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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT (cont'd from top)
WOW, what a year it has been! What started off as an initiative to transform the recruitment process for the search and staffing industries, has wound up emerging into a full series of programming and training that bridges the gap between recruitment and retention of high performing talent for high tech / high touch corporations. Keen is growing and we have added five new consultants to the team and we are strategically partnering with three other training companies. In addition, we have trained and are partnering with 15 elite staffing and search companies committed to raising the bar on their service delivery models, and our Keen Human Capital Strategy seminar series is taking off with a bang! Where I first learned about some of the unique and innovative talent management services offerings that Keen would be offering, was in a program that I attended through the National Association of Personnel Services on workforce retention and employee engagement. In the course CERS, I saw a plethora of opportunity for my company, as well as the elite operators of the staffing and recruitment industry, to impact the human capital initiatives necessary for companies to gain the competitive talent advantage. I am now the premier leader of the CERS program, and I have updated and improved the content well beyond retention and engagement strategies to include comprehensive training in top grading, employee selection, workforce analytics, new hire integration and onboarding, employee development, succession planning and human capital ROI. When you leave this course, you will have the power and knowledge to offer your customers best practice solutions to a full life cycle of their talent and people issues. The newest news and the most exciting for me, is that Keen is now staffing for Human Capital and Talent Management roles in the Bay Area and the greater Chicagoland area. Ideal roles for us to staff are project-based Talent Strategists, HR Business Leaders, Organizational Development professionals, Executive and Leadership Coaches, Retention Specialists, strategic thinking HR Generalists, LMS professionals, Employment Selection / Talent Acquisition experts, and high potential college graduates. I look forward to the future and am excited that I made the move to Keen. - Margaret Graziano, President & CEO Keen Talent's vision is to be a catalyst for corporate transformation. Keen Talent's Mission Keen Talent tranforms Human Capital Management departments from cost centers to strategic business partners. We partner with leadership to initiate and integrate world-class talent management systems and programs into progressive organizations. We accomplish this through People Strategy Creation, People Leadership Selection, People RoadMapping, Talent Management Contract Staffing and Project Management. We alter the way people impact the organization. Keen Talent provides systems, programs and methodologies that forward a companies ability to top grade, hire right and develop their next level leaders. We staff next level People Difference Makers in organizations that aim to be world-class. Back to Top THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE FOR RECRUITING IN GOOD AND BAD TIMES from the Harvard Business Review (excerpt cont'd from top) When economic crisis hits and companies focus on cutting costs--or on their very survival--they slash hiring. But if history is any guide, in the first few months after the upheaval subsides, hiring quickly becomes a front-burner issue. Consider the period following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when the economic outlook appeared dire. In rapid succession, the U.S. initiated the war in Afghanistan, Enron's house of cards fell, other corporate scandals ensued, the SARS scare struck Asia, and the Iraq War began. The economy was in recession, and struggling firms retained only their strongest people. But even before things turned a corner in 2003, the smarter and abler companies--;having cleaned house and discovered what was missing from their talent pools--;took advantage of the buyer's market and began staffing for the future. By June 2003, the war for talent was on again in full force, and companies hired aggressively until the economy went into a tailspin in 2008. History will again repeat itself. Even now, before the recession lifts, our research suggests that most global companies are running into staffing problems in emerging markets, and they are also having a difficult time finding talented younger managers to replace baby boom retirees. These problems will be made all the worse because, we've found, current hiring practices are haphazard at best and ineffective at worst. And even when companies find the right people, they have difficulty retaining them. This article offers our best thinking about the most effective way to hire top-level managers, based on a combination of our own and established research about the relationship between recruiting and long-term corporate performance (see the research sidebar). The following is, to our knowledge, the first time that an end-to-end set of best practices has been put forward in one place. Our compendium comprises seven steps, which cover the full recruitment spectrum: anticipating the need for new hires, specifying the job, developing a pool of candidates, assessing the candidates, closing the deal, integrating the newcomer, and reviewing the effectiveness of the hiring process. Back to Top WHAT IS EMPLOYMENT EMPOWERMENT? by Margaret Graziano Employee empowerment is sometimes reflected in employee engagement. It can be measured in several ways: one of the tools a company can use is an engagement survey, another is 360 degree peer review, another is by conducting employee focus groups, and recently I uncovered an employee empowerment assessment that analyzes the difference between the Managements' interpretation of empowerment and the employees' experience or their lack of it. I was recently leading a program for my Keen Coaching community; the inquiry was about situational leadership. One of the main elements we