People Strategy Programs and Services

Developing and Implementing a People Strategy

This interactive session will explore the four cornerstones of an effective people strategy including your recruiting and selection process, training and development practices, communication and feedback vehicles and benefit and compensation offerings. This customized presentation is based on the leadership interaction, observation and strategic goals of the organization and will provide a detailed list of action items for each leader in the firm.

Audience: Executives, Managers, HR Directors and HR Staff

War for Talent: Developing a Recruitment Process

This interactive workshop walks through the recruitment process focused on requisition, sourcing, screening, interviewing, selection and hiring steps. This session will provide interview training, interview team selection, template the development of position descriptions and using selection tools to aid the recruitment process.

Audience: Corporate Recruiters, HR Directors, HR Staff, Hiring Managers

The Different Views of Business: Diversity in the Workplace

Different perspectives and ideas can spring firms back to life.

If you could implement a program that could potentially increase productivity, increase creativity, reduce turnover, attract more candidates and increase your return on equity and shareholder value, wouldn’t you do it?

From my research, I found that firms with a successful diversity program often state that the firm’s creativity increases when people of different backgrounds and influences work together. New ideas are generated and processes are improved with different perspectives working together. Productivity also increases when diverse workgroups are assigned to a project including an increased energy when views are challenged by different perspectives.

Diversity is a journey not a destination. It is not a black or white issue and it is not only a focus on minorities. It is a change in mindset by valuing different perspectives, different ideas and creative solutions to the work environment. Diversity encompasses cultivating an environment that offers different view points, different life experiences, and different professional knowledge.

In today's business environment, diversity is essential. While there are legal and ethical motivators for diversity, the strongest rationale is this: Developing and promoting a diverse workforce simply makes good business sense. Consider the following:

• During the next 50 years, most of the population growth will occur in non-white demographic segments, both in the general population and in the labor force;
• Nearly 80% of future population growth will be non-white;
• Through 2012, 55% of the labor force net growth will be non-white with that trend beginning to mirror the 80% in the general population as we approach 2020; and
• These trends are largely because of the retirement of the majority white baby boom generation and its replacement in the labor force with a much more diverse, younger generation.

Audience: Executives, Managers, HR Directors, HR Staff, All staff

Not Your Typical Suggestion Program: Incentive Compensation Programs (Reward Results)

You might be asking yourself, how can I get my staff more engaged in the business and leverage their creative ideas? Many companies rely on the good old suggestion box in the lunchroom. The problem with most suggestion/incentive programs is their longevity. The ideas pour in during the first few weeks, but slowly decrease as the program lumbers along. When employees don't see their ideas being taken seriously, they stop participating. Sound familiar?

The primary reason suggestion/incentive programs fail is due to a lack of communication and structure of the program. A successful suggestion program is one that reflects the company's culture, motivates the employees to get involved, and aligns with your firm's strategic goals.

Audience: HR Directors, HR Staff, Managers

Conflict Management in the Workplace

Is that a disagreement or true conflict? In any set of working relationships there are bound to be significant differences of opinions, tensions, and varying perspectives. These differences can be either a healthy thing or extremely destructive. Managers and staff members need to:

• Understand the differences between disagreement and conflict.
• Gauge the appropriate level of intensity.
• Determine if intervention is needed.
• If needed, apply one or more conflict management strategies.

This session will explore the differences between a disagreement (mental): A failure or refusal to agree and a conflict (emotinal): Open or closed fighting – often prolonged

Audience: Executives, Managers, HR Directors and HR Staff

Building a Leadership Development Program

Is leadership learned or born? This session will explore the different types of leaders and the different tools used to assess leaders. We will also explore the development of a leadership program fro your firm and unveil different programs that you can consider including Hi-Potential and fast track programs, foundations of leadership, transitional leaders and strategic leadership.

Audience: Executives, HR Directors, HR Staff

How to Attract, Hire and Retain Millennial

What are the key characteristics that need to be understood in order to attract, hire and retain this group of very productive, task oriented, multitasking, and technically astute green horns.

