Unfortunately, most onboarding programs are poorly designed and even more poorly executed. After years of researching and advising firms on developing best-practice programs, I have found that there are 15 key factors that can literally kill any chances of onboarding programs demonstrating a positive impact.

The Root of the Problem

Most corporate onboarding programs are designed from the HR administrator’s perspective. The goal and focus is to ease the administrative burden on HR and to drive compliance activities, not to ensure that new hires can reach expected levels of productivity in the shortest time frame possible.

As a result, most programs have boiled onboarding activities down to all but the bare bones of administration. Every new hire, transfer, or merged/acquired employee gets the same information, on the same timeline, via the same channel.

Doing so has made administering onboarding easy, cheap, generic, consistent, and utterly useless. The result is that most onboarding programs frustrate new hires and hiring managers.

While the concept behind onboarding is truly simple, delivering world-class onboarding is anything but easy and generic. If your current approach demonstrates any of the 15 onboarding program killers described below, you’re missing the mark and need to start over:

1. The wrong definition and limited goals. The first and most impactful error is to define the program as orientation as opposed to onboarding. The term orientation has for years been applied to the narrower range of corporate activities related to “sign up’s” and providing basic information. The goals of traditional orientation are relatively narrow: to get new hires on the payroll, signed up for benefits, and to provide a brief overview of the company’s culture, products, and values. Onboarding, however, has a much broader perspective and goal: to decrease the time it takes for a new hire to reach the minimum expected productivity level on the job. Onboarding (also known as assimilation) lasts longer, occurs at several organizational levels, is metric-driven, and has a greater business impact.
2. Overloading new hires. The most common program killer is overloading new hires on the first day with a volume of information and questions that result in sensory overload. Because new hires are apprehensive, putting them under this kind of pressure makes it unlikely that they will ask tough questions, make good decisions, or remember a majority of the information they are provided with. The best programs limit the amount of information provided and the number of forms and sign-ups required so that they encompass less than two hours on the first day.
3. Failing to extend the timeframe. Viewing onboarding as something that happens only on the first day of employment is a major program killer. The best programs start before the employee’s first day (pre-boarding) and continues for up to six to 12 months. By stretching out the process, you help to ensure that the new hire is not overwhelmed on their first day.
4. Not offering onboarding at multiple organizational levels. Failing to provide information at each organizational level guarantees that the new hire will spend a great deal of time operating blind. The five organizational “levels” of onboarding include:
   • Corporate level. Covering signups and corporate-wide values.
   • Location level. Covering information and issues related to the country/region and the plant/facility where the new hire will be working.
   • Departmental level. This level covers things related to the department the new hire is joining.
   • Team/Job level. Covers things related to this person’s work team and job.
   • Individual level. Covers things at the team level that relate to the unique and diverse needs of this individual.
5. Unidirectional information. Most programs focus entirely on providing the information that the corporation wants the new hire to possess through presentations and videos. Unfortunately, this unidirectional approach lacks interaction and it can make the new hire feel like little more than a “hard drive” for receiving information. In addition, it restricts the firm’s ability to understand the new hire’s needs/concerns. The best programs directly ask new hires about their concerns, who they wish to meet, what they wish to learn, and how to best motivate and manage them. They also ask new hires for referrals and they gather feedback from them on how to improve both the recruiting and the onboarding processes.
6. No metrics or accountability. Most orientation and onboarding programs are not designed and run like standard business processes. Few have any objective results metrics that make a specific individual accountable for producing measurable business impacts. The best programs include metrics that cover time to productivity, new hire retention/termination rates, new hire error rates, new-hire referrals, and program ROI. Hiring managers also need to be held accountable by including their onboarding success rates in their performance appraisals and their bonus formula.
7. Ignoring diverse needs. Although nearly every corporation makes a special effort to hire diverse individuals, few onboarding programs provide alternative approaches to meet the needs of diverse hires. This is critical because diverse individuals, by definition, have different needs and ways of processing information. As a result, there must be variations in the onboarding process (either different information or the same information presented in a different way). By varying the information to meet individual needs you can dramatically reduce diversity frustration and eventually diversity turnover.
8. A face-to-face approach. Although this is gradually changing, a majority of onboarding activities are still provided in a live meeting. Not only is this time-consuming and expensive, it also limits the new-hire’s ability to access this information later on, when they might actually need it. For “remote workers,” not having online access can dramatically slow time to productivity. A superior approach focuses on providing most, if not all of the necessary onboarding information online where it is more easily accessed and searched before and after they start their new job. Online information can include the standard information provided to new hires as well as interactive forums for asking questions, buzzword and acronym dictionaries, as well as photos and bios of team members. In truly global corporations, the need for online information is even more critical.
9. A lack of integration. The very best onboarding programs make a special effort to integrate and coordinate what are traditionally independent activities. The program needs a process that integrates and coordinates benefits enrollment, payroll registration, technology set-up, security registration, business supply delivery, office assignments, new hire training, and “local” onboarding activities at the departmental level.
10. Failing to make the manager’s expectations clear. Information should be provided on corporate success measures, departmental plans, strategies and goals, how this individual’s performance will be assessed, their bonus and promotion criteria, and specifically, what is expected from them during their first week and month on-the-job.
11. Their manager is not present. The most common fault that occurs at “departmental level” onboarding (and the one with the most negative impact) is not having the employee’s direct manager present on the first day. With the manager absent, often the new hire feels unimportant and frustrated. Invariably, in the absence of the manager, new hires are shown their cubical, given “a manual” to read, and told to be patient until their manager returns. The best programs do not allow a new hire to start without their manager present and a plan of action for the first month of the new hire’s employment.
12. No compelling business case. Support for great onboarding programs is unfortunately very cyclical. Programs typically receive a great deal of support when competition for talent is high but they are often cut back or eliminated during tough economic times or whenever the program’s manager moves on. If you want to avoid this painful cycle, it is essential that the onboarding program be covered by a formal “business case.”
13. Run by benefits. Generally, benefits people have a narrow and tactical view of both HR and onboarding. Their view of the process is focused on “sign-ups” and having everything done quickly the first day. In order to be strategic, the program must be “owned” by hiring managers and run by recruiting or employment brand managers.
14. Failing to reinforce the employment brand. Colleagues and friends will contact the new hire during their first week, and if the onboarding program doesn’t provide a great “new hire experience,” they might provide limited or even negative information.
15. Delays in offering onboarding. Organizations frequently postpone most onboarding components until a large group of new hires can participate in a single session. Any delay can negatively impact new-hire productivity and provide an opportunity to make mistakes that will later be difficult to erase. As a result, effective programs offer online onboarding or do not delay onboarding beyond the first week after the employee is hired.

