Greetings:
Hello and welcome to the January issue of Rise & Shine, your NEW leadership solution and resource newsletter! We hope this month’s newsletter finds you all well and that you and your families had a joyous holiday season. We also want wish all of you a very Successful and Fulfilling New Year!
What’s New at Rising Sun Consultants:
Similar to what we have done with our website we have also revised the format of Rise & Shine. Based on feedback from our readers, beginning this month, we will focus our monthly newsletters on solutions to the major challenges most leaders face. We hope you like the new format and find the information useful both personally and professionally and encourage you to continue to provide us with feedback on how we can improve our products and services.
New Horizons (Tips/Solutions):
This month’s Solution will focus on Recruitment and Hiring Strategies.
“Hiring employees with no talent for the job or who are not the right fit wastes recruiting dollars, time, and effort. Worse, employees with mismatched talents turn off customers, disrupt workgroups, and corrupt brands.” (The Gallup Organization)
Nothing is more important to the success of an organization than the quality or professionalism of its staff. Creating a professional staff requires more than just a hiring process, or more than just a training program. Creating a professional staff requires a holistic or systems approach.
The interview and hiring process for an organization is a critical opportunity to actively communicate the organization’s culture and expectations. It is also a very important and effective opportunity to intentionally select the most appropriate individual who will support and move forward the mission of an organization. Many organizations fail to realize this opportunity and the tremendous cost of hiring and training the wrong staff.
It is in the best interest of an organization, as well as the potential new staff member, for the organization to do everything possible to select the right people, at the right time, for the right job. In other words, it is at the same time both cost effective and culturally sound to develop a professional hiring process for all staff that will support the positive development of an organization.
How often in your career did you feel that the hiring process you went through was:
- designed to prepare you to become a member of the organizational culture you were about to enter, and/or
- designed to match you, your skills and talents, to the most appropriate position within the organization?
Top performers in all jobs think, talk, and act differently than average and poor performers. Understanding the talents that contribute to outstanding performance is key to developing an effective talent-based hiring strategy. (The Gallup Organization)
Shining Stars (Best Practices):
This month’s Rising Sun Consultants’ Organization of Excellence is JPL Productions in Harrisburg, PA. JPL helps corporations, government and organizations communicate messages, increase revenues, decrease costs, and achieve goals through a wide range of communications media alternatives. This year, JPL Productions received recognition as one of the 50 Best Medium-Sized Places to Work in Pennsylvania, and there are many good reasons for this honor…
- A clearly articulated Statement of Values that all employees and leaders follow and through which decisions are filtered.
- A hiring process that focuses on finding the “best fit” with the company, not just “the best.”
- Regular opportunities for employees to provide input into decisions made in and about the company. This input is considered seriously and thoughtfully by the leadership.
- Continual reinvention of company structure and strategies to meet the changing needs of the clients, the demands of the market, and the success of its employees.
- An internship program that grooms potential employees (approximately 1-2 interns have been hired each year as full-time employees) and potential supervisors (the program serves as a vehicle for non-managers to experience the world of supervision by serving as a mentor for an intern).
- A belief that investments must be made into programs and benefits that employees value and appreciate, and that ultimately help build positive relationships and teamwork.
We thank Michael Horgan (Executive Chairman) and Luke Kempski (President) for meeting with us to discuss the best practices of this Organization of Excellence. More information about JPL Productions can be found at their website: www.jplprod.com.
Bright Lights (In the News):
According to the "The Walker Loyalty Report for Loyalty in the Workplace" only 34 percent of employees were categorized as being "truly loyal" - defined as being committed to the organization and planning to stay with their companies for at least two years. However, "Real opportunities exist for companies to close the gap between those employees who are merely satisfied and those who are truly loyal," suggests Chris Woolard, loyalty specialist for Walker Information. For example, according to their analysis, Walker Information suggests that over the past 12 months, employees who rated themselves as truly loyal had participated in some form of:
- A 360 degree feedback system,
- Career planning,
- Professional development classes and/or seminars, as well as
- Mentor programs.
But why should an employer care about how loyal their employees are? According to Woolard, replacing an employee usually costs a company approximately 1.5 times the individual's annual salary when taking all factors into account. In addition, potential customer concerns come into play with new employees who don't have the same rapport with customers. "Customers want to know that whoever takes care of [them] will be the person who will give them the best experience," says Michael DeSanto, vice president of marketing communications for Walker Information "Even as much information as CRM systems hold, there's a human element that can't be replaced when that employee leaves. There's a tangible that goes with that."
According to Woolard, more loyal employees recommend their company as a good place to work, limit their job searching, resist offers from other companies, and do things above and beyond the call of duty. Companies have to have the vision, insight, and audacity to measure employee loyalty," DeSanto says. "Often, they don't want to see the numbers. It's bold to say, 'We have a problem.' Customer turnover is far more risky, so they invest in it. What they're not seeing is the effect the employee turnover will have on customer loyalty."
(Original Article in CRM Magazine)
Rays of Hope (Stories/Parables):
Why We Tell Stories
There was once a disciple of a great teacher. Day after day the disciple would sit at the feet of his teacher listening to his instruction. Many people would come to visit and inevitably the teacher would engage them by telling a story.
One day the disciple asked; "Guruji, why do you engage people by means of stories? Why don't you just give them your teaching straight out?"
The guru answered: "Bring me some water."
Now the disciple knew his teacher to be a very formal and disciplined man. He had never asked for water at this time of the day. Nevertheless, he went immediately to fetch it. Taking a clean brass water pot from the ashram kitchen, the disciple went to the well, filled the pot with water and returned. He offered it to his teacher.
"Why have you brought me a pot when I asked only for water?"
- Author Unknown
The moral of this story…
We share with others the lessons we have learned. We provide you with a banquet of various tastes and styles. It is up to you to choose that dish which you find most palatable.
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Thank You:
As always, we want to thank all of you reviewing our Monthly Newsletter and for providing us with your insights, feedback and suggests. We also want to once again invite you to visit our new website (www.risingsunconsultants.com), to enjoy our latest book review and white paper.
On behalf of ourselves and all our associates, we wish you good health, success and a very JOYOUS HOLIDAY SEASON!
Until next month: Always Keep Your Eyes on the New Horizon! |
