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#Leadership : #EmployeeRetention – Plan your New Hire’s Next Job from the Moment they Start… Here’s how Here are Three Ways to Start Preparing your #TeamMembers for New and Different Roles Inside the Company (before they find other opportunities outside it).

July 21, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Remember when staying in a job for less than a few years was considered a stain on your resume? That’s no longer the case. By one recent estimate, the average length of time people now spend in a given role is just a little over two years among workers ages 25–39. And who can blame them?

Baseless millennial stereotypes notwithstanding, it’s people earlier in their careers who tend to fill lower-level positions, which typically involve at least a few unexciting tasks. I’ve noticed entry-level employees at my own company getting anxious to take the next step in their careers even sooner than they’d used to. Many of our sales reps now start eyeing their next internal moves after just six to eight months.

So lately I’ve had to think creatively about ways to keep new hires engaged while extending their professional lives inside the company. Here are a few methods we’ve come up with.

BREAK ROLES INTO TIERS

The most employee movement we see here at Vidyard is in our sales department. As with a lot of front-line jobs, it’s hard to keep this area dynamic because sales isn’t necessarily a role where you can rotate people through varied projects, like we do with our developers. So instead we’ve introduced tiers to certain sales positions, transparent step-ups that come with added responsibilities and pay. Importantly, these aren’t promotions out of a role that somebody has only started to master. Rather, we’re building discrete new functions into that role.

A higher-level tier might include new responsibilities like mentoring newer hires, taking on bigger accounts, or shadowing more senior team members. Yet each new level comes with commensurate pay increases to reflect the advancement.

Having clear tiers for sales jobs lets our new hires see from the outset that they’re never “stuck” in an entry-level role, and it shows them exactly what they need to do to make it to the next level. They get the support and encouragement to add to their skill sets while also getting better at selling–the critical function they were hired for. For now, we’ve limited this “slice-and-dice” approach to sales, where there are clear, repeatable duties. But it’s not hard to see how it could be useful elsewhere.

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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ASK AMBITIOUS EMPLOYEES TO SELF-ASSESS

As any manager knows, dealing with an employee who’s pushing for a promotion before they’re ready can be a tricky (and common) situation. The challenge is to be realistic without dismissing their desire to advance. Simply telling someone they’ll have to stay put will only breed resentment and accelerate a move–likely outside your company.

So we’ve tried to develop what I think of as a readiness pulse-check. Flip the tables and give eager team members a chance to assess their own readiness for a promotion (or lack thereof). A little while ago, one new hire joined Vidyard as a “concierge,” helping direct customer inquiries to the right place, but his heart was set on getting into sales. When he pleaded with me after just a couple months to make the move, I assigned him some homework: I asked him to spend some time with other leaders in the company to learn exactly what his dream job entailed.

He soon realized he still had some work to do, but he now knew exactly which skills and qualifications he’d need to move forward. Within little more than a year, he successfully made the switch and has continued to move up the ranks. In fact, using this same approach, he went on to segue into a product manager role, where he’s in charge of bringing our tools from ideation to market.

Putting the onus on your ambitious employees to figure out whether they’re truly ready for the next step is a great way to give them some control over their career paths. Some may resent the perceived roadblock. But those that rise to the occasion will be doubly dedicated to their jobs, and double their value to you by learning more about how the company works.

EXPERIMENT WITH SWAPS AND LOANS

Indeed, sometimes the best ways to keep team members happy is to encourage internal mobility across functional areas. Jumping to a new role or department can revitalize enthusiasm and preserve institutional know-how while also busting up silos.

We recently began experimenting with a loaner program to let employees cross departmental lines in their work, something that other tech companies have been doing for years. Right now, our initiative is admittedly small and operating on a four-month trial, but I’m excited to see where it leads in the future. Other times a change of scenery is all it takes to renew someone’s enthusiasm for their job. We have a satellite office in another city on the West Coast, and we’ve had a few team members request to make the move. While this doesn’t always entail a change in job description, the shift in setting is often a welcome change, with the added benefit of strengthening our company culture through cross-pollination between offices.

In my opinion, keeping a good employee for many years is important; it’s the goal of every great leader I know. The key is to creating a climate where people hungry to amass new skills can genuinely see a path forward. In the end, a stifled, inflexible workplace only leads to the exodus of your best and brightest. The earlier you start thinking about where your newest hires might be headed, the sooner you’ll start seeing them maximize their potential and make your organization stronger–no matter how long they’re there.

FastCompany.com | July 20, 2018

#Leadership : Do These Things To #ReduceTurnover Among Your #BestHires …It takes Work to #Retain #StarEmployees . Here are the Steps you Can take to Stop Losing them to “Better Offers.”

February 26, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

If there’s anyone more hopeful than a new employee showing up to her first day on the job, it’s the hiring manager who offered it to her.

Call us hopeless romantics, but we think there’s something really special about a candidate and a company coming to an agreement and choosing to embark on a relationship together–albeit a business one.

But what happens when the relationship goes south and the employee decides to move on? There may not be actual tears, but it can still feel like heartbreak to the recruiter, hiring manager, and leadership team that had high hopes for the future.

