Speaking Up Helps Keep Star Workers appears in one of our local papers – the Pioneer Press. The article discusses a topic we have addressed before that many employers assume is not active in their company – job hunting.

In case you were in doubt, some stats from the article:

A recent workplace survey of 16,237 workers by Leadership IQ, a leadership training and research firm in Washington, D.C., found that nearly half the people regarded as stellar performers were actively trying to leave their current employers.

That should grab every managers’ attention. 16,237 is a large sample size and 47% are actively looking to leave.

Forty-seven percent of your most productive, most creative, most valuable workers are mailing out résumés, going on job interviews, even contemplating other offers.

We see this fact every day. We source for positions beyond just salespeople and we incorporate many traditional and non-traditional channels to locate top performers. Invariably, we do kick up some lackluster candidates and we quickly screen them out of the process. Yet, it is surprising how many strong candidates we find. As you read further into the article, an interesting trend is noted:

Only 18 percent of “slackers,” the people who spend more time trying to avoid work than actually doing any, are looking around.

The stiffs have landed on your payroll and they know they have a good thing going. In sales, these employees are easier to spot since their sales numbers are simply not there. The survival method they use is to inflate their pipeline with ghost deals that always seem to be 3 months out. Managers and owners have been known to be entranced by the huge opportunities that appear to be just around the corner for this underperforming salesperson. They stretch out the paychecks as long as possible and then land on someone else’s payroll.

We see it every day. Be wary of a salesperson with 2 year employment stints on their resume. That time period is usually the amount of time needed to smoke out a pretender who made it on to the payroll.

Back to the article with an absolute necessity for successful management:

“Fewer than 25 percent of managers actually go out and talk to their employees about what motivates them and what demotivates them,” Murphy said. “This is just a fundamental aspect of being a manager: Figure out who your best people are and what motivates them.”

We can provide managers with their employee’s motivational pattern and reward structure. That provides a manager with a tremendous headstart. In the end, the author is correct – it takes communication to maintain a strong employee.

And don’t assume it’s about money. When someone quits her job, 89 percent of managers assume it was over money, whereas 91 percent of the workers who quit say it was anything but, Murphy said.

Please check out the Rewards section on our website for more information about motivational factors and rewards for employees. You may just save your superstar.

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Last week we posted on the CEO turnover problem both here and here. Today, I caught up to a lengthy CareerJournal.com article regarding How to Fire a CEO: It’s Harder to Sack the Boss. It is an interesting read about the multiple dismissals that have arisen recently. This topic hits home in that the United Healthcare imbroglio occurred in our backyard this year.

This is borders on the absurd:

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. dismissed CEO Robert J. O’Connell last year, saying that he padded a retirement account by millions of dollars, misused corporate aircraft and conducted an affair with a female executive. But a panel of arbitrators said last month that MassMutual should not have terminated Mr. O’Connell for cause. The arbitrators found that Mr. O’Connell made questionable moves to benefit the retirement account and had affairs with two other employees, but said these did not amount to “willful gross misconduct” that materially damaged the company — as his contract required. MassMutual has appealed the decision, which could force it to pay Mr. O’Connell more than $40 million.

Wow. The obvious question is what would the arbitrators consider as “willful gross misconduct?” I really don’t want to know the answer to that question.

I guess this statement provides some insight into how these issues are handled:

It’s so hard to fire a CEO for cause that many boards don’t try, even when ethical problems are involved. Some boards work out other departure arrangements that allow the CEO to leave with severance or other benefits intact.

A few years back, we were involved with a customer that ended up firing their CEO. He was a complete maverick and a definite High D. He arbitrarily hired our services for a consortium for which his company was just one of many manufacturers. We ended up meeting with the president of this consortium who was a bit confused as to our reason for meeting. He proceeded with our hiring process until he got the word out to the other companies involved in the consortium. At that point, the hiring process was terminated.

The CEO for this company was fired not long after this event.

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Honestly, I just came across this article – Women CEOs Experience Longer Tenures, Faster Growth – as a follow up to my previous post. This study is from a limited sample of Massachusetts-based companies with an average size of $54M/year revenue and 120 employees. Not huge, but sizeable companies nonetheless.

This piece of information from the short article caught my attention:

When asked about their priorities for driving that growth, 80 percent of women CEOs surveyed identified expanding customer relationships ahead of aggressively pursuing new products, new geographic markets, or strategic alliances, the study found.

Another 77 percent said they sought input into the decision-making process through a participatory leadership style.

Nearly 98 percent gave to local charities and nonprofit organizations in their community, while about a third took part in philanthropic events at least once a month, the study found.

Interesting, isn’t it? Notice the women CEO tend to focus on people-oriented topics. This approach paid obvious dividends:

More than half had achieved an annual growth rate of 5 percent or more since 2004 nearly double the state and national average…

Now let’s go back to the article in my previous post. The gist of this article was the short amount of time CEO’s now have to affect profitable results in their new company. The “100 day window” has led CEO’s to a short-sighted approach:

“You now see a lot of CEOs who are not internally focused,” says Khurana. “For them, the people in a company, what the company produces, the services it provides are abstractions.”

