Reskilling and Upskilling Our Workforce Are Essential as Talent Gaps Expand

More than a third of the world’s employers are struggling to find the right talent.

ManpowerGroup’s 2013 Talent Shortage Survey canvassed more than 38,000 employers worldwide, and 35% of them reported “difficulty filling jobs due to lack of available talent.” What’s more, their struggle has been worsening; the 2013 findings were the highest proportion of employers expressing concern about talent shortages since 2007.

Surprisingly, this news comes at a time when talent pools are virtually brimming with people, and when a recent Harris Interactive study shows that 74% of workers would consider taking a new job immediately. With all of this talent available, what’s causing our shortages? The debate around this question has been lively. An aging workforce, unexpected and rapid growth in specific sectors, the sudden need for entirely new types of jobs (in the technology and data niches, for example), poor training and knowledge sharing practices, and even inadequate compensation have all been blamed.

Whatever the cause, we all know the results of unfilled talent gaps: reduced productivity and innovation, greater burdens on the workers we have, lower satisfaction and engagement levels, increased turnover … the list goes on.

The obvious question is … how are employers responding to these talent shortages?

“Nearly eight out of 10 employers surveyed tell us they are taking steps to grow the talent pool and ensure access to the right skills that will help drive business results,” the ManpowerGroup report states. “Yet more than one out of five employers report that they are currently doing nothing to remedy the skills gaps indicating that they may not understand how the talent shortage is putting their business at risk or they simply don’t know how to effectively solve the issue.”

Doing nothing clearly isn’t a viable long-term strategy for most employers but growing talent pools certainly makes sense. However, it’s not the only option we have. We can also reskill and upskill the workers we currently have. But to do so, our vision of these individuals must be crystal clear. We need to know precisely the talents and skills they possess and those they lack—especially those we need to grow and remain competitive. Once we have this clear vision, we must put it to use and implement training and development programs that fill our gaps, disseminating the right knowledge in the right ways. For today’s workforces, this means more mobile and social learning, more interactive and independent learning technologies, more mentoring and peer-to-peer learning, and the like.

We also have to take steps to better understand the specific work our people are most interested in doing, where their natural capabilities and skills lie, and the types of projects they want to work on in the future. Frequent and effective performance reviews are an ideal tool for gathering all of this critical information.

If we want to fill our talent gaps and build workforces capable of successfully carrying us into the future, expanding our talent pools is a terrific idea. But it can’t be our only one.

Employee Learning and Training—No Retreat, No Surrender!

How much do employers spend on learning and training?

According to the American Society of Training and Development’s 2013 State of the Industry Report, U.S. organizations spent more than $164 billion on employee learning in 2012. (In this case, “learning” encompasses a wide array of educational initiatives including training.)

Training magazine’s 2013 Training Industry Report, on the other hand, offers a narrower focus on training initiatives and the dollars spent. The report indicates that U.S. training expenditures, which totaled $55.4 billion in 2013:

·       increased among large companies (from $11.3 million in 2012 to $17.6 million in 2013);

·       increased very slightly among small companies (from $294,532 in 2012 to $301,082 in 2013);

·       and fell among midsize companies (from $2 million in 2012 to $1.2 million in 2013).

No matter how you slice and dice the definitions or the numbers, it appears that employers’ commitment to training and learning remains strong overall—especially considering the state of the economy during the past few years, the increasing challenge of global competition, and the ongoing turmoil around employers’ healthcare costs, among a host of other ongoing competitive hurdles.

Make no mistake, no matter what our other business challenges are, we need a no-retreat, no-surrender commitment to training and learning for one simple reason: organizations that are dedicated to learning crush their competition.

Bersin by Deloitte’s Corporate Learning Factbook 2013 contains several persuasive proof points based on years of study. They show that organizations with “strong learning cultures:”

·      Are 42% more likely to innovate (i.e., be first to foster ideation and implement change initiatives) than their peers.

·      Are 37% more productive.

·      Are 35% more responsive to customers’ needs.