Weaknesses and Problems in Program Administration

There are several common omissions or failures related to the administration of the onboarding program that, although not program killers, can negatively impact the results:

• No written plan. Most onboarding programs have no formal written plan that is integrated with the overall business plan, the HR plan, and the recruiting plan.
• Owned by HR. Rather than being owned by HR, the onboarding program design should make it clear that onboarding problems and processes are “owned” by hiring managers. Managers must realize that they suffer the most when poor onboarding takes place.
• Jobs are not prioritized. Because there is never enough budget, world-class onboarding programs rarely excel unless they prioritize and focus their talent, time, and resources toward onboarding individuals in mission-critical jobs, critical business units, and in jobs with a significant revenue impact.
• No continuous improvement component. Few onboarding programs have a component that allows them to continually improve. In direct contrast, the very best have a formal process for continuously assessing and improving processes and output results by assessing each on-boarding success and failure. Exceptional programs periodically use “mystery shoppers” to identify system problems.
• No best practice sharing. The onboarding program must have a formal design component for the rapid identification, sharing between business units, and the adoption of best practices related to onboarding.
• No data-based decision-making. Major onboarding program design and resource decisions must be made based primarily on data, rather than emotion or historical practice.

Final Thoughts

It’s a critical mistake to build a high-impact process based solely on intuition. A superior approach requires that you examine the “root causes” that drive success and failure. Part of that process includes identifying “critical success factors” which cause programs to succeed and “program killers” that can doom an otherwise well-designed program.

If you want to raise your game, it’s critical that you periodically assess your program design to ensure that it is rich with critical success factors and that it steers clear of program killers.

Editor’s note: Those interested in learning more about leveraging onboarding and orientation to improve new-hire productivity can read Dr. Sullivan’s new book, entitled The Onboarding & Orientation Toolkit, available at www.drjohnsullivan.com.

In most organizations the recruiting function is entirely separate from the retention effort, yet the design of the hiring process has a dramatic and direct impact on future turnover. I estimate more than one-third of the factors that drive future turnover have their roots in the recruiting, hiring, and on-boarding process.

Unfortunately, most managers and many recruiters are unaware of this direct relationship and as a result, organizations suffer from unnecessary turnover. If you are a hiring manager, a recruiter, or a retention specialist, it’s important that you understand how the hiring process impacts the likelihood that someone will depart early.

Recruiting Factors That Impact Future Retention

If you’re interested in reducing turnover, here are some of the hiring-related factors that impact future retention:

