The Power of People Insights

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Rachelle Lee

The Power of People Insights When Hiring, Retaining, and Developing Professional Staff

The 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

“People insights” can be applied to three key areas—hiring, retaining, and developing staff.

People Insights when Hiring

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.

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.

People Insights: Retention

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’

strengths and minimize their weaknesses. They know who needs support to do a specific job and where to tap specific resources. The same applies to team-building.

Managers benefit from training in the techniques of “participatory problem-solving,” where both sides talk openly about the issue in one-on-one coaching conversations. When applied to performance reviews, managers with good coaching skills learn how to invite suggestions and innovative ideas from employees to resolve the problem or find appropriate corrective actions.

People Insights: Development

Development is another area where assessment tools can be very powerful.

Strengths-based training is one of the best known. For example, 360-degree feedback and self-assessment programs are available to measure management effectiveness. Following a feedback process, leaders receive a diagnostic report that measures, reports, and recommends improvements in 14 key management skills. In addition, individual coaching is provided to set personal-development goals.

That is just one of the various assessment processes that can give professional staff what they need to feel successful and satisfied in their jobs. Others include emotional intelligence profiles, assessments for coaching effectiveness, and processes for succession planning. It goes without saying that it helps to have a trusted supplier of strengths-based training programs.

People Do Want to Remain in Their Jobs!

Armed with people insights, organizations can take strategic, targeted actions toward hiring well, improving retention, and developing leadership—actions that will ensure they remain competitive and successful.

If you haven’t done so before, consider using highly credible, reputable assessment tools as an effective way to demonstrate to professional staff that the company is actively involved and interested in the experience of each employee. Further, show them your organization is willing to act on the feedback received. Who wouldn’t want to work for—and stay with—an organization that takes feedback and continuous improvement seriously? Rachelle Lee, President, Einblau & Associates, is an organization development and management consultant specializing in training and coaching, leadership assessments, and facilitation of strategic conversations. Her work is focused on helping leaders and managers create a motivating work environment where staff are inspired to reach their full potential and achieve great things together. www.einblau.com