·      And have a 26% greater capacity to deliver quality products.

It’s hard to ignore numbers like those, which clearly show why our investment in employee learning must be unwavering. Obviously, how we allocate our investment is equally important. The Training magazine report shows that employers’ top three priorities in allocating training resources in 2013 were: 1) increasing the effectiveness of training programs (32%); 2) reducing costs/improving efficiency (20%); and 3) increasing learner usage of training programs (14%).

When it comes to training and learning, our bottom line costs matter. But the greater bottom line is this: if our commitment to learning weakens so will our companies.

The Price We Pay for Bad Managers

“Currently, 30% of the U.S. workforce is engaged in their work … (while) the vast majority (70%) are not …” -- Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report

This statistic sent a shockwave through the business community when it was first published. But the Gallup report actually begins with another and equally important insight that deserves our attention. Gallup’s Chairman and CEO, Jim Clifton, opens the report by telling America’s business leaders: “The single biggest decision you make in your job—bigger than all of the rest—is who you name manager. When you name the wrong person manager, nothing fixes that

bad decision. Not compensation, not benefits—nothing.”

Clifton estimates that bad managers are costing the U.S. an estimated $450 billion to $550 billion annually through the active disengagement they create.

Why are there so many bad managers, and why are they doing so much damage? A 2013 article in U.S. News and World Report offered seven noteworthy reasons. Here are the top three:

1.     Managers were promoted into management roles because they were good at something else. As the article points out, “Management is often just the next rung on the ladder, but the skills needed to succeed at management are very different from the ones that got them this far.”

2.     They get little or no training in how to manage well. New managers often receive precious little guidance on “how to take on their crucial new role and are left to just figure it out as they go along.”

3.     Managing well is hard. It requires an understanding of challenging concepts such as “how to set goals that are the right mix of realistic and ambitious; how to give feedback that's clear, specific and actionable; how to stay involved without being overly hands-on; (and) how to hold people to high standards without being a tyrant,” among others.

Clearly, with losses of $450 billion to $550 billion a year, we need to choose our managers with greater care. Managing others is demanding and it requires a whole host of people and business skills that must be deftly exercised. If we’re going to give our managers every chance to succeed, they need better training and more coaching in the art of leading others.

Employers spent an estimated $62+ billion on training in the U.S. alone last year. But I’d be willing to bet that a relatively small portion of that went into training our managers to be better managers. It’s time we started making and taking that investment seriously.

Developing Internal Case Studies: 5 Tips to Market LMS Value

Companies have been putting more money into their learning and development budgets. In fact, Bersin by Deloitte’s 2013 Corporate Learning Factbook shows that U.S. organizations grew their

spending by 12 percent in 2012.

With all those dollars being allocated to training, are your employees taking advantage of the opportunities? It’s easy for employees to forget or even miss that there’s learning management software available to them. Courses that are relevant to their job might be hard to find, lost in a large library of titles.

Instead of sending reminders, take a marketing spin and create internal case studies of what employees learned and how the training applies to the job.

1.     Find people who are your power users. Your LMS or learning content management system should track who’s using what courses or downloading additional resources.

2.     Interview them about the courses they’ve been taking. Approach the power users and ask about their experience. Make sure they’re getting value from the training and would be willing to participate in a promotional case study.

3.     Learn how the training has impacted their performance. Training should help employees do their jobs better, so ask how the training has made a difference. Also ask how the team’s performance might have been improved.

4.     Include insight from their managers. Managers could be encouraging development, or they might not even know employees are going the extra mile to train themselves. Find out what each manager knows, including how improved performance could be changing the way those managers work toward developing the rest of their teams.

5.     Capture the story. You can capture the story in any number of ways — writing an article, taping a Q&A, or even making a video. Make sure you put the story in a format that’s easy for other employees to consume when you share it with the rest of the organization.

Keep tracking use in your LMS so you can find additional power users and see which case studies might have increased usage overall. It’ll be powerful information to share with your executive team, and it can help ensure future budget increases for training.