After years of hiring and working with this generation, I have heard many colorful statements that describe Millennial. “They have no work ethic? They have an entitlement expectation? They are not loyal and don’t understand the need to earn their stripes and put in the time.” I am sure all of us have thought this and even uttered those words when referring to this next generation work force coined as the Millennial Generation (also known as Generation Y or Net Generation) born in 1977 – 1998. However, I think this generation is just different then past generations that we have hired. In order for you to successfully attract, hire and retain this generation, we need to take into account a number of factors that have influenced this generation. This session will explore those influences and provide sound strategies to help attract, hire and retain this valuable generation.
Audience: Managers, Interviewers and Recruiters

The Power of Position Descriptions

In this session, we will explore the art of writing result oriented Position Descriptions. These documents must focus on Tasks, activities and expected results for a specific position including success measurements and performance criteria. They must sell the position education the interested and guide the employed.

Audience: Managers, Interviewers and Recruiters

Interview Training: Legal Pitfalls and Cultural Sales

In addition to understanding the overall recruitment process, we will guide managers and recruiters through the process of effective interviewing. From the legal perspective and the listening perspective, we will successful transform your leaders to help you attract, select, hire and retain the best staff in the industry.
Audience: Managers, Interviewers and Recruiters

Make Everyone a Recruiter: Strategic Hiring

The proactive process of identifying, attracting and hiring strategic hires is critical to a growing firm. In this session, we will walk key managers through the process of tapping into their network to identify key hires that the company should pursue. We will explore the sources, the courting and the actually selling of opportunities. We will also explore the organizational structure and the process of developing new positions for key hires.
Audience: Executives, Managers, Interviewers and Recruiters

Become a Recruiting Executive

This program is designed for corporate recruiters and recruitment executives. We will explore the research and use of progressive/innovative methodologies, tools & techniques utilized in all facets of the recruiting process. This structured and comprehensive education program is designed for corporate recruiters and will explore the recruitment process, the documents critical to communicate status and the measurements to ensure recruitment success.

Audience: Interviewers and Recruiters

On-Boarding / Orientation: You Had Me at Hello

Don’t miss the opportunity to make a positive and long-lasting first impression. A new employee orientation program should welcome the new hire and reinforce his/her decision to join your firm.

Employee turnover within the first two years can be directly attributed to a lack of employee integration. “Overwhelming” and “intimidating” are often the words that describe many employees’ experiences on the first few days of a new job. A solid orientation program will not only serve as a formal introduction of your firm, but will also increase productivity while decreasing the learning curve of a new employee. Following are three areas that you should consider when developing your integration / orientation program.

Audience: Managers, HR Executives, HR Staff

Launching a Corporate University

This session will help corporate leaders analyze, develop and launch a successful corporate university. We will explore content, facilitators, delivery and measurement critical to program acceptance and overall corporate success.

Audience: Managers, HR Directors, HR Staff

Developing Individual Career Development Plans

As part of any career development program, it is imperative that you focus on ones career development and overall personal and professional goals. This session will walk the management team through a series of techniques that will help them communicate better with their staff and help each team member develop an individual career development plan. It will begin with a 360 assessment, include a skills gap analysis and help each team member develop short and long-term goals.

Audience: Trainers, Managers, HR Directors, HR Staff

Training Millennials

To train and retain this generation, your managers and team members need to accept that this generation is different than other generations in the past. Different does not have to be bad. This generation has the ability to take your firm to the next level through their ability to multitask and understanding of technology. In order to compete in this global economy, we, as hiring managers, need to further understand the drivers of this generation and develop programs to address their unique needs and perspectives, if we want to develop our next generation of successful employees.

This session will explore and unveil many of their drivers, help you develop communication strategies and help your firm develop individual or group training programs that will help you attract, hire and retain your future leaders.

Audience: Trainers, Managers, HR Executives, HR Staff

Performance Reviews

Lets face it, as Managers, we spend hours upon hours completing paperwork, rating each employee and meeting with each person to review their strengths and weaknesses just to have a debate over my rating of 4 (above average) which in the employees mind should have been a five (excellent rating). Our staff dreads the reviews, not wanting to hear any constructive criticism or any negative information. Sound familiar?

The traditional approach to performance reviews focuses too much emphasis on the paperwork and rating scales and not enough time on improving the employee/manager communication process. Performance feedback is effective if implemented with one goal in mind: Establishing clear expectations for a desired behavior.

Before we delve into the specific tools that I have used to establish clear expectations, let me start by saying that you need to continually provide feedback to your staff throughout the year. Do not rely on the annual performance review to drive desired behavior. Short monthly meetings with your staff could dramatically improve morale, performance and even your employee retention rate. An employee should never be surprised during a performance review.