1. Hiring candidates who are focused on money. Every candidate has his or her own set of motivators for taking and remaining in a job, and a significant percentage of people are motivated primarily by money. Money is the offer component that is the easiest to compare between firms, but it is also a factor that can change fast. Individuals whose primary motivator is money tend to be at the top of the turnover pyramid because they frequently “jump” to a new job as soon as a higher monetary offer comes in. No matter how good your initial starting salary, if your organization is slow to give raises, bonuses, stock rewards, or to counter outside offers, you will inevitably lose these individuals when more money comes along. Leading firms like Ernst & Young and Southwest Airlines understand this relationship and as a result, they specifically target hiring individuals who don’t have the “give me the money” mentality. Incidentally, individuals hired from executive search firms can fall into this “money first” category. If they left the last job because an executive search professional presented a “better money” offer, don’t be surprised when they leave again when the next executive search professional calls with slightly more money to offer. Solutions include targeting individuals from not-for-profits, government, education, and medicine. Also, share information on the maximum and minimum salary, stock options, and bonus amounts (based on actual new-hire experience over the last two years). By providing only trend information from actual experience and carefully avoiding any direct promises to individual candidates, you can minimize legal issues and any misperceptions about the actual amounts that they “will” actually make. To determine a candidate’s top motivators, give them a simple, one-page survey that requires them to force-rank the top and bottom factors that motivate them to change jobs. By forcing them to rank the top and bottom three “job change” motivators, you can get a good (though not perfect) idea of whether exceptional money is a critical factor. Options could include high base pay, bonus percentage, exceptional benefits, challenging work, learning and growth, working in a team, working independently, the opportunity to innovate, job security, a directive manager, a hands-off manager, a product they believe in, the desire to help others, recognition, and two-way communications.
2. The source where you found the candidate. Employees who make referrals have a personal interest in the individuals they refer succeeding on the job. As a result, the employee making the referral has a tendency to mentor or guide that individual and will intervene to help the candidate if he or she gets frustrated. Sources of recruits who don’t have that mentoring connection, like large job boards, almost always produce hires who quit at a much higher rate. Look at each of your early turnover cases and see which of your sources have above-normal turnover rates.
3. Their average tenure in other jobs. Calculate how long, on average, any “serial quitters” stayed in their last several jobs as an indicator of how long they are likely to stay in this job. I am not saying you shouldn’t hire people who change jobs frequently. They might be top performers who are simply in high demand or who work on projects with relatively short lifecycles. However, you should estimate their likely tenure, then mark it on your calendar, and then later, actively “re-recruit” them around the time they are “overdue” for change and are likely to begin looking for a new job.
4. On-boarding and orientation. The first few days on the job have a dramatic impact on future retention (one firm found that weak orientation could increase future turnover by as much as 20%). Research shows that individuals make a “mental decision” during their first month as to how long they expect to stay with the organization (Note: this phenomenon is highlighted in the popular book, Blink). New hires subconsciously judge whether the organization meets, exceeds, or fails to meet the expectations they have based on how they were treated during the first week and month. If they are under the belief that your organization promised exciting work but are told during their first week on the job to sit in their cubical and “read the manual,” they are likely to conclude (and also to tell their colleagues) that while the organization may talk a good game, it is not reflected in the actual job. To avoid mixed messages, make sure that your “local” on-boarding is stimulating and gets them up to the expected level of productivity quickly. Such a program might focus on coordinating meetings with the top people right away, providing new hires with a mentor, and periodically asking them what can be done to bring them up to productivity faster. During orientation, ask candidates specifically “what is the best way to manage you?” By identifying what management approaches they personally have found to be effective with them in the past, you can avoid the need for a lot of trial and error on the part of their manager. Some of the “factors” you want to identify relating to “how to best manage them” include what motivates them, what frustrates them, what is the best way to communicate with them, how often they like to see their manager, what challenges them, and what would they like to learn during orientation. With this information, you can provide their new manager with insights into the management approaches that make them the most productive (note: managers can also provide new hires with a profile outlining how they manage their employees). Ask new hires during on-boarding why they accepted the job and what led them to quit their last two jobs. Passing those reasons on to their current manager can help ensure that they know which factors might cause the new hire to leave again.
5. Recruiter involvement after the hire. If you want to reduce future turnover, maintain a relationship with new hires during their first six months in order to ensure that they don’t become frustrated (this approach was championed by Michael Homula at FirstMerit Bank with great success). Recruiters can add value because good recruiters routinely know what motivates and frustrates their candidates. It only makes sense that they maintain a relationship with new hires for a few months after they come on board to gauge whether the candidates’ expectations are being met. I call this process “closing the sale.” In this case, recruiters don’t take over a manager’s role in retention; instead, they only supplement it. Recruiters can be a source of advice and information, help reduce new hire frustration, and provide insight on how to navigate inside the company. Recruiters can also help new hires understand the “what” and “why’s” within the firm. As many as 60% of new hires fail, not because they’re bad hires, but instead because of a bad initial job placement. Recruiters who keep in touch can help to speed up internal redeployment of initially “mis-placed” individuals.
6. The lack of diversity orientation and retention. Many organizations have a diversity recruiting function that endeavors to hire diverse individuals. Unfortunately, once they are hired, diverse individuals frequently receive no further special attention. This is unfortunate, because by definition, diverse individuals have different expectations and needs than the average hire. If you treat all new hires exactly the same, you should not be surprised when you find that diversity turnover rates are higher than your average turnover rates. The solution is simple: offer variations in on-boarding to ensure that the unique needs of diverse people are met. Next, add a diversity retention function or process to ensure that your organization gets direct feedback from diverse new hires about factors that might cause them to be frustrated or to begin looking for another job.
7. Manager rewards for great retention. Less than one in three organizations reward managers for having low turnover rates among new hires. If you want managers to pay attention to retention both during and after a new hire’s induction period, show them the impact that turnover has on their business results. Then, tie every manager’s bonus to “performance turnover.” Performance turnover differs from traditional turnover in that the loss of a top performer, a diverse individual, or an individual in a mission-critical job is weighted significantly higher than the turnover of an average performer. There is no punishment for losing a bottom performer.
8. Being aware of the most common causes of turnover. If your organization conducts delayed or “post-exit” interviews, you probably already know that most top performers leave because they had a bad manager, were not challenged, were not growing, or were mistreated. Don’t place a top candidate with a mediocre or bad manager. If your organization doesn’t have a bad manager identification program, look at the processes pioneered by FedEx and Dell.

