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TrainTheTRAINER
AL LOCK
Recently, I spent two days at the Personnel Management Association of Thailand (PMAT) human resources forum. Before I get into my subject, I want to congratulate all the people from the PMAT who work hard and make its events so successful and well-attended. I've been attending PMAT events for seven years, and I am always impressed by how well they are run and how much effort the people of PMAT put into making sure that participants and vendors have a positive experience. Well done.
While I was at the PMAT forum, it was very clear from what vendors got the most attention that recruitment and retention are two huge issues right now. We've all heard of "the war for talent" (I even saw a banner about an upcoming seminar on this subject) but the reality is that the war is over. Talent won. The battle now isn't for talent, it's a battle between potential employers to have talent choose them.
Why is it that certain organisations seem to have so little difficulty attracting and retaining talent and others constantly struggle and have high turnover?
Is it compensation? Benefits? Working conditions?
Although all of those have an impact, I think the difference between the organisations is two-fold.
First, the organisations that attract and retain talent both recruit well (clearly define what they want, use the appropriate tools to identify the right candidates, make realistic offers to those candidates) and market themselves well to candidates. Talent won. Companies have to sell themselves to talent much more than the other way around.
Real talents have multiple opportunities, why should they come to a particular company? Of course, some companies have a clearly defined reputation as employers. They are places that certain types of employees want to work at. IBM, Microsoft, Xerox, Spansion, Fabrinet all are good examples of corporations with a clearly defined image, not just to consumers, but to employees.
Second, the organisations that attract and retain talent do things that help them retain that talent. Individual development, succession planning, coaching, team-building, health and fitness opportunities, etc. People don't stay at Johnson & Johnson or Spansion just because of the salaries they earn, they stay because of a cultural match (they are comfortable in the corporate culture), opportunity (job advancement, personal development), loyalty, and a feeling of belonging. Companies with good leaders will develop employee loyalty. Good recruitment techniques (especially the use of the right psychometric tools) will identify cultural matches and combined with good leadership, this results in that sense of belonging.
Training has a clear role in the area of employee retention, and on multiple levels.
First, when a company provides an employee with training, it is assisting in that person's individual development and saying that it cares about that person's development. As long as job opportunities (not necessarily promotion) match the training (in other words, the person has an opportunity to use the training in their job), this should enhance retention (again assuming good selection tools were used during recruitment to get a values match).
Second, the development of leadership at all levels of the organisation (via training, coaching and mentoring) will help to build stronger teams, loyalty and a sense of belonging. In addition, developing leaders can include training them in "selling" the company to potential employees.
Third, training in company-specific items can make the employee feel that they need to stay with this employer because they have skills that they can best use and have appreciated only with this employer. This also brings up the point of appreciation and recognition. Appreciation (saying thanks to people who do a good job) and recognition (awards, etc) are often underutilised tools in an organisation. People like to be appreciated for the work they do and like to be recognised for it. And they will stay at organisations that appreciate them and recognise their efforts much longer than at organisations that don't.
Finally, training can provide individual benefits or incentives that make the employee disinclined to leave (sports programmes, team-building, fitness programmes, "boot camps").
Despite the misperception that it is HR's job to recruit and retain talent, the reality is that every manager, every leader in an organisation has a significant impact on both recruitment and especially retention. If people are our most important resource, then the responsibility for finding the best people for our companies and holding on to them must reside with every member of the leadership team, starting with the CEO.
Do you have a training question or issue that you would like to see addressed here? Please e-mail me and I'll see what we can do.
Al Lock is the managing director of NLI Communications Ltd (http://www.nlicomm.com) and the business development and marketing consultant for t+b solutions ltd (http://www.tandbsolutions.com). He can be contacted at al.lock@nlicomm.com
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