In our last edition of Creating Your Dream Team, we talked about September’s Turnover Trend, and how by using turnover as an opportunity, employers can enhance, grow and bring success to their organizations.
Whether an employer is promoting from within, re-evaluating their current structure, or ramping up to fill a position, by understanding the strengths of your team members within the organization, employers have an opportunity to increase employee satisfaction, retention and productivity.
Beyond skills and abilities, companies are realizing the impact of an employee fitting into the culture of an organization, and how it can affect performance and motivation.
Bestselling author Jim Collins wrote about the importance of getting “The Right People on the Bus” in his 2001 book, Good to Great. He refers to a company’s strength being in its team members and explains further that employers also need to ensure that these “right people” are in the “right seats”.
You can always uncover potential in someone who is willing, but not yet able… but there’s little potential in developing someone who is able, but unwilling.
Many employers and managers have found themselves stumped as to why highly skilled and able workers are not succeeding in their roles. By understanding the concept of ‘fit’ and by recognizing your team’s strengths and weaknesses, there may be an opportunity to realign these individuals into roles that they are better suited.
Many employers use skill assessments to measure a candidate or employee’s abilities to perform a task, but what is becoming more popular is the use of qualitative and behavioural assessments. These tests are not pass or fail; they are used to better understand an individual and the type of environment in which they will succeed or have challenges.
There are assessments that uncover and explain people’s instinct-based actions. In no way do these assessments indicate a person’s ability or intelligence; they simply identify a person’s instincts. Such evaluations can show you the value a person can bring to a group, how to zero-in on their strengths and utilize them, and how to make better use of their time.
For instance, by understanding how much information a person needs to receive in order to begin a new task, you can ensure that you are properly communicating with them in a meaningful and effective way.
There are customizable assessments used to create benchmarks around your star performers to help you to determine if you are hiring the right type of person. By identifying the characteristics of people who’ve been successful in your organization, this tool aims to identify similar people that are likely to succeed in a similar environment. This assessment is customizable by department, location and job function.
Salespeople interview well; they like people. But, if the success of a salesperson within your organization is contingent upon their drive to make new contacts and to uncover new business, it is important to understand if they have any reluctance to do so. There are assessments that measure this reluctance in different environments and determine a person’s emotional hesitation to prospect.
By learning to understand the results of these assessments as an employer, and by implementing the tools and training necessary, employees are able to bring more value and productivity to the organization. You can make sure that your strongest employees are in the ‘right seats’ to succeed.
To enable you to better leverage turnover and ensure your employees are sitting in the right seats on your bus, TPD offers both skill-based and qualitative assessments.