This session will help develop and launch a new performance review process that will increase productivity, communication, and overall engagement of your staff and managers using a step by step pragmatic approach.

Audience: Trainers, Managers, HR Executives, HR Staff

Be interested, Not interesting: Employee Communication Strategies

Two factors that are critical to professional networking, developing mutual relationships, and influencing people are the art of listening and the genuine interest in other people. This is especially true when you are a recruiter or interviewer. The purpose of interviewing is to learn more about the candidate, understand the candidate’s skills, knowledge, education, experience, and cultural fit, and assess the candidate’s interest in your firm. Then why do interviewers talk so much?

Interviewers are excited to talk about their firm and sell the opportunity, but research shows that interviewers talk too much and do not listen enough. I interviewed 100 executives to better understand how much time they spend talking versus listening during an interview. I found that 65% of the interview time was spent talking about the firm and selling the firm to the candidates. You can always tell which managers talk too much during the interview. Their interview notes are short, they can’t tell you much about what they learned from the candidate, and their recommendations are often a gut feel.

However, listening skills and general interviewing skills need to be taught. It is critical that you identify the best staff to conduct the interview, train them and then provide them with the tools to be effective interviewers. This program will help your managers, interviewers and recruiters develop techniques that will increase interaction, provide better interview data and increase the level of new hires.

Audience: Trainers, Managers, HR Executives, HR Consultants, Recruiters, Interview Teams

Virtual Communication: Communicate While You Are Sleeping

Constant communication is critical to a growing company and employee satisfaction. This session will explore the many different types of constant communication firms use today and help you establish the best medium to communicate company updates, successes and celebrations and daily information your staff crave to feel engaged, included and productive. We will explore different technologies as well as on-line intranets that will be your firm’s information portal of the firm.

Audience: HR Executives, HR Consultants, Marketing Directors, Marketing Staff.

Peoples Power: Conducting an Organizational Assessment

The first step of an Employer of Choice Program is to assess the firm’s culture and employees opinions. As part of this program, we will conduct an organizational assessment of the Executive and Senior Leadership, Managers and employees through focus groups, individual one-on-one sessions and a company-wide employee survey. We will provide a framework to identify key focus areas as a foundation of the survey and help administer the comprehensive survey. The results of the findings and recommendations will help frame the specific organizational objectives to strive for Employer of Choice. This survey will also serve as a benchmark for your firm to continuously measure employee opinions.

Audience: Executives, HR Executives, HR Consultants, Marketing Directors, Marketing Staff.

Form the Team: Team Dynamics and Team Success

Teamwork has played a very large role in the development of your firm’s culture. The process is designed to capture the “Form the Team” process and communicate each proven step in an effort to standardize the process for your firm and specific teams. This program is designed to help managers and team increase communication, expectations and overall results resulting in increased professional and personal satisfaction of working on a team that clicks--a high performing team. However, team members have also experienced the inevitable pitfalls that occur when teams do not click. The most frequent causes, unclear project goals, and hazy roles and responsibilities all lead to a duplication of effort, missed deadlines and frustrated team members.

A Form the Team is a meeting that occurs at the inception of a project. It is conducted as part of the team creation process. The purpose of the meeting is to:

• Achieve a shared vision for the project among team members.
• Obtain real commitment to the project team.
• Obtain real commitment to the project team goals.
• Create the opportunity for every project team to become a high performing team.

Several factors contribute to the success of the Form the Team meetings:

• Preparation prior to the meeting.
• Participation of all team members.
• Adherence to the agenda.

Audience: Trainers, Managers, HR Executives, HR Consultants

How to Grow: Corporate Strategy and Growth

Developing a strategic plan is critical to the success of any firm. This program will be based on company goals, management expectations and observations of the overall staff. We will explore and present specific areas within the firm such as resources, processes, succession planning and culture and help your management team identify specific objectives and goals that are time sensitive and result oriented. This program will also include the development of a communication and measurement plan for this strategic initiative.

Audience: Trainers, Managers, HR Executives, HR Consultants

Employee Feedback or Exit Interviews?

Turnover is a part of business. However, most firms try to ask critical questions, during an exit interview, to departing employees after they already tendered their resignation. That is too late, they have already left. I suggest developing a feedback process that solicits the same type of information as an exit interview when the employee is just that, an employee. Through this process you will gain valuable information, improve credibility and trust, improve communication and improve morale of the firm. Listen to the feedback then attempt to implement changes if possible.