uncovered is the whole aspect of an empowered workforce and what that really means. Everyone has a different spin on it and we all learned a ton from the dialogue. What follows is a series of "linked-in" responses from Corporate and HR leaders on what empowerment means or does not mean to them. --------------------------------------------------- "I recently worked for a company that encouraged empowerment, and to us, it meant not always seeking permission or approval with our ideas. I think with empowerment comes trust. Empower your staff to take on more responsibility without being 'assigned' the work. Empower them to take matters into their own hands and to use their best judgment for the good of the company. Empowering your staff when done right, only benefits the company, but also makes employees feel valued, which we don't see often enough." "One point to consider is that 'employees' don't exist as a homogenous group. Employees are people at different levels of personal and professional development." "To be empowered, people must have the ability to step up into a leadership role, self leadership, or leadership of others. Confidence, access to the skills and knowledge they need, and a workplace where it is ok to make mistakes as you learn, go a long way towards providing an environment that supports empowerment and situational leadership." "Empowerment is the way to go, but far too many companies use it as 'flavor of the month' and eventually move on to the next best thing. Empowerment involves a lot of time and effort. If a company is not willing to make such an effort, it is best to move on." "Empowerment basically means the level of employee engagement and commitment to the strategic direction of an organization." "I find most companies are not willing to truly empower the workforce, and I'm not sure I disagree completely with this practice. To be empowered is the most rewarding and fulfilling organizational commitment one can experience, but the cost of changing the culture and managing the resistance to change is often overwhelming for organizations. It is clearly not for every company, and only those with strong leadership in key positions can make this happen. There has to be a commitment and strength in leadership to weather the resistance from all the major power players and to build a viable vision and process to gain true empowerment of the workforce. I do believe, however, there is no more powerful force on earth to accomplish organizational objectives, than an empowered and engaged workforce." "In the usual context, empowerment refers to a gift that management can give their workforce... they entrust their work teams to utilize personal commitment to common goals and motivate themselves to better performance standards... the reward is satisfaction. Unfortunately, Corporate America has tinkered with the ol' basic equation of Good Performance + Loyalty = Job Security." " 'Empowerment' does tend to be overused in the Consulting community... perhaps we need to meet Corporate America in THEIR sandbox- why not focus on motivated 'engagement' with the labor force to meet common goals and expectations? We have some ground to make up in re-capturing the loyalty and top performance from the workforce... after all, Corporate America was forced to abandon 'job security.' " "Empowerment is one of the tools that management has to help them engage their workforce... but TRUST must come first!" "I've seen the word 'empowerment' become more of a buzzword in the corporate world than anything else. The concept is good - giving teams the ability drive the organization's strategy and goals, without feeling micromanaged. But many managers are promoted to their roles because they're good at being individual contributors, not necessarily good at managing and empowering teams. As a result, they don't necessarily have the skills to define a vision and strategy for their team, link that vision and strategy with the organization's overall vision and strategy, and then give their teams the leeway to execute on and innovate with that vision and strategy." " Empowerment has to become a part of the corporate culture, it has to be driven by the leaders at the top, and management has to be taught how to empower their teams. Otherwise it's just another buzzword that goes in one ear and out the other." " Off the top of my head I would say that empowerment is giving line employees the authority and resources to solve the problems they face on a daily basis." "A team of professionals is empowered because the employees have the knowledge, skills, abilities and track record to make decisions. A team of hourly employees who are 'empowered' are given their empowerment to make them feel like they are important and to keep them from joining a union. Hourly employees who are 'empowered' are often empowered in name only. They rarely have the resources, acumen and experience to make substantial decisions and take meaningful actions." " Some leaders want it, some don't. I'm not sure you can make a blanket statement that leaders do or don't want their employees to be empowered. Also, a leader who is pro-empowerment may not trust all employees with the same level of authority." --------------------------------------------------- What's your opinion? What is empowerment in the workplace? What is it to lead an empowered team? Do leaders really want this, or is it the right thing for them to say they want, and are they not empowered enough to actually create it? Respond to my blog at http://blog.keenhire.com Back to Top Quote of the Month All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. - Joseph Campbell Back to Top |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| About Keen Talent |
|
Keen Mission- We transform Human Resources departments from cost centers to strategic business partners. We partner with leadership to initiate and integrate world class talent management systems and programs into progressive organizations. We accomplish this through HR Strategy Creation, HR Leadership Selection, HR RoadMapping, Talent Management Contract Staffing and Project Management. We alter the way HR impacts the organization.
© 2009 Keen Talent. All Rights Reserved. |