when did we start becoming labeled groups instead of human beings?

Every week articles are published about what to do with certain groups of people. How do we change them; how do we minimize their damage? I challenge each of you to start asking this:

• How can I understand people who don’t think the way I think, act the way I act or value the way I value?
• What makes me right and them wrong?
• What can the different groups bring together to make a better organization?

People are complex and cannot be described by one group or label. As humans, we bring more to our careers than our political or religious views, generational stereotypes and current level of performance category.

So where does a business begin when trying to determine job fit, development plans and succession planning? How can a company be strategic in times that don’t allow for thinking and planning? It starts with understanding a company’s most valuable asset, their people. In order to truly value your team, you need to understand people beyond their typical labels.

• How do they think?
• What drives them?
• How do they prefer to get things done?

What could removing labels and re-engaging your workforce do to your bottom line and your most valuable asset—people?

Myth: Assessment tools are not necessary or cost-effective for all positions.

Perhaps many of you have heard the argument that assessment tools are only useful for top-level positions. Or that it is cost prohibitive to assess the entire organization. So are assessments important in every level of your organization? We’re often asked this question, and the answer is YES.

Any building is only as robust as its foundation. And so any organization is only as strong as its foundational workforce. Regardless of the position, all organizations benefit from understanding every role. A person’s assessment identifies strengths and weaknesses in the individual and the team. We often learn of organizations that identify undiscovered talent hidden within their organization as a result of utilizing assessments. This initial discovery leads to tapping the potential of future leaders and getting them started on the right development path.

When employees are in positions that are not a fit with their skills, the entire organization suffers. The benchmarking process uncovers the key performance indicators that drive results in the job critical to success. By understanding what the job needs and rewards, you should understand the best way to manage people, develop training and implement strategies.

Best of all, benchmarking is a simple, cost-effective way to set the foundation for the leaders of any organization to increase morale, improve retention and enhance overall employee satisfaction.

Hell hath no fury like an employee...ignored.

A book detailing the follies of the Bush Administration from an insider’s perspective came out this week. Matt Latimer, former speechwriter for George Dubya, has written Speech-less, forcing the ex Administration to shudder and call the author a traitor. What prompted yet another "tell all" from an employee in the Bush administration? Did Latimer and Dubya have an argument? Did Dubya not like the speeches Latimer wrote?

On the contrary, Bush never had any interaction with Latimer at all. He was basically ignored.

A recent survey published by Talent Management indicates that only one-quarter of workers are less likely to be looking for another job in today’s tightening labor market. Why the rush out of their cubicles? According to survey findings, companies seeking to retain their employees when the recovery begins should start by addressing three key areas of dissatisfaction: compensation, career growth paths and retention efforts.

The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, showed that two-thirds (66 percent) of American workers are not currently satisfied with their compensation. Additionally, 78 percent of American workers are not satisfied with their company’s overall retention efforts and 76 percent are not satisfied about future career growth opportunities at their company.

Other key findings of the survey included:

• Relationships are strained: Almost half (48 percent) of workers are not satisfied with the relationship they have with their boss and the majority (59 percent) of workers are not satisfied with the level of support they receive from their colleagues.
• Company vision and leadership is lacking: The majority of workers (77 percent) are not satisfied with the strategy and vision of the company and its leadership.
• Retirement contributions: 68 percent of workers are not satisfied with their company’s contribution to their retirement plans.

As we move closer to an economic recovery, managers should remember that career development begins with communication. What workers are telling us is that even during a recession, just having a job does not equate to job satisfaction. Employers need to be conscious of the concerns their staff is managing through on a daily basis and proactively come up with the appropriate solutions to improve retention and reduce the current and future high cost of turnover. Ignoring employees and their concerns will only incur their future wrath...and cost your organization.

Here are some tips to help to reduce feelings of dissatisfaction among your employees.

