Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Work

Beyond Work is our line of resources for people and community leaders looking for something new and innovative outside, be it a new job, career change, or personal development outside of work.

  • 2 Steps to Keep People from Quitting

    2 Steps to Keep People from Quitting

    Do you know the number one reason why people quit a job? It’s not for more money or better benefits or advancement opportunities. People may cite these factors as a reason for leaving in an exit interview or casual conversation, but what most likely led them to look elsewhere in the first place is because of a bad boss. As a Harvard Business Review article stated, “Studies have consistently shown that having a bad manager or a poor relationship with one’s manager is a top reason an employee quits.”

    Yep, most likely your number one reason for turnover is bad leadership, especially at the frontline level. And how much does turnover cost? Most studies report between 150-300% of the person’s annual salary depending on the position. Ouch.

    However, in the same Harvard Business Review article, only 12% of survey respondents said they currently invest sufficiently in the development of frontline managers.

    So one of the best ways to nip a turnover issue in the bud and to potentially gain a competitive advantage over competitors is to fix your leadership issues, with the greatest bang for your buck being at the frontline level. Here are two steps to do just that:

    1. Identify, assess and select frontline leadership talent based on skills needed to effectively lead and develop others, not skills needed to perform successfully in the doer role. The classic Peter Principle states the people are often promoted to their level of incompetence. Most frontline leaders are promoted to a supervisory role because they are good at the doer role, not because they are equipped with the skills to be effective leading others.

    Whether you are hiring someone externally or promoting from within, you need to assess both the leadership potential of the person (skill) as well as the desire to be in a leadership role (will). As Kris Dunn said in one of his all-to truthful and to-the-point performance management posts at HR Capitalist, “That makes hiring people (leaders) – who are comfortable with the gray and understand the value of taking many small actions towards a goal with no guarantee of success – one of the most important things you can do today.” Find out if the person can lead others in a gray world and if he/she actually wants to.

    If you want some tips on what dimensions you need assess potential leadership talent for, give us a shout out and we can help. Kris Dunn’s post just cited has some food for thought on this, and entrepreur.com can help you get you started in thinking about key traits to evaluate.

    2. Teach frontline leaders the skills they need to be effective in a management role. We often promote people to their level of incompetence because we throw them to the wolves as a new leader and expect them to come out alive.   What often happens is we make no investment in cultivating the new skills needed be effective at our organization and then are surprised when they fail.

    Doing this before someone is even promoted and/or hired into the role is imperative. For example, we have a company we love working with that calls us to come and do one-on-one leadership coaching/training with anyone before they are promoted into a supervisory role. You can’t be promoted without this step in the process.

    Developing and deploying a leadership development training plan at an individual and company level in order to effectively transition people from doer to leader then ensure people maintain and grow in effective leadership skills is an ongoing effort. Development plans are also a great way to facilitate succession planning and foster employee engagement.

    If you want more tips on strategies for putting together effective development plans, you might like these posts:

    3 Steps to Better Leadership  

    Get a Leadership Development Game Plan

    What has been your number one strategy to keep people from quitting? Does it involve leadership development?

  • 4 ways that the changing world of work is changing education

    4 ways that the changing world of work is changing education

    We’ve been talking a lot on The Point blog the last month or so about the changing world of work. Unfortunately, until recently, the changing world of work wasn’t doing much to change education. The structure of education has remained very much a product of the industrial revolution. The fact that education’s purpose is primarily to train people to be successful, working adults emphasizes the importance of our educational system adapting to the world of work.

    Here are 4 Ways The World of Work is Changing Education:

    1. Delivery is changing: Schools are now offering classes outside of traditional school hours and schedules to meet the needs of the learner and foster an environment where each individual can learn best. In addition, virtual offerings are taking place, even down to the elementary school level, where a student doesn’t have to step foot in a traditional classroom to learn. In fact, PennsSounds familiar? The workplace has by and largely done the same thing. For a model of this check out, Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School.

    2. Curriculum focus is changing: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic will probably never go away, but curriculum is shifting more and more to focus on the application of concepts learned and how they relate to actual jobs and tasks present in the workplace. The rise of career academies and soft skills lessons and training (what employers seem to complain about the most in terms of what is lacking in employees) lend themselves to foster a learning environment to purposely prepare students to tie relevance to what they are learning and at the same time prepare students to be prepared to meet workplace needs. In addition, many of these models incorporate on-the-job learning requirements through job shadowing, internships and co-ops. For more information on this check out: Career Academy Policy Paper, Model Soft Skills Curriculum

    3. The traditional college degree could become obsolete: In a discussion with a friend about saving for our young children’s college education, he said, “You know, when our kids are 18 the model for gaining access to success which, we by and large see now is through a college degree, could be completely turned up on its head.” Interesting, I thought, but I’m not sure I believed it. Although the pace may not be as rapid as he thinks, ie- I haven’t cancelled my my four and one year old’s 529 savings plans- evidence is showing that the traditional college degree model is turning out graduates who are not prepared to meet a need in the marketplace, thus making their degree, well, worthless (even though they paid a pretty penny for it). More and more programs are being offered that seek to prepare individuals for success in the “real world” and they aren’t through traditional post-secondary pathways. For more information on this check out: This is the Future of College and Uncollege.

    july7

    Image: William Symonds, Director of Global Pathways Institute

     

    How do you see the world of work changing the world of education?