Shifting to other turnover causes, if you want to ensure that new hires are challenged, learning, and growing, ensure that all new hires have an individualized plan for learning, growth, and challenge (Qualcomm, for example, requires every employee to have a learning plan). Next, focus on the lack of differentiation.

In my experience, it’s hard to get compensation professionals to realize the important role they play in great recruiting and retention, but every effort must be made to convince them that you can satisfy most top performers’ need for differentiation by ensuring that a significant portion of pay and bonuses are based on performance.

Few things frustrate top performers more than being paid, recognized, and treated exactly the same as poor performers like Homer Simpson.

Final Thoughts

HR has justifiably been accused of creating numerous functional “silos” that hinder cooperation between the different HR departments. New hires must be “maintained” just like any other new asset. There needs to be a planned maintenance schedule that is personalized to the needs of each new hire. That maintenance process must be coordinated and systematic and must “force” integration of the actions of the various silos. Almost without exception, one of the thickest walls between HR functions is the one that separates the recruiting function from the retention effort.

In my experience, the interaction between these two functions is, all too often, minimal to nonexistent even though bad recruiting directly “causes” future turnover and conversely, poor retention efforts unnecessarily increase the future workload of all recruiters.

To avoid this common problem, identify the direct connections between how you recruit and orient and future turnover. Then take the necessary steps to stop this wasteful, preventable turnover.

I am still amazed at how many organizations do not allow their current employees to apply for internal positions until they meet a whole bunch of conditions. Typically, they have to have been in a position for a certain amount of time, may have to meet performance requirements, may have to fill out an application, and then go through the same interview process as an external candidate.

Most HR people think this is fine, and in fact, often put these rules in place. Their thinking is understandable from one perspective. After all, shouldn’t a boss be aware that an employee is looking? And if a person has only been in a job for a few months, isn’t it only fair they give their boss their services for a few months?

My answer is that yes, it would be fair, if we were not in the midst of a talent shortage where “fair” has little meaning. Is it fair any employee can simply tell her boss she won’t be back tomorrow because she has another job? Is it fair that employees can often get a salary increase of 10% or more simply by moving to another company? Is it fair that we have a labor shortage? There is little in life that is fair, and the days of stability and loyalty in our corporations are over. We could argue about why these traits have gone by the wayside, but the truth is that they have.

The shortage of talent in some areas such as engineering, IT, medicine, and finance are so severe that almost anything has become “fair” in the pursuit of talented people with these skills.

I have started to notice “For Hire” signs hanging in front of lots of stores and restaurants I have been in over the past three months seeking hourly help. This underlines the growing shortage of talent and the growing need for people with key skills. To place obstacles in the way of anyone with a motivation to raise their hand to move into a needed position is plainly just dumb.

Let’s face the truth: whether employees are allowed to transfer freely inside or not affects no one but the employer. They lose a good employee to another company for no good or value-added reason.

Employees As Investors

One of our problems is that we think of employees as assets, or things we control and dispose of as we see fit. Unfortunately, this characterization leads to behaviors that are incompatible with reality. Employees cannot be owned, taxed, depreciated, or disposed of as machines or other tangible assets.

They are investors in our organizations and they freely choose to share their expertise and skills with us or not. Each employee has a built-in return on investment meter that is constantly sampling the atmosphere and deciding if she is gaining or losing from a continuing association with the firm. As long as employees feel they are gaining, they don’t look for different jobs.

But in this job market, whenever the balance shifts even slightly, employees become vulnerable to any offer that may present itself. That is why having managers who have a history of good employee loyalty and low turnover are so valuable.

Usually when an employee wants to apply for another position inside the firm it is because they are looking for a new challenge, are unhappy with their current assignment of boss, or feel that the new position will offer more of a return on their investment. To deny them the opportunity and to place some HR policy in their way is not only a sure way to lose them to someone else, it is also just plain dumb. Happy employees who are being treated as investors will be unlikely to leave.

