Late last year the Society for Human Resource Management published the results of a survey of the top HR challenges for the next 10 years. Participants were asked the same questions as they were asked two years previously and the results are shown above.
The results show some significant changes with developing corporate leaders, retaining and rewarding the best employees and remaining competitive in the talent market shooting ahead of finding the right global markets, breaking down cultural barriers and finding the right employees in the right markets. The results suggest that people are in the right place to do the job with the right skill sets and that the challenge is in recruiting, developing and retaining the best talent in a market that can virtually pick and choose.
The need for a talent management system which tracks talent shaping from recruitment through to succession planning is no longer a nice to have but a necessary part of corporate planning and development. This is further verified in the survey by the increase in the need for creating smooth and efficient HR processes for employees.
So what if you could –
Increase your recruitment accuracy from 45% to 90% by introducing 175 job specific traits and working preferences
Automate your job application process in a system which rates applicants in order of eligibility and suitability (job specific traits) for a role
Automate your succession planning on line for all job roles not just the senior ones with applicants completing their own interest and rated in accordance with their suitability for the role
Use highly accurate paradox based reports for development and performance management
Use a ‘cultural’ profile within your appraisal system by which everyone is measured thus making previously difficult conversations for managers easier and more open.
Why Harrison Assessments?
High degree of accuracy with a consistency score preventing the use of inaccurate data
Uses paradox theory and 175 job specific traits and preferences to determine suitability as well as eligibility for a role.
Uses well known concept that enjoyment factor determines engagement and success.
Doesn’t revert to ‘norms’. No labels or boxes.
Online Questionnaire makes it easy to use, efficient and cost effective.
Range of reports for different uses – recruitment, development, interviewing, appraising, succession planning, culture development.
Takes the cost and uncertainty out of talent management.
Marshall Goldsmith is being heralded by Harvard Business School as the best executive coach in the world for leadership development and at Quadrant 1 International we are delighted to number amongst the few UK coaches to be accredited as Stakeholder Centred coaches under the Marshall Goldsmith scheme.
Why Stakeholder Centred Coaching?
Leadership development is traditionally conducted via attendance on a programme or via an executive coach. Both methods have their merits and stakeholder centred coaching adds valuable dynamics.
Who is best placed to provide real and productive comment on the leader’s behaviour? The stakeholders
Results are measurable
The system focuses on future behaviour not past
Time and cost efficient
Stakeholders become an integral part of the process thus adding real value and support
Leaders are in a position to change their own behaviour and the perception of stakeholders at the same time
Relationships improve, silos break down and teams become stronger.
Who is it for?
Leaders by definition have already experienced success and will have formed strong beliefs about their ability to continue to succeed. Stakeholder Centred Coaching builds on this belief system – it requires the leader to have the humility, courage and discipline to make the changes being suggested. It is not for leaders who believe they know it all and have no interest in improving. It is for leaders who are valuable to your organisation, for whom further and deeper insights into leadership skills will add significantly to the ethos, culture and bottom line.
How long is the programme?
Ideally the leader commits to a year-long programme consisting of a monthly session with the coach and short (approximately 5 minutes) monthly sessions with each stakeholder. From this monthly plans are developed and action undertaken by the leader. Measurements of progress are taken after months 5 and 11.
Why Stakeholder Coaching for Quadrant 1?
At Quadrant 1 International we feel that the combination of Stakeholder Centred Coaching, NLP and Harrison Assessments together form one of the most powerful and effective leadership approaches on the market today.
Do you have the capability to source great talent for your organisation?
A recent article in People Management entitled ‘How Do You Pick a Winner from 5,000 Candidates’ highlighted the challenges still faced by recruiters in picking candidates that not only have the right qualifications and experience but who will fit the suitability criteria for the organisation.
CIPD research* also shows that only 8% of organisations rank their talent management activities as ‘very effective’, and highlights the top 3 Learning and Development objectives for talent management activities to be:
Growing future senior managers / leaders
Retaining key staff
Developing high potential employees
It seems many companies are having difficulty retaining top talent. Sometimes job advertisements fall short of expectations, but there is another quite stark dynamic to the talent problem. HR professionals and operational managers are more aware today than ever before of the consequences of recruiting the wrong talent. For example, retail want people who are talented at giving superb customer service, whilst technical firms want people who can communicate in plain language and collaborate with peers and clients. It is no longer enough to have a technical or academic ability, or to have years of experience – companies want people who naturally express the behaviour they see as needed in order to remain competitive, and this is the current challenge.
It’s more about the culture than technical skill
More companies are seeking to create the ultimate cultural environment where high performance can flourish. They have learned that it is not so easy to teach non-technical traits such as customer service, collaboration, empathy, initiative, trustworthiness, enthusiasm and interpersonal skills, or to assess negative traits such as permissiveness, bluntness, blind optimism, harshness and dogmatism. These can be referred to as suitability traits as opposed to eligibility traits. Eligibility traits are the clearly measurable ones that appear on a CV – number of years’ experience, qualifications, achievements both personal and business. If you can find candidates with the right suitability as well as eligibility then you can usually plug any gaps they may have in your technical requirements through training, coaching, shadowing and mentoring.