• Make retention efforts more visible: Behind the scenes, managers may be doing what they can to retain their employees, but staff won’t feel valued if these efforts aren’t visible to them. Retention efforts begin through mutual dialogue and building trust. Managers should engage their employees in the realities of the business challenges to foster employees’ understanding of the market and competition.
• Reward and provide reason: If increasing compensation due to the current economic climate is not possible, look to reward employees through an awards program or team contest. Improving morale just by recognizing good work can help ease compensation complaints. As the survey found, dollars and cents are not the only way to improve satisfaction, so be sure you are putting in the extra effort where extra investment is not available. In addition, employees benefit greatly by understanding the reasons behind lower compensation and how these short-term adjustments will help them and the company in the long run.
• Communicate a growth path for employees: Managers should map out a growth plan for employees and communicate it to their teams. Employees will then understand that managers are invested in their future, and they’ll be more confident in investing their time and career with the organization.

Don't ignore your employees, and you can reap the benefits of retaining your top performers when the economy improves.

Health Care Managers and Poor Performers

With all the challenges the health care industry faces these days, why do leaders and managers tolerate poor performers in the workplace? We have observed several incidences of hospital managers putting up with disruptive behavior, low productivity or lack of professionalism—sometimes at the cost of top performers who leave because they have had enough of the negative work environment. And sometimes, these managers have lost their jobs because they would not take the steps necessary to correct the employee issues.

We interviewed some leaders in health care to find out why it is so difficult to deal with poor performers. Here is just a few of the most common problems:

1. Believing that the manager can change the person's behavior.
2. The fear of loss of a specific skill.
3. Discounting the bad behavior, and not analyzing the broader implications such as retention of top performers.
4. A lack of control over the hiring process to replace the problem employee. Many managers find their internal HR processes take too long to fill positions.
5. Managers not properly trained to deal with confrontation of poor performance.

There is a broad belief that people can be fixed. Resources and dollars are spent on trying to change behaviors of people who were never a good fit for the job in the first place. The reality is health care managers need to recognize that there are specific predictors, critical success factors, behaviors and evidence-based business practices that contribute to high performance. Focusing on a better hiring process can go a long way to increasing productivity and saving money in health care, and alleviate many of the problems managers face with employees.

Select the right person

Now that we know WHAT the issues are when it comes to managers and poor performers, much of this can be corrected by looking at the behaviors needed to fit the job and decide WHO is best to do the job. Most traditional hiring processes stop with hard skills (for example, working knowledge of various medicines and their interactions, ability to read and analyze cardiac data)
and experience needed, but you must also take the time to determine what PERSONAL SKILLS (sometimes referred to as soft skills) an employee needs to be able to do the job. Some examples of the dozens of possible personal skills are:

• Ability to manage stress
• Ability to be accountable for others
• Leading others
• Planning and organization
• Results-orientation
• Ability to pay attention to detail
• Problem solving ability
• Teamwork
• Self-starting

Most people do not fail in their jobs because they lack hard skills; they fail because they don’t have the personal skills necessary to do that specific job in that specific environment. To learn a better hiring process go to http://vantagegroupinc.com/hirefasttrack.html

Soft Skills - Can They be Taught in the Classroom?

More and more companies are measuring soft skills in their work force and evaluating their impact on performance. Only recently do we have evidence that soft skills may be age- and occupation-related. This is based on four different studies. The first two studies were conducted in the fall of 2008 (Target Training International). Nine hundred college freshmen from two Midwest universities were asked to respond to an assessment that measures 23 specific soft skills. The results from both groups (business and engineering majors) indicated that, as a group, they have almost no mastery in these 23 soft skills. In fact, their lowest scores were in decision making.

In the spring of 2009, a small group of seniors were given the same survey. The results showed only a slight improvement.

Curriculum or Practice?

Looking at the numbers, it is becoming more and more apparent that certain soft skills cannot be taught in the classroom. To mention a few:

• Interpersonal Skills
• Personal Effectiveness
• Futuristic Thinking
• Self-Management
• Diplomacy
• Goal Orientation
• Flexibility

To support this hypothesis, a group of employed adults (1632) were given the same assessments. Specifically, the research was looking for correlations among people who are passionate about knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Many Ph.D.s fall into this category. The evidence was very clear on all 23 soft skills: There were no correlations strong enough to predict a person will actually develop soft skills based on curriculum knowledge. The assessment used did not measure their knowledge of the skills; it measured their mastery of the skills and the use of these skills in their work. In other words, Do they walk their talk?