Here are four things every organization and HR group should be doing or should have in place today:

1. All policies should be abolished that limit or control how or when employees apply for positions within an organization. Every employee should have the same employment at-will opportunities inside the company as exist in the open marketplace.
2. Companies should make it a policy to encourage employees to share expertise and skills broadly. After all, it is the networking interconnectedness of our employees that add value and allow us to develop new products and generate new ideas. Creativity does not arise in stable, rigid, and change-adverse organizations. The most exciting new concepts and ideas come from small firms where people wear many hats and move between responsibilities such as the dot-com companies of Silicon Valley.
3. Let recruiters work just as freely inside as outside the organization and let them work on back-filling positions that may be vacated by an employee who is moving on to something else. If a recruiter knows an employee is leaving for a new position, they can help the manager find someone else for the old position at almost the same time.
4. Create policies that allow employees to try out new jobs for a short time to see whether they like it and can do it well. Let employees share their job with someone else so they can sample more than one kind of work or more than one project. Foster a spirit of sharing expertise and skills, not of owning the mind and body of someone.

The policies that restrict or limit transfers and change within an organization are leftovers of the 20th-century organizations that are hierarchical, paternalistic, and slowly fading away. A 21st-century organization removes barriers and builds networks that power creativity and growth.

I recently finished reading a few of almost 600 pages of postings on MSN’s message board concerning an article by Scott Burns, entitled Is Home Depot Shafting Shoppers?

In a very short period, this article received confirmation that indeed Home Depot was shafting its customers, at least that’s what over 5,000 authors believed when I last looked. MSN Money reports an additional 10,000 emails.

What a corporate nightmare! First, the company suffers from the obvious public relations blowout by having the negatives of the store being flaunted so publicly.

Second, Home Depot employees used this public forum to outline how company policies have not only burned their customers, but also their employees.

Third, the current and relatively new CEO, Frank Blake, publicly apologized to customers and employees, pleading for “a chance” and says “the company is taking steps.” They’re going to be hiring 15,000 new employees to address these problems.

Hmmm. I’d say it’s a pretty bad day in Atlanta.

Out of curiosity, I made a trip to the Home Depot website. I wanted to see what image the site conveyed about the company, how the career page was crafted, and how all of that squared with the lousy experiences reported on the MSN message board.

The headline on the career page reads: A Team. A Future. A Career. What Will You Build? According to the employees responding to Scott Burns’ article, Home Depot workers don’t have a chance to build a lot.

The real surprise was to see the company values page. Taking Care of Our People, Excellent Customer Service, Respect for All People, Building Strong Relationships, Doing the Right Thing, Giving Back to the Community, Entrepreneurial Spirit, Create Shareholder Value.

Of the eight listed values, one would have to conclude that the real emphasis has been on Create Shareholder Value while ignoring the other seven. But that isn’t anything new, is it? We’ve all read corporate values for other companies. Unfortunately, such proclamations are supposed to act as guideposts for all employees, from the tip-top all the way down. Few do. Home Depot’s obviously does not.

The next surprise was to check out Home Depot’s jobs, that is, if you can. It is the most convoluted job site I’ve ever seen. First, one has to pick the city and state and then pick preferred stores by address. A long laundry list of jobs roll down, jobs that may or may not have an opening at the store you have selected.

The obvious question is why limit possible applicants to just one store in a given market? In my market, Portland, Oregon, there are 10 Home Depots listed. I am within 20 minutes of at least three Home Depots. Why not give me the capability of searching as many stores as possible?

I think it will take Home Depot a long time to find 15,000 additional workers who will slog through its job site to find possible openings.

Four Lessons to Learn

What can every business, large and small, learn from this ugly episode at the expense of Home Depot?

1. You reap what you sow. When a company, no matter how large or small, forgets the importance of the customer, everyone pays. Employees are the face of the organization to the customer. If the employees are unhappy, frustrated, tired, and overworked, where does all that ugliness land? It lands at the feet of the customers. That is, until the customers decide to take their feet to the competitor. Employees leave as well. The loyal, hard-working; reliable ones are out the door. In their wake are those who hate their jobs, don’t care, or are just inept, but continue to sour the environment.
2. Listen to the criticism. Frank Blake certainly was listening to the criticism appearing on MSN and took a huge step forward by responding on the message board. I have a hard time imagining some of today’s CEOs earning $20 million or more a year breaking a sweat over some customer backlash on MSN; perhaps in the WSJ, but not on the Internet. Upper management needs to be less insulated by its VPs and middle managers and all the folks who are paid to keep the bad news away from the Big Guy. Upper management needs to get their feet out onto the floor and experience what customers do. They need to answer the customer service phone calls once in a while to better understand customers’ wants and needs. They used to refer to this as Management by Wandering Around. Getting out from behind the desk would probably be a most enlightening experience for most of today’s CEOs and presidents. What about HR’s role? My ideal is that HR should be more like a conduit or the bridge between management and its employees. Yes, HR needs to have a seat at the strategic table. But they also need to truthfully represent the company’s human capital in a way that makes upper management stop and think before they deploy disastrous policies on its employees.
3. Walk your talk. Now that Frank Blake has asked his customers and employees to “give us a chance”, he better figure out how to make a significant difference and make it fast! He has to put some fire under all of his management team to get tangible changes down to the store level. For an organization the size of Home Depot, that’s a bit like turning the Queen Mary. But then, this is probably why he earns the big bucks that so many CEOs earn these days. If he doesn’t make significant changes, he can be assured that he’ll lose more good customers, more good employees, more off his bottom line, and maybe his job. The big issue is going to be matching up all the great things on the Home Depot website’s job pages and make certain they really mirror employees’ experiences. If the company’s website is out of sync with reality, it will not bode well for Home Depot’s aggressive recruiting efforts.
4. Respect, with all your heart, your most precious asset?your people. Once negative publicity about a company gets rolling, particularly across the Internet, a company has a steep mountain to climb. A climb that wouldn’t be necessary if upper management paid attention to its employees. It is high time for today’s CEOs to wake up to the fact that an organization that cares about its employees? genuinely cares? will always be able to muster sufficient profits for Wall Street in the best and worst of times. This is because happy, well-treated employees will always want to deliver more in return. Bad employees? Well, they’re just bad hires who could be avoided if organizations like Home Depot employed aggressive screening and effective profiling techniques. Do you think they do? I don’t. No, bottom-line profitability probably won’t allow for up-front investments in making certain that Home Depot hires the right people for the right jobs. Why waste the money? It’s so much wiser to burn it with high turnover!