High performance of any kind is easier when backed up by certain suitability traits such as the tendency to collaborate, listen well, empathise and take initiative. Sadly these traits often take a back seat in our schools, colleges and universities, and the tendency is to rely on a person’s natural abilities in these areas.
Conventional ways of recruiting no longer cut the mustard
Sifting through CVs, all formatted differently, formal interviews, and psychometric tests that don’t relate to the workplace still exist for many companies. Agencies that filter based on CVs and interviews and charge the relative manual labour fees are still the most common form of hiring. It can also be the most costly form of hiring as it is often quite hit and miss, with only an average of 45% prediction of job success. Online agencies are becoming more prevalent today, and some of these are making strides to reduce cost, but behind the scenes you often find a conventional process of CV filtering and interviewing. There simply has to be a better, more value for money way of attracting and hiring top talent.
Ben recently applied for a key role with a major technology company, attracted by the promise of high autonomy to make decisions and a development path into top leadership. Unfortunately the job was hyped up and he found he had to refer to the USA HQ for every single decision. He left after just 3 months!
The solution is at hand!
What if you could identify and capture both the suitability traits and eligibility factors required for a role and measure your candidates against them without the need for manual sifting whilst increasing your prediction of job success from 45% to 90-95% at the same time?
Harrison Assessment Talent Solutions allows you to just this at a fraction of the cost –
Set eligibility and suitability criteria using one of 6,500 job profile templates
Invite candidates to complete their own eligibility information and the online SmartQuestionnaire™ (no more paper sifting by you or your recruitment agent)
Receive processed list of candidates in order of suitability for role (no more subjectivity)
For each candidate selected for interview receive –
An Interview Guide
A How to Attract this Candidate Guide
A How to Manage this Candidate Guide
A Job Success Analysis
Other reports as required
Smarter technology
Harrison Assessments is the result of over 30 years of research by Dr Dan Harrison. It is designed specifically for the workplace and is based on enjoyment and paradox theory. It utilises 175 behavioural traits (nearly 4 times as many as its closest competitors) in an online SmartQuestionnaire™. It offers a complete talent management solution from – recruitment, development, performance management, succession planning, benchmarking and cultural change measurement.
If you would like to know more about this exceptional Talent Management System call +44 (0)7768 922244.
*CIPD Annual survey report 2013, over 1,000 respondents from senior L&D professionals
Most people would agree they would like their leaders to be competent, knowledgeable, visionary, progressive and decisive with excellent interpersonal skills, innovative and open to new ideas. How about a propensity for self improvement, a desire to lead, an outgoing personality, a reasonable level of self acceptance, a balance of analytical and intuitive skills, a balance of diplomacy and frankness and a balance between assertiveness and helpfulness. There is, I am sure, an endless list of traits we would like our leaders and upcoming leaders to possess.
As a rule leaders tend to gain their positions through demonstration of exceptional skills in the operational side of their roles together with an enthusiastic and optimistic attitude and relevant experience. Operational expertise and experience are relatively easy to measure and as such dominate the decision making process of leader selection. But what of the rest? How do you measure all the traits mentioned above?
Many companies have introduced comprehensive work based competency frameworks – in some cases documents running into 30 + pages. Such frameworks clearly indicate the type of attitudes and competencies the organisation is striving for but rarely get it right when it comes to measurement. Measurement is often done on a scale based on the subjective opinion of as few as one person (often the manager), I have often spoken to Learning and Development specialists who don’t even use their own competency frameworks, not because they lack substance but because of their lack of user friendliness and reliability in measurement.
We have been working recently with an organisation which has just undergone a merger. Initially we worked with the smaller organisation who were fearful of being ’swallowed up’ by the larger and that prime jobs would escape them. We were able to help them position themselves and the outcome was very positive. Since the merger the organisation has been streamlining its talent management approach. They began with the senior team spending time identifying what an ‘outstanding’ organisation might look like. They came up with 23 behavioural traits they believed would be demonstrated in such an organisation.
So this is where the measurement comes in. Harrison Assessments measure 156 traits based on work based preferences. It is highly accurate and measures the very things mentioned above. The 23 traits were mapped across to produce a Harrison Assessment capable of measuring them. This has been incorporated into their appraisal system so that everyone in the organisation is measured against these basic traits. Staff are now able to have conversations around such things as ‘taking initiative’, levels of enthusiasm, optimism, ability to handle stress in difficult circumstances and so on.
The Assessments are also used for recruiting people into roles. They measure suitability for a role over and above eligibility – leaving nothing to chance and increasing talent management accuracy manifold!
Late last year the Society for Human Resource Management published the results of a survey of the top HR challenges for the next 10 years. Participants were asked the same questions as they were asked two years previously and the results are shown above.