Narrowing Skill Gaps for Employees

The employee without skill gaps is somewhat unusual. Sure there are superstars with few, if any, performance issues, but those are few and far between. Performance management should include not only the recognition of the gaps, but a plan to help close them.

Achieving desired performance outcomes is at least partially achieved through accurate identification of performance gaps and the application of appropriate training and development to reduce or eliminate the gaps. Effective performance management processes include both of these important elements.

When effective mapping of learning content to competency gaps is part of the performance management "infrastructure" in an organization, performance gaps tend to close faster and more completely. This stems from the fact that there is a much higher level of matching training and development efforts to areas where employees are weakest and need the most attention. Without this level of mapping there is usually a shotgun approach to training and development efforts.

ASTD reports that "Organizations are linking learning to performance and the bottom line, and they understand the relationship between creating a skilled workforce and achieving enterprise-wide success." The linkage between performance, learning, and higher levels of profitability is difficult to deny. Intuitively we would expect there to be a higher level of success and much less waste in the training process if attention is focused on closing performance gaps rather than painting employees with a broad development brush.

Training for the sake of training alone is a very bad idea and consumes valuable cash that can be applied more appropriately elsewhere. But when training is specifically linked to performance, training expenditures that are essentially thrown out the window are reduced dramatically.

Put Your Performance Data To Work

Over time, ratings created across many performance reviews throughout the organization can provide real insight into a number of things. Having a manual or quasi-automated review system can be a barrier to being able to easily mine those data to assess what is happening in key areas of performance. Using an automated system that stores the data in a manner that allows for easy querying of those data provides a basis for generating reports and analyses easily and quickly. Having this capability allows organizations to zero in on performance issues and opportunities.

Creating reports and analyses using historical performance review and 360 degree feedback data can allow you to draw inferences and conclusions about many performance related items which in turn can provide a basis for:

- Identifying trends, both positive and negative, at various levels within the organization.
- Modifying existing or create new performance metrics at the employee, work unit, department, division and/or organization level.
- Zeroing in on specific work units or employees who are leading the way in terms of performance and those who are having problems that aren't getting addressed.
- Creating training and development plans at various levels based on accumulated data and not intuition or limited data.
- Using the data to support coaching and discipline events and bring additional credibility to those discussions.

Some examples of information you might be interested in include:

- Competencies that appear to consistently receive low ratings across a department, division, or the organization as a whole. This type of information helps isolate where problems within specific performance variables might lie. It could point to a training and development gap that needs to be addressed, for example.
- A comparison of average overall ratings and average competency ratings for each manager. This can point to biases in how reviews are conducted, the quality of employees hired by each manager, unresolved training gaps, or other issues specific to the manager or the employees.
- A comparison of overall, competency, and/or goal level ratings across review periods. This query will help divulge trends and let you determine if progress is being made in improving performance across key performance areas. Various breakouts of these data can be helpful as well. For example, perhaps you would want to examine improvement or degradation in communication skills over the last 4 years by department.
- A ranking of overall ratings by employee across several review periods. This simple analysis can point out employees who are consistently top performers, those who are making progress, those who are struggling, and those who may have been allowed to continue employment beyond a reasonable time frame given their performance.
- A comparison of managers' ratings from 360 degree surveys by variable. This comparison can identify specific coaching or training needs for each manager.

These are just a few of the analyses that can result from having a wealth of performance related data stemming from performance reviews or 360 degree feedback surveys. There are many different ways to analyze your historical performance data that can be accommodated by a robust reporting tool contained within an automated performance management system.

ReviewSNAP has what is believed to be the most extensive standardized and ad-hoc reporting tools available as part of its performance management solution. Give us a call to learn more about the benefits of using this type of reporting module.