Jim Collin’s research from this article stated that internal CEO’s outperformed externally hired CEOs because the internal CEO’s:

“knew which people on staff were good and where best to deploy them.“

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We first posted about CEO turnover in this post. Now BusinessWeek comes along with an article titled The Great CEO Exodus.

CEO’s get a bad rap about their compensation packages, but it is not an easy job. Now consider the pressure being exerted on these leaders:

Not so long ago, a new CEO like McComb would have had six to nine months to get his act together. Not any more. Management experts say the newly minted boss has about 90 to 100 days to start implementing strategy.

It would appear that there is a drastic candidate shortage even at the CEO level:

Gerard R. Roche, senior chairman of leading recruiter Heidrick & Struggles, says it’s getting harder to fill high-level openings as more candidates opt to work at private equity firms or run private companies. “We have to work harder than we used to,” says Roche. “We used to think, ‘tell us your need and we’ll give you half a dozen candidates.’ Now [those candidates] say, ‘I’ve been talking to Blackstone and Kravis and I’m thinking about going private.’”

(As an aside, don’t you love the name of the recruiting firm – Heidrick and Struggles?)

Jim Collins has a fantastic take on the CEO struggle:

In researching his best-seller Good To Great, management guru Jim Collins found that of those companies whose stocks outperformed the competition over the long term, 90% had a homegrown CEO. Why did they do so well? Because they knew which people on staff were good and where best to deploy them.Even so, Collins notes that most of these CEOs didn’t get their program humming until seven years into their tenure, just when the average company boss today is walking out the door. “The best chance for spectacular results comes from insiders who have enough time to lay the foundation that will lead to them,” says Collins. “If we’re systematically lurching for saviors and shorting the amount of time a CEO gets, we’re on a systematic path toward increased mediocrity.”

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CareerJournal.com has to be one of the best sources for hiring information on the web. Today is no exception as they release this article – Job-Hop to the Top Of the Corporate Ladder.

To cut to the quick of the article:

If you want to make it to the top of the corporate ladder, job-hopping may actually be the only way to get there…

Yup, this is a common strategy amongst the younger generation. We wrote about it in this article from earlier this year. Our perspective focused on the manager’s viewpoint while the CareerJournal article focuses on the employee’s viewpoint.

First, from the CareerJournal article:

Identify what you want to do. Develop a comprehensive personal career plan and review it with your supervisor. Articulate what you want to accomplish and where you want to be.

And from our article:

Gen X and Y candidates are looking for a skills path. They desire to understand what skills are needed to be successful in the position today. The long-term incentive is to understand what skills they will personally develop or acquire within the company. They prefer a horizontal management structure and respond to personal skill development. Titles are out. Responsibilities are in. It is imperative to share with the candidates the responsibilities they will inherit as their skills become more advanced over their tenure with the company.

CareerJournal:

Develop a relationship with your supervisor and his or her boss. “You’re living in the dark if you believe you can advance without your boss,” says Crawford. “People who have high aspirations should not be ashamed to let it be known. Talk to your boss about taking on broader responsibilities, ask how she got where she is and discuss how you can earn the right to move ahead.”

Our article:

Gen X and Y highly value the manager-employee relationship. They view their manager as a guide an experienced Sherpa to make sure they are on the right path.

A job-hopping career path is certainly here to stay and I’m not against it. We screen sales candidates constantly for their short-termed tenures. Sales typically requires a longer commitment since building a territory or customer base takes time. Salespeople who jump every 1 to 2 years with no appreciable path are high risk. The red flag here is that it usually takes 1 to 2 years to get a complete read on a salesperson’s abilities. Salespeople who consistently jump at the 2 year mark may be capable of delivering a strong sales interview but not revenue results.

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Earlier this week we posted on employee turnover via a survey that found 75% of jobseekers believe they will find greater career success elsewhere. As jobs become more plentiful and workers more scarce, employee retention is going to be a top 3 topic for most companies.

Steve Rothberg posts on the CollegeRecruiter.com blog a handful of tips to increase your company’s employee retention rate. Please read them – he is spot on.

The suggestion that stood out to me in terms of the younger generations:

Keep it fresh. Create new ways to ensure your employees continue to learn and grow within their related field and your company.

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Ok, there isn’t a Select Metrix survey and Richard Dawson isn’t screaming “survey says” anymore. Nonetheless, most of the major job boards have a quarterly report that details the hiring landscape. Now this morning I see that some of the smaller boards are starting to release their own survey results.

TheLadders.com released their Quarterly Executive Employment Outlook. We have minimal experience with TheLadders.com but I have read many good things about it. Their focus is on $100K+ jobs which puts a management-level focus on their results.

From the press release:

The survey also revealed a growing trend among senior level executives to search for new employment in order to accomplish their career goals. Sixty-three percent of job seekers said they are not likely to achieve their career goals with their current employers. And 75% report that they are more likely to attain career satisfaction at a different company.

If you have read our blog for any amount of time, you know that these numbers are fairly consistent no matter what the source. It seems that 66 to 75% of employees are looking at other opportunities, whether it be a casual awareness or a full-fledged search. This ear-to-the-tracks approach to furthering one’s career is the modus operandi for the current Information Age.

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