After 30 years working with companies of every size and dimension, I am continually frustrated by the dumb, bone-head moves that most of management make in the name of ROI. With thousands of new business books, new theories, globalization, and technological advances, it seems a bloody shame that business can’t figure out one of the most basic tenants to success? treat your people well and they will deliver.

This is a universal law of business. Frankly, it is a universal law of life. It always has been and it always will be.

Last week we introduced the concept of an employment product manager, an individual who would oversee the development and positioning of employment opportunities using approaches similar to those used by product managers in a products company.

This week we will turn our attention to the development of a prototype job description for such a role and explore where the role should be positioned in the modern organization.

However, before we begin, we would like to take a quick opportunity to respond to several questions that arose following last week’s introduction of the concept.

Question One: Do you think the time will come when employees will ever be willing to “pay” for the opportunity to work for a specific company? Or are they doing that already?(Submitted by Maureen Sharib of the ERE community.)

This is a great question, and one that gets to the very distinction our previous article was trying to make. The answer is that we believe employees are already paying for the opportunity to work for a specific company, they are just doing so using a currency we often do not consider. If you look at employment opportunities as products, each with a unique set of features and you look at talent as consumers, it becomes clear that talent buys employment opportunities using a combination of currencies that include time, motivation/commitment, skill/knowledge application, etc.

Many organizations already demonstrate the flip-side of this mentality, viewing talent as the asset being acquired primarily because organizations use a more traditional currency to pay for it. In reality, a true barter system is a play. To make the most of such a system, we have to become as adept at marketing unique opportunities as talent does at packaging a unique combination of skills, knowledge, and abilities.

Prior to asking this question, Sharib indicated concern that the vast majority of the talent population do not have what it takes to respond to an employment opportunity and that until the masses stop manifesting the “soup to nuts” expectations they have of employers, they will not respond to the concept of product marketing.

While not phrased as a question, this point is a critical one. While product marketing would most certainly become an output of implementing a formal employment product management role, product management and product marketing is not the same thing. The role of the product manager would not be to position an existing set of employment products, but rather manage the development of new ones and the revision of existing ones using a defined methodology.

With regards to talent not being capable of responding to employment opportunities, our response is simply that the inability of them to do so is our fault. When a product fails to generate the demand and consumption by a target customer group, it is because:

• The product did not meet the perceived needs of the consumers.
• The product was not positioned appropriately.
• The product was not visible to consumers.
• The product was not priced so as to contribute to the perception of best value.
• The product sucked.

Sales professionals have long understood that to make a successful sale you must be able to align expectations. The HR profession has long practiced the art of inflating expectations, not setting realistic ones that can be delivered on. Nearly every piece of recruitment marketing that exists today communicates a bland, non-descript employment opportunity that does little to establish expectations among the talent population you hope will respond. We use terms like “employer of choice,” that lack a consistent definition, which enables the talent to develop their own definition, one rarely if ever communicated to the employer. When customers are permitted to establish their own expectations in secret, your chances of meeting them as an employer are slim to none.

Question Two: I can easily see how companies that can execute this concept would develop a true competitive advantage in the labor market, but how realistic do you think it is that HR would ever be given enough authority to formally manage employment opportunities given that a large portion of what defines an opportunity is controlled by line managers? (Submitted by Todd Kaufmann via e-mail)

This is, for lack of a better word, a phenomenal question. The human resource profession has historically (and continues to) position itself as an administrative function. While many human resource leaders were granted a seat at the table under the auspices that their functions could contribute strategically, in reality, few functions ever transitioned beyond the realm of transactions. Our current position can also partially be attributed to the lack of a standards organization to provide leadership to the function, but that is another topic. Luckily, organizations may be more ready for the employment product manager than many current HR professionals perceive.