An Introduction To Building Effective Teams

A manager's role has changed dramatically over the past 10 to 15 years. This change stems from the realization that old management techniques and styles are no longer effective given the changes taking place in peoples' attitudes about work. Today's employees are in tune with what other companies are doing in terms of empowering employees and establishing teams to solve problems, refine processes, plan and make decisions about how particular segments of the business will be managed and other facets of managing the organization. The manager of the 90's and beyond will need to be an effective builder of teams whether the team is his/her work unit or specialized teams formed to plan, refine processes, solve problems or carry out some other task.

-Old management styles or techniques tended to be more controlling and dictatorial. The management styles and techniques that fit in today's business climate will need to be much more facilitating in nature.
-Managers cannot see themselves as the sole source for decision making although they will probably be the final authority in most decisions.
-A facilitating management style includes coaching, encouraging, listening and teaching.
-This is clearly the preferred style in today's business climate.
-Interpersonal skills are very important to this process. Effective team building starts with effective communication and facilitation. Many people who have risen through the ranks have been more task-focused than people/goal-focused. Making the transition can be difficult, if not impossible, for some people.
-A controlling leadership style generally has adverse effects on a team's communication effectiveness and morale. Remember that, in general, high morale = high productivity.
-Subordinates of a controlling manager tend to be motivated by fear. While in the short-run, employees motivated by fear might produce well, they are often reluctant to express opinions that they perceive run counter to the manager's and/or will attempt to hide problems. Upward communinication diminishes and the information being shared becomes less accurate and less meaningful. In fact, team members will tend to select communicaton that heads off punishment since they are part of a punitive environment.
-Power struggles, back-biting, excessive conformity, diminished creativity, withdrawal and other negative results can occur under the leadership of a controlling manager.
-Controlling and facilitating leaders view authority differently. A controlling leader views it as power and usually will not share it. A facilitating leader looks at authority as something to be shared and used in a manner that will help empower the team.

Exercise

The following chart illustrates the difference in leadership styles. If a manager/supervisor placed an "x" along each attribute continuum to best describe his/her style, an overall picture of leadership style would emerge. Take a few minutes to place an "x" along each continuum. Example: if you feel you tend to sell decisions or ideas to subordinates more so than tell them what the decision is, you would place an "x" closer to the "Selling" end of the continuum. The "x" can fall anywhere along the continuum.
Selling____________________________________________Telling
Diplomatic_________________________________________Direct
Gentle____________________________________________Harsh
Laid Back_________________________________________Demanding
Loose____________________________________________Controlling
Patient___________________________________________ Impatient
Long Fuse________________________________________Short Fuse
Social____________________________________________Private
Soft Spoken_______________________________________Loud

Do your "x"s tend to be more to the right or more to the left? If they tend to lie more to the left, your style is more facilitative. If they tend to lie more to the right, your style is more dictatorial. A word of caution is appropriate at this point. Being too far to the left is just as dangerous as being too far to the right. A style that tends significantly to the left indicates that you could be too "soft" in your approach to managing people. There simply are times when being direct is important, for example. But it is how being direct is delivered that counts. Knowing what kind of style you present in the workplace is critical to effective team building. This exercise is intended to help you think about what type of style you bring to managing people.

-Facilitating leaders generally produce better results because their team members are empowered. They will tend ot use creativity and brainstorming to improve and perform at higher levels. They tend to become thinkers. Controlling leaders tend to suppress independent thought and creativity.
-Almost without exception members of a team led by someone with a facilitating style will be more likely to support decisions (buy into them) and work harder to carry them out. Why?
-Because they were involved in the process in some manner.
-Does this mean that employees are involved in every aspect of every decision? Absolutely not. But when appropriate, the team is engaged by the manager to provide input and assist in planning and making certain decisions. -Because responsibility for implementing decisions is often shared, the talents and knowledge of all team members tend to be more fully utilized.
-Conversely, teams led by more controlling styles tend to work against the leader because they want to have input, but the manager is unwilling to relinquish enough or any authority.
-Your goal is to increase productivity and performance through enhanced employee satisfaction.