Why do people leave organizations?

If someone leaves in the first year, it is typically a recruitment mistake such as a poor corporate fit or lack of appropriate skills and knowledge which should be identified during the screening or interviewing steps.

If someone leaves within 2 – 3 years, it is an on-boarding mistake or orientation error. The employee never felt part of the team, lacked buy-in or company understanding.

If someone leaves your organization after three years, it is often a career development mistake and the employee felt a lack of opportunity, career advancement or better career opportunities elsewhere.

This program will help your managers develop critical questions that are firm and cultural specific and help your firm launch this new feedback process. In addition, we will explore the formal exit interview process to help your firm gain insight that will be critical to making organizational improvements.

Audience: Trainers, Managers, HR Directors, HR Staff

Merger Integration

As the marketplace continues to accelerate its process, business cycles, and competitive vigor, some firms develop Merger and Acquisition (M&A) strategies to expand into a geographic market, grow revenue and client base and/or acquire talent and merge best practices. Whether you are the acquirer or the seller, it is imperative to have a well thought-out M&A due diligence, communication and implementation plan to navigate through this challenging process. As research would tell you, 70- 80 percent of M&A deals fail due to poor planning, communication and implementation of the merged firms, people and processes.

Even if the merger appears to make business sense and the deal struck looks perfect, that only gets you half way to success. Studies over the last 20 years have proved that there are risks and rewards with merging human organizations that dictate the likelihood of success. It is critical that you get the people integration process right. Maintaining employee morale and retaining key employees, despite the substantial impact of change, are essential. Below are some of the best practices for M&A integration that I have learned through experience. By reviewing and implementing these practices, you will realize the benefits to successfully navigate through this challenging process.

This session will explore the due diligence process, the implementation plan and the communication plan. The program will help your managers identify critical areas of focus and the time that it will take to make a smooth and successful transition to a combined firm.

Audience: Executives, Managers, HR Executives, HR Staff

Workforce Reduction Process

Unfortunately, terminations and workforce reductions are common in a difficult economy. However, it is critical that your firm develops a repeatable process to evaluate, identify and efficiently implement a workforce reduction program while maintaining dignity for the staff and preserving a reputation as an employer of choice. This process will help your firm establish metrics for staff evaluation, adhere to the legal requirements and help your managers communicate with respect and understanding.

Audience: Executives, Managers, HR Executives, HR Consultants

Compensation Programs

This program will help your managers and leaders identify industry benchmarks for your firm’s overall compensation program. We will help you identify the benchmark study that is good for your firm and help you develop and implement a compensation program that evaluates variable compensation programs such as profit-based bonuses and performance bonuses. This program will also include establishing a standard evaluation plan to administer wage increases using broad-banding by position. Finally, we will also provide your managers with a technique to evaluate team member equity and communicate the results to your staff.

Audience: HR Executives, HR Consultants

Incentive Compensation Strategies

This program will help your firm develop an incentive compensation program and identify specific areas of focus based on employee feedback. We will explore the purpose of incentive compensation and the range of possible benefits to achieve when the program is effective. We will provide an overview of forms/types of incentive compensation and present benchmarks and data. Finally, we will explore a Case study: a study in the potential negative impacts of a poorly designed/implemented incentive compensation program.
Audience: HR Executives, HR Consultants

Grow your future leaders

Seventy-six percent of the executives I surveyed said that it is better for a firm to grow their leaders rather than hire them externally. The executives surveyed felt that cultivating existing staff would provide opportunity for advancement, build loyalty and help maintain the firm’s culture, values and overall vision. However, of the firms surveyed, only 25% had a dedicated leadership development program focused on growing internal leaders. These employees are often referred to as fast-trackers or high-potential employees. If your goal is to grow internal leaders, start building the programs today that will bear fruit two to three years from now.

This program will help your firm develop a High-Potential Program. Your High-Potential Program should identify and select those individuals who have the abilities and desires to develop into leaders. This program should assist in grooming your best staff for future leadership roles and help you launch the program by defining your program, developing a rigorous nomination and selection process, identifying and developing content, facilitators and internal mentors and providing an overall structure for the program.

Audience: Trainers, Managers, HR Executives, HR Consultants