Around the globe, traditional HR leaders are being tossed aside, replaced with professionals from operations, finance, marketing, and in some rare cases, engineering. This trend signifies that corporate leaders not only expect the development of business infrastructure within the human resource profession, they demand it and will supplant any human barrier that stands in the way. Could the role of an employment product manager be established in a traditional HR organization? Maybe. But it is much more likely to be established in a category-killing organization that demonstrates they value top talent as opposed to merely talking about it!

To everyone who commented online or via e-mail, we thank you for contributing to a concept that could change the profession. Now on to that prototype job description.

The Employment Product Manager Job Profile

As you know, we hate job descriptions but accept that they play a role in our profession. What follows is an overview and list of major responsibilities for the role of employment product manager and a review of the basic skills, knowledge, and abilities needed to perform the role. (If you would like to add to the profile, we welcome your insights.)

Position Overview

The employment product manager plays a leadership role in the employment opportunity development process.

Strategically, this position partners with senior corporate leaders and the human resource function to craft employment opportunities throughout the enterprise that are seen as viable career opportunities by the world’s most elite talent.

Tactically, the employment product manager develops comprehensive employment product definitions that define the employee experience required and outlines the characteristics of all systems, processes, and organizational interactions required to deliver the requisite experience to a predetermined level of measurable quality.

This role owns the entire employment product development life cycle, from conducting market research and developing employment product definitions to delivering the products to market and troubleshooting/resolving any systemic issues that arise.

Employment Product Manager Responsibilities

The role of the employment product manager is one that involves both strategic and tactical deliverables. Approximately 40% of the managers’ time should be dedicated to strategic deliverables, while 60% should be allocated to tactical delivery. The major responsibilities in both categories are outlined here:

Strategic responsibilities include:

• Participating in workforce feasibility discussions regarding all new business concepts and initiatives, and strategic plans for existing operations.
• Consulting business managers during the development of business plans and work allocation models.
• Ensuring that optimal labor allocation plans demonstrate significant value for target labor segments, including full-time labor, part-time labor, temporary labor, outsourced labor, offshored labor, strategic partner labor, acquired component labor, and workforce automation; and that said labor can be secured at a total cost point that would deliver an acceptable benefit to the organization.
• Ensuring all resources needed and organizational experiences required to secure top talent are defined to the extent that requisite systems to ensure delivery can be developed through the human resource function in partnership with line and corporate management.
• Supporting and consulting in build vs. buy analysis for talent.
• Creating proof-of-concept documents that validate proposed employment products will deliver on labor requirements.

Tactical responsibilities include:

• Creating the employment product requirements definition (EPRD). This document outlines the specifications/requirements of employment opportunities needed to satisfy the expectations of pre-determined talent pools.
• Working with various human resource departments and functional leaders to ensure that human capital management systems developed conform to the requirements stated in the EPRD.
• Facilitating human capital management system design review meetings.
• Facilitating resolution of systemic employment issues.
• Working with line management to provide support.
• Working with organizational quality management staff to develop robust test plans and talent acceptance test plans.
• Creating employment product delivery plans, including work assignments, key milestones, timelines, deliverables, and product evaluation analytics.
• Facilitating employee/candidate perception testing (market research) when applicable.
• Working with other business functions to coordinate interdependencies and resolve issues.
• Reporting to the executive committee on the positioning of the enterprise and its component groups as an employer.
• Collaborating with product marketing professionals to outline the employment brand development strategy and ensure developed communications conform to messaging requirement outlined in the EPRD.

Employment Product Manager Requirements

The employment product manager role is a complex strategic-level role. To adequately perform all of the responsibilities defined above, organizations should look for individuals with the following combination of knowledge, skills, and abilities:

• Prior experience with product development or in-depth understanding of product development methodologies, combined with demonstrated project-management expertise.
• Ability to perform and oversee multiple complex projects.
• Ability to manage several timetables successfully in collaborative cross-functional environments.
• Demonstrated ability to quickly understand complex issues in human relations.
• Demonstrated ability to understand the business, and the core product/service development life cycles that the labor force must execute.
• Must be comfortable speaking in front of large groups that consist of a cross-functional group of management and line managers.
• Must understand abstraction layers between the “big picture” and the detail-orientated, and be comfortable working in both arenas.
• Good at troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and remedy of systemic employment issues.
• Ability to effectively lead and influence cross-functional teams.
• Must be able to motivate others outside of direct reporting line.

Positioning the Employment Product Manager Role

Place this role within the enterprise such that it can wield a significant degree of organizational power and influence. Burying this role in the staffing department, or the human resource function, would all but kill the opportunity for this role to achieve its objectives.

It is clear based on past experience that for this role to succeed, it must exist as a leadership role within the executive operations rank. The optimal position for this role would be one directly reporting to a matrix of C-level executives including the CEO, CFO, and COO.