There are four keys to effective team building:

1. Lead with a clear purpose. The goals of the organization must be clear to all employees since these drive the focus of the various work units. But employees of any work unit or team must know why they are doing what they are doing. Therefore, each team must have well defined, actionable goals and expectations. In developing these goals and expectations, it is appropriate that team members have input into their development. These goals and expectations must be written and distributedto all team members. Here is an example of team gaols for a warehouse and shipping team:

Goal 1 - Maintain at least a 95% customer service level.
Goal 2 - Achieve on time shipments 98% of the time.
Goal 3 - Achieve outstanding customer service ratings from our shipping surveys.
Goal 4 - Process and ship all orders received by 1:00 p.m. by no later than 4:00 p.m.

In short you need to develop a focus for the team. Communicating expectations for the team in terms of cooperation and teamwork is equally important. Here are some examples:

-Be a team player. No one individual is more important than another. We have common goals and you are expected to be a part of a team. Remember, big team, little me.
-Be highly responsive to fellow employees. When they request something from you, provide a time when you will get back to them if you can't provide it immediately. Get back to them as promised even if you don't have the information requested to let them know you are still working on it. Customer service starts with each other.
-Never become confrontational or defensive with a fellow employee. Put your ego away and have a strong spirit of cooperation.Disagreement can be healthy but do so in a professional, respectful manner.
-Hold all employees in high regard and show respect for all employees. Pettiness will not be tolerated. We are a team and will work as a team. Healthy exchanges of ideas and viewpoints are welcomed. But, do not put down fellow employees or talk behind their backs. These examples point out the importance of establishing clear expectations about how team members should interact and work together.

2. Empower the team. Ask more than tell and listen more than talk. This is a good rule to remember. Employees should feel as if their opinions matter. Ask for input. Charge the team with proposing solutions. Resist having the last word in every situation. Hold regular team meetings that are designed to create an open forum for idea generation and input to decision making. In general, get the team involved with the decision making process as appropriate. Reinforce good ideas and successes through sincere and well timed praise. Praise as soon after the event as possible. Be specific. One word of caution; false praise will cause any praise to lose its effectiveness.

It is critical that team members feel as if their input is being heard. To ask for input and constantly ignore it is a prescription for discontent among employees. When appropriate, get employees involved with decision making and allow them to help make decisions. It is important to let employees know that their opinions are important and they will be involved in many decisions. However, they will not have input to all decisions. Some decisions have timing, confidentiality or other factors associated with them that preclude managers from asking for input. Employees need to understand that up front.

3. Build consensus. In building consensus, the leader helps the team move toward general agreement. This does not mean that all employees will agree with a particular decision. That simply won't happen very often. Disagreement is natural in a team setting. Your job is to direct the process so that these disagreements are positive, but open and honest. Get all issues on the table. Continually probe for additional input until you feel most or all of the issues have been brought forward. Allow employees to express their opinion, but keep the discussions on track if you are in a group meeting. Keep the conversation focused and moving. Stress the desired outcomes and results. Focus on team and company goals in helping to bring focus to decision making.

4. Direct the process. To be effective in directing the team and its efforts, you will need to give clear direction, intervene as necessary to resolve conflicts and to keep the team focused on goals, suggest alternatives if they haven't been presented and in general provide the steering mechanism for the team. You provide the rudder to the ship. Your job is to direct the process toward consensus and buy in. Let employees know that no idea is a bad idea. Encourage open and honest communication. Integrating many personality types into a team environment can be challenging, but certainly not impossible. Remember that you are dealing with people. Your job is to observe very carefully how the various personalities on your team play off of one another.

-Hiring decisions are critical to building an effective team. Ask yourself when hiring anyone if that individual will "fit" with the rest of your team. While that individual might have good experience, they might not have a personality that fits well with the rest of your team. This is a crucial factor in building a team. To hire someone with strong skills, but who otherwise would be a poor fit personality-wise is a mistake. What is gained in good skills is lost in the person't inability to help perpetuate a high morale, high cooperation environment.
-When you have an employee who is a barrier to effective team work, you must deal with that employee and clearly communicate the issues.
-Because people are involved, there will always be conflicts in organizations. Handle conflicts carefully. Don't stir up trouble that might not exist. When you intervene understand that you are not a referee. You are a facilitator in helping to resolve conflict. Listen to both sides of the issue first and put biases you might have about the employees aside. You might be tempted to side with one employee over another because of past history or personal feelings. Don't!

