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Rachelle Lee
The Power of People Insights When Hiring, Retaining, and Developing Professional Staff
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he definition of a businessowner’s bad day? One of the best, most highly skilled, talented, and likeable members of the professional staff has handed in his resignation. It’s too late to talk about it because the decision has been made.
“People insights” can be applied to three key areas—hiring, retaining, and developing staff. People Insights when Hiring
No one sensed his dissatisfaction over the past year or so, but it has been a busy time. Now the company faces a daunting task . . . starting all over again with recruiting, hiring, and onboarding without any guarantee that someone who’s the right fit will be found.
Résumés tell you about skills, education, and certifications—all the technical areas that demonstrate someone can perform the functions of the job. But résumés, even interviews, can’t tell you if a person has the right attitude for the job. At Einblau & Associates, we like to say, “If a job could talk, we would know who would be successful.” It’s important to understand exactly what personal skills are required for success in the position in terms of behaviours, the driving forces behind the behaviour, and nontechnical (soft) skills-proficiency.
Is there anything you could have done to prevent the departure from happening? That is a question on the mind of thousands of companies these days with staff at all levels leaving in record numbers. Even before today’s “great resignation” trend, it was a challenge to keep good talent.
Fortunately, some excellent tools and processes are available to do pre-employment strengths-assessment and job benchmarking. By using highly valid and reliable assessments, companies can reduce hiring regrets along with the time and money spent trying to make a poor hire successful.
Most organizations are familiar with the factors that impact employee retention at senior levels, including • lack of respect, • poor company culture, • feeling overworked and underappreciated, • lack of growth opportunities, • team issues, and • poor leadership. How does a company demonstrate to its professional staff that it cares about those factors when hiring, retaining, and developing its people?
People Insights: Retention
There is a scientific approach to all the uncertainty. We’re talking about the use of analytical tools and predictive assessments that provide “people insights” to understand the strengths of the individuals working in an organization. The insights (provided through data and self-assessment tools) reveal what drives them to do well, what’s getting in their way, and how a company can develop their strengths in the best way possible.
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Professional staff possess the technical skills and experience they need to do their work, but they often struggle with how to deal with poor performance on their teams or problem-solving around behaviour. As stress builds, the leader becomes frustrated with lack of respect, dissatisfied with his or her own performance, and without support, disillusioned with the overall culture and working environment. That is when people insights, provided through coaching training, are so important. Coaching skills training addresses the kinds of soft skills that aren’t taught in schools, such as how to • manage people’s performance, • mitigate and resolve conflict, • deal with difficult employees and clients, and • build team-effectiveness. Managers who learn how to coach performance effectively are able to capitalize on their employees’
BC Notaries Association
Volume 31, Number 1, Spring /Summer 2022
