Too Obvious and Commonsensical

We recently received a couple of comments at the same time about the August/September issue of Merit Guidelines™ that said:

"This newsletter could be something I forward to managers or other employees if it weren't filled with such obvious and commonsense content," followed by a second reader's opinion, which was, "Thanks for the great information."

Well…that variety of feedback certainly caught my attention and then I found myself thinking…"r-i-i-i-ight." The articles that we crank out and the issues we talk about will seem obvious and commonsensical to those of you who are on top of your game and successful in delivering strategic HR programs to your companies.

But there are many other situations out there as well, which include capable HR professionals in organizations where support for their proactive efforts is hard to find, and also those organizations where senior management knows they don't have the level of HR support their business needs but are ambivalent about what they are going to do about it.

We write for all of these possibilities.

The main reason for talking about the basics is that leaders, managers and employees across the landscape give us new examples every single day of how to fail at the most obvious and basic. In a high percentage of cases we find failures to see the connection between business success and seemingly separate HR issues. And in those instances we can show you businesses that are holding themselves back from meeting their goals while not even knowing it.

Building trust; clear and frequent communications; and re-recruiting employees after they have come to work for you -- may seem like independent efforts. In truth each depends greatly on the others if a business is to be as successful as it can be.

In our experience many business people don't see the connections between the above to retention, productivity and cost savings, not to mention increased sales, improved customer loyalty and more positive bottom line results.

And so the August-September issue of Merit Guidelines™, while talking about building "…a culture of trust", improving "…employee communications", and capitalizing on "…a new hire's first 90 days" may seem obvious, experience tells us that good practices in these areas are not all that common.

According to Career Builder's Q3 Jobs Forecast and The Herman Group, the number of passive job seekers is on the rise even in this economy. In fact they report 19 percent actually are looking and 83 percent of those not looking definitely will be open to new opportunities when they come along. The Herman Group's point is that this is good if you are hiring, but bad if you are trying to keep good people.

The tendency in many organizations after hiring great talent is to let them fall into the condition of not feeling valued, by not staying in touch with them either directly and one-on-one, through frequent communications that are open and two-way, or through periodic employee surveys. Companies that do these things build trust, improve engagement and, as The Herman Group expresses it, perform pre-emptive strikes by re-recruiting their talent before the competition can steal them away.

This philosophy relates not only to new hires, it is important for your long-term contributors as well. They all deserve your attention and your "checking in" on how they feel about their employment relationship with you. There is no unconditional loyalty that should be expected. If you want them to stay you have to reach out and find ways to make that happen.

A portion of the work we do for clients is helping remedy problems that emanate from situations where some or much of what we write about in our newsletter is missing in their day-to-day operations. Sometimes the omissions have happened by accident. In other instances they are absent as a matter of choice, over time. In either case, some of the basics are missing. And when that happens, less success resulting from unexpected consequences and missed goals can't be far behind.

Rod Hanna, Principal
Merit Resource Group

We welcome your comments on perspectives we take and information we share in our e-mails and in our newsletter - Merit Guidelines™. We take a business focus as we provide HR expertise to our clients in a variety of forms, from filling professional HR job vacancies to consulting with HR executives and business leaders to deliver programs, projects and strategies that create engagement and high performance contributions from their employees. If you would like to discuss how we might put our expertise to work for you in your business give me a call at 925-867-4400 or e-mail me at rodh@meritHR.com