So, what can you do when you’re tired of losing employees to “better offers”? Here’s what five recruiting and hiring pros would do to reduce churn and improve employee engagement and retention:

1. BE HONEST ABOUT THE DOWNSIDES OF A POSITION

It makes sense to try to put your best foot forward in the first stages of the interview process. After all, that’s what job candidates are doing, too. But Chuck Solomon, cofounder and COO of LineHire, says that it’s in the best interest of long-term employee retention to be upfront about what a job is really like without candy coating the truth or trying to ignore potential challenges within a job.

“It may sound quaint, but I believe authenticity is key to reducing churn and increasing employee retention,” says Solomon. “Recruiters should be honest and accurate in describing both the pros and cons of the job–after all, once on board, the candidate is going to learn firsthand themselves. I’m not suggesting you should ‘air the company’s dirty laundry,’ but there are ways to tell a candidate that this is a challenging position. That way you’re only bringing in staff members that are up for the challenges.”

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

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2. CLOSE THE LOOP ON NEW HIRE DATA

Find the best person, hire them, and move on. Sound familiar? If that’s your approach to most of the positions you fill and you want to reduce churn, Mikaela Kiner, CEO and Founder of uniquelyHR, wants you to think about following up and tracking how your candidates work out in the role.

“Recruiters always believe we’ve found the absolute best candidate for the job, says Kiner. “After all, that’s why we hired them! But too often, we don’t know what happens once that person joins the company. Did that person become a superstar, did they plateau, or were they eventually let go for poor performance? If recruiters can work with HR and hiring managers to get data on the quality of the people they’ve hired, they can spot trends and then use that data to improve the screening and recruiting process.”

“For example, what skills and qualities are common to the most successful hires?” continues Kiner. “Failures are also a good source of learning, because if you make a note of red flags during interviews of people who don’t succeed, you can be on the lookout for similar candidate qualities in the future.”

3. LISTEN TO AND REWARD EMPLOYEES BEFORE THERE’S A PROBLEM

Brianna Rooney, founder of software engineer recruiting company Techees, works in a high turnover industry placing software engineers at tech-focused companies in the Bay Area. In her line of work, it’s common for people to leave every year, and if someone has been with their company for three years, it’s a downright miracle. Why? Because most companies say they don’t have time to deal with employee retention or simply don’t want to know the bad things about their company.

“I can’t tell you how many times a company will try to give a raise or actually listen to an employee when it’s way too late,” says Rooney. “Everyone wants to save money. It’s hard to keep giving raises. Yet, think about how hard it is to find good people. People you trust to work hard, honestly, and efficiently.”

“If you don’t have the budget for a salary increase, make sure they understand that,” Rooney continues. “Talk to employees, make them know how important they are. Don’t just wait for quarterly or yearly meetings. You need to care before you ‘have to,’ and it has to come naturally.”

4. RECRUIT QUALITIES THAT MAKE FOR GOOD OFFICE POLITICS

Are office politics always a bad thing? No, says CEO and The Compass Alliance author Tim Cole. They can be good or bad for an organization depending on how they are directed. But if you’re in a position where you need to reduce churn, your politics are likely unproductive. It’s critical that you start screening candidates for qualities that are conducive to healthy office politics.

“Bad office politics implies backstabbing and conspiring for personal gain,” says Cole. “An organization that tolerates that type of behavior faces the long-term effects that always follow, like low engagement, loss of productivity, and attrition.”

Cole adds: “Companies that recruit for collaboration skills and capacity for problem solving can often direct office politics in a more positive direction and use them to streamline workflow with behind-the-scenes discussions and gain consensus on critical job decisions away from the boardroom.”

5. RALLY YOUR TEAM AROUND A COMMON “WHY”

Low employee retention and low engagement go hand in hand, so if you’re struggling with a need to reduce churn, you are likely struggling with employee engagement, too. Zach Hendrix, cofounder of the lawn service app GreenPal, grew one business from 1 to 100 using a simple but profound engagement strategy: rally employees around the central “why” of their jobs and the business as a whole.

In his first business, much of Hendrix’s operating core was comprised of Guatemalan immigrants who would come to the United States for several consecutive lawn mowing seasons and save as much money as they could to improve the lives of their families back home by building homes, ranches, and setting up farms stocked with cattle.

To fuel his team through the tough times, including the economic recession of 2009, he rallied them around their “why.” At weekly meetings, they would give progress reports on how projects back home were coming along and display picture collages of homes, farms, and businesses in Guatemala in the office and shop.

There’s nothing more frustrating than waving farewell to an employee you had hoped would stick around long-term. And while there are many reasons you’ll need to say goodbye to employees over the years–relocations, promotions, and career changes among them–there’s a lot you can do to make sure that your company isn’t the reason employees leave. Consider how you can apply these tips to your recruiting and hiring process to reduce churn to help your candidates stick around.

FastCompany.com | February 26, 2018 | BY SARAH GREESONBACH—GLASSDOOR 5 MINUTE READ