Conclusion

The time for change is now. The human resources function and the staffing departments cannot continue to exist as isolated, non-integrated units in service to the business. They must become part of the business. Look at employment opportunities as products, and formally manage their development and delivery across the enterprise using a methodology and infrastructure consistent with that which drives the development and delivery of the organization’s core products and services. Are you ready?

Few of us really want to work for someone else. Many would rather have the freedom, independence, and potential earning power of the self-employed.

But for reasons of confidence, skill, companionship, security, and convention we work for others. When times are good and jobs are plentiful, we are easily enticed to greener grass. And when times are not-so-good, we hunker down and hope we can stay until those better times return.

Therefore, keeping people with skills, experience, and proven track records is never easy. With strong economies all around the world, high demand for skilled and experienced people, and with a shrinking pool of workers, it has become harder than any time I can remember to keep these good people.

Employment is a relationship. Specifically, it is a relationship between an individual with changing needs, increasing experience, growing knowledge, and intellectual capital.

Historically, the labor market has been a buyers’ market and the employee had to work hard to prove his or her worth and to build and maintain a satisfactory relationship with the employer. The successful employees (i.e., the ones who did not get laid off or fired) found a way to maintain harmony between themselves, their managers, and their work.

Now in this sellers’ market, the employer has to take the lead in building and maintaining the relationship. Employers have a huge responsibility to their stakeholders to do everything they can to keep the best people.

First, they have to identify their best employees, talk to them often to keep them informed, help them maintain and develop skills, and encourage them to build internal and external networks and relationships. The employer now has the responsibility of finding and keeping the balance between productive-yet-engaged and content-yet-challenged employees.

These are hard, new skills for employers. Communicating, engaging, and challenging people does not cost much when compared to the cost of recruiting and developing new employees.

Here are those four requirements for building harmonious and lasting employee-employer relationships:

1. Practice tough love. Have a performance management system that works. Let employees know where they stand and how they are performing. Offer the opportunity to move within the company to jobs that may fit their skills and interests better. And keep the bureaucracy to a minimum and remove time constrictions. A major reason for employee unease and anger is insecurity over how their performance will be assessed. Many employees have goals and objectives that are not strategic and that lead to fear and self-doubt. For example, a colleague told me about a recent layoff she was part of. While the employee who was being let go had an excellent performance rating, so did almost every other employee in the organization. The way performance was assessed provided no meaningful information to either the organization or the individual. Performance criteria have to be clear, quantitative, and meaningful. They also have to have consequences and rewards. No other system will work.
2. Open up and be transparent in every area. Silence and secrets are the greatest enemies of retention. When management does not update the employees on the financial and business state of the company and when rumors can be counted by the minute, turnover goes up and productivity goes down. While some people (usually the “B” and “C” players) hunker down and hide, the best ones start looking. I can?t tell you how many excellent employees who are highly valued have left their employers because of business uncertainty, lack of open communication, and a sense that management was keeping secrets from them. No one expects assurances or guarantees; what they hope for is an understanding of trends and issues. For example, are things better, the same, or worse? Are customers leaving? How is sales volume? Relationships thrive on the exchange of information. Employees should also be expected to bring problems to management and there needs to be a way to share their ideas and thoughts about improvements or changes. The two-way communication between employer and employees is as critical as performance management.
3. Provide skills and opportunity. Education and development are the cheapest retention tools in your arsenal. We are in a talent war and we need bold experiments to find the best ways to unlock the potential of our employees. Getting people into degree or certificate programs is almost a guarantee that they will remain with your firm until they complete the program. Most will be loyal and thankful. And all will be better-educated and hopefully more productive employees. This is a BIG plus for the large organizations and you should be capitalizing on this right now. But development can also occur through on-the-job development, rotations, and informal networks and conversations. Every employer should encourage employees to transfer to different positions frequently, as well as put in rewards for managers who let their people go and who try and develop their staff. Many employees who leave organizations are simply looking for a bigger challenge or the opportunity to use new skills or degrees. Smart organizations will encourage this and motivate managers to source and hire internally whenever possible, even if it will require a bit of training.
4. Help every employee build a social network. Employees are frequently devoted to fellow employees and feel strong attachments to them. This is what keeps many people from job-hopping. We all know how powerful networks are, and companies that actively promote employee interaction and teamwork have less discontent and less turnover than those that keep employees apart or at odds. Start clubs and social groups within the company so that people can work and play together. Some companies form college clubs for new college grads that help them become oriented to the firm and meet other new hires. This tends to raise the level of commitment they have to the organization and reduces turnover. Internal networks are powerful binding devices. Encouraging internal blogging, the use of virtual communications tools like SMS or IM, and the use of video conferencing can strengthen networks and extend them globally.

Knowledge is a powerful retention tool, so combat naivety and ignorance by sharing ideas and experiences between people from many different firms.

Employee retention is about applying the Golden Rule: do to the employees what you want done to yourself. It is about creating harmony and reducing discord. It is 90% common sense.