Exercise

1. What, if any, "symptoms" have you observed within your organization or team that might indicate that your people are not operating as a cohesive team?

2. If you don't already have team-oriented expectations and goals, write down at least three possible expectations and three possible goals for your team.

3. How can you more effectively bring your employees into the decision making process?

Develop A Training Plan Based On Skill Gaps

Since training is an expensive proposition, it is critical that training dollars be spent wisely. We find that far too many companies allow their employees to select the training they will participate in or they put everyone through the same training.

It is a fact that very few employees are a perfect fit for the jobs they hold. This means that they will need to be coached and trained to help strengthen skills they might lack or be deficient in. Understanding where each employee's "skill gaps" are is important to developing a training plan that helps enhance overall company performance. Putting employees through training they don't need is a waste of money. There needs to be a very targeted approach to training employees. A shotgun approach is wasteful and frustrating for all involved.

For each employee develop a good understanding of what skills they lack to perform the jobs they hold. This can take some time to develop and are often uncovered over a period of time. A coaching assessment tool can be of great assistance inspeeding up this process by identifying the deficiencies of the employee against job requirements. The Prevue Assessment is an excellent tool for creating a training plan for new and current employees by uncovering areas where the employee lacks sufficient skills or tendencies.

A training plan will help focus training on skills that are critical to employee and company success. And it will be based on specific and individual needs rather than generalized ideas about what training is needed. The training plan should take the form of a matrix that shows each employee and the specific type of coaching or training required. Once this is determined, the task is to find training programs that meet your needs in terms of delivering excellent quality at a reasonable cost.

We are firm believers that sending someone off to a public seminar or workshop is rarely as effective as individualized coaching, mentoring and training. An employee must be mentored and coached to higher levels of performance and a one or two time exposure to concepts and theories is usually not retained and, therefore, not very effective.

Look for training providers that offer individualized and group training with follow-up and mentoring. Mentoring helps isolate the specific needs of the employee and allows the mentor/trainer to instill specific skills over a period of time. This approach helps immensely in getting the skills to "stick" with the employee.

Remember that training should be focused, individualized and carefully planned for. A haphazard approach to training will only frustrate you and your employees.

Training Won't Always Help

Employees that are miscast for their jobs will rarely be able to turn around their performance. Trying to make these employees perform consistently at acceptable levels will be like trying to drive a square peg into a round hole. All the training in the world will probably not help enough to make him/her perform sufficiently.

Training is an absolute necessity for people who are appropriately placed into jobs they can perform. The sad truth is that too many employees are hired into jobs they stand little or no chance of being successful in. With these employees, spending a lot of time and money on training is simply a futile effort. Many managers will try to "force" the employee to fit the job because they don't want to admit they made a bad hire. It's preferable to admit to bad hires as opposed to pouring money into training them. We all make them from time to time. The intent, however, is to minimize the number of employees hired who can't do the jobs they are hired for.

Employees are rarely a perfect fit for the positions hired for. The degree to which an employee "fits" the position will determine degree of success. It also helps determine the amount of training required to enhance the job fit. However, an employee that is a poor fit to begin with generally can't be trained to be a good fit. Employees who are initially a good fit to a position by meeting acceptable standards for a particular job relative to ability, interests and personality can often be coached and trained to higher levels of performance within that position.

The point of this Business Brief is to help managers and owners understand and accept the fact that some employees simply can't be trained to become adequate to high performers in the jobs they currently hold. If an employee doesn't have the ability to perform appropriately in a particular job, don't waste money and time training him/her. Take the appropriate measures to terminate the employee or move them into a position they can perform well in.