Only 27% of large organizations are Transferring Knowledge from retiring baby boomers to younger employees.

• -Novations Inc.

The bookstores are full of self-help books that would lead you to think that buying a book can lead to developing and mastering certain soft skills. Merely reading a book on how to persuade others will not make you a successful sales person.

So what are we to do? The knowledge needs to be incorporated into activities, experiences and games. Practicing what you preach is the most promising method of developing soft skills. Our ThinkBox tools keep these activities and experiences at the forefront of an employee's personal development through easy to access online tools and self-coaching guides.

A Flooded Candidate Pool...Yet Still Making the Wrong Hire?

With all the candidates available to hire these days, why are organizations still unable to make great hiring decisions? The answer is simple: BIAS. Attracting candidates is easy today. Screening out all of the unqualified to discover a superior performer is the real challenge. This challenge also means we must look at the job objectively and eliminate any biases that keep us from selecting the best candidate.

We all see the world from our own viewpoint. This viewpoint is influenced by how we value experience, knowledge, economics, aesthetics, altruism, power and tradition. When we are confronted by a person who sees the world differently, our views could be called biases. Neither right or wrong, nor good or bad, biases are simply a reflection of our personal viewpoint. Oftentimes, this personal viewpoint is unknowingly injected into the hiring process even when it is not relevant to a specific position or to the organization itself. When this happens, it creates a barrier, preventing us from selecting truly superior performers.

Today we have laws that keep us from acting on our biases as they relate to gender, age and nationality, but there are still biases that get in the way. Many people are also unknowingly biased on experience, education and intelligence, and this keeps them from selecting superior performers. In addition, people bring much more to the job, including their passion, beliefs, personal skills, and behaviors. Perhaps one of the most important personal skills is that of personal accountability, and most companies do not have an awareness of its importance, nor do they have a way to measure it.

Determining the ideal candidate for a position can prove to be not only the most frustrating part of the hiring process, but also the most difficult. Each person involved in the hiring process will have his or her own idea of what skill set, experience and education is required for the position. Job descriptions begin to assist recruiters, internal and external, in narrowing down the resume requirements. Meanwhile, the personal skills, behavioral style, attitude and motivations of the ideal candidate tend to be undefined and left up to the interviewer. This type of hiring process becomes subjective, rather than objective, and leaves all involved parties frustrated and with less than desirable results.

Typical hiring processes allow for little preparation time on the front end, with more time allotted for interviewing. This often results in a partially or even completely wrong hire, which, in turn, contributes to significant managerial time loss. By turning the process around, you will save time and energy, and improve your hiring decisions, therefore improving your bottom-line.

Our system creates a screening assessment based on the behaviors needed to help the organization reach its goals. Plus, it provides behavioral interviewing guides that help you go deeper in discovering the right hire. These tools and processes, has allowed us to achieve a 92% retention rate on the people we placed using these tools. Eliminating bias is the key to successful hiring. The only way to achieve this is through an objective process that looks at all aspects of the ideal candidate.

Bottom-Line Effects of Dysfunction

How It Heightens Disengagement and Costs You Millions

Dysfunction in a team will usually result in poor performance and inadequate productivity, but the effects of team dysfunctions on the employees themselves just might be far more serious and much more costly.

When a team becomes dysfunctional you can expect disengagement to follow as individuals may lose sight of team goals, not understand their role in the team and wait for direction to make any progress. Statistics say that the average employee is disengaged two hours each day. Could dysfunctional teams be contributing to disengagement in your organization? If so, just how does it affect your bottom-line?

Disengagement is not a small concern. Take, for example, a company with 100 employees who work full time at an average wage of $25 per hour. What is disengagement costing them? The productivity they could be losing due to disengagement is worth an estimated $1,200,000.

Determining the cost of disengagement within your organization is an important step in tackling this talent management burden. Then, consider implementing organizational and team multi-rater surveys that give everyone in the organization the opportunity to speak up and help you determine the real root of disengagement. Perhaps it is dysfunction in a team, job misfit, mismanagement, lack of motivation or other personnel-related issues. No matter what the cause, identifying it, addressing it and implementing a solution will make a dramatic difference on your bottom-line.