    For more on this topic, you might like: 5 Big Ways Education will Change by 2020 from FastCompany

  • 4 Outdated Career Myths You Should Probably Forget

    4 Outdated Career Myths You Should Probably Forget

    Guest blog post written by: Stephanie Seibel

    Have you ever noticed that your career looks nothing like Mom’s did? We’ve got a post-recession economy,technological advances resembling something from Gattaca, and a radically different generation of workers entering the labor force. It only takes one Google-second to realize that the entire world of work is changing.

    If the evolving work-world gives you a headache, here are 4 outdated career myths you can safely forget.

    1) Get a Job

    “Jobs” are out but “gigs” are in. With the high costs of training and the short stay of workers, many employers now prefer independent contractors, consultants, and freelancers over full-time employees. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that solopreneurs will make up about 40% of the workforce by 2020. While the figures vary, reports will tell you that half to two-thirds of millennials are interested in entrepreneurship and a third already have their own side-businesses. It’s no wonder career blogger, Danny Rubin, recently suggested that the best networking conversation-starter today is, “worked on any cool projects lately?”

    2) One Career at Once

    Some money experts say that diversifying your income streams is wise in this economy, perhaps explaining the rise of what Marci Alboher coined as the “Slash-Career.” While most Boomers and Gen Xers will vouch that one career used to be more than enough to juggle, some workers today enjoy the variety that a multi-faceted career brings, with what business author Dan Pink is now calling the ever-shifting “Lego Career.” Many millennials in particular are drawn to a multi-income lifestyle rather than the single-track careers their parents knew so well. Just don’t be surprised when the next contact you meet has three job titles listed on her business card.

    3) Stay For Life

    It’s no secret that job security’s a myth. While there are many different estimates, most sources say we work somewhere between 7 to 15 jobs in a lifetime today. For millennials — soon to be a large portion of the workforce — 91% expect to stay at a job less than three years, according to surveys conducted by the Future Workplace. The old story of climbing a static ladder until retirement do you part simply isn’t true anymore. Your career will likely be an evolving journey.

    4) Work at Work

    Advances in video conferencing technology and an increasingly global workforce have spurred a new trend towards remote work. Fortune reported a 26% increase in remote job postings just in 2013 alone and 45% of the workforce now has jobs suitable for part- or full-time telecommuting. Droves of millennials are setting up shop in creative work environments — home offices, cafes, and the increasingly popular “co-work space” (which I write you from at the moment, perched at my laptop amongst a community of coffee-drinking solopreneurs). If business casual is sucking the life out of your closet, working in your pajamas is officially more possible than ever.

    These changes may seem confusing, but 21st century workers are riding the currents and finding ways to thrive within the storm. By working together and sharing our talents in innovative ways, we’re redefining work as we know it.

    So hold onto your hats! We’ve got some exciting careers ahead.

     

    Stephanie Seibel, CPC, is a certified career coach for 20- and 30-somethings and founder of RedThreadCoaching.com, “Work With Every Fiber of Your Being.” She specializes in educating young adults about the alternative career options available today and helping them pursue work that is both meaningful and successful.

  • The Changing World of Work: Is the Policy Going to Die?

    The Changing World of Work: Is the Policy Going to Die?

    You all know I hate policies for the sake of policies. Rules follower I am not, so when I see that one of the potential trends in the way work is changing is a swing away from policies, I get excited. Now throwing policies out the window isn’t being adopted by all, case in point this experience I had recently but with the need for innovation and adaptability in order to attract and retain talent and therefore meet customer needs, trends are arising to simplify or scratch policies all together.

    For example, companies like Netflix have scratched vacation and sick policies all together. Revolutionary? Maybe not. Let people take what they need, knowing if you’ve got motivated and engaged people they won’t take enough of what they need, and it builds two things:

    1. Trust in your work place.
    2. Money to do other things that contribute to your bottom line besides paying someone or some system to police your workforce.

    In fact, some companies are doing away with traditional performance review all together, here are some great reads on the movement: The Crowd Sourced Performance Review and “Is It Time to Put the Performance Review on a PIP?”.

    If you are considering getting rid of some of your policies then:

    1. Review all policies in place now against business needs. Do this in writing.
    2. Dialogue with colleagues and industry peers about what does and doesn’t work for them. Set the scope for industry standards in writing.
    3. Make decisions with your leadership team based on business needs and industry standards. While I hate a policy for policy sake, I’m not advocating for the wild, wild West. Most of the time, we need to consider everything from the scope of moderation. It’s like food, don’t eat enough and it will kill you, eat too much and it will kill you. What is your health dose of policy given your business needs and your industry standards? In answering this, consider where you can be an industry leader in innovative policy structures that can push you to be the talent leader.

    What policy would be the first to go at your organization?

  • It Doesn’t Matter How and Where Work Gets Done. The Death of Office Space, Office Hours and the Employee-Employer Relationship.

    It Doesn’t Matter How and Where Work Gets Done. The Death of Office Space, Office Hours and the Employee-Employer Relationship.

    My brother started a new job in business development for an international company about six months ago. His boss lives in Toronto. He lives in Memphis, TN. In fact, he didn’t meet his boss until after he was hired. He works from home, or his car, or an airplane, or a hotel room, a Starbucks or really anywhere as long as he has a WIFI connection and a cell phone, it doesn’t matter where he is.

    We at Horizon Point just finished a project on wage analysis. Neither I nor our other full-time employee did any of the number crunching for it. The data analysis was done by a contract employee who works comp projects for us from time to time. She lives two hours away and has a full-time job by day. I never saw her once face-to-face throughout this project. I have met her once in person two years ago.

    In reading Start Something that Matters by Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes (read further insights from his work here) it was interesting to learn that when he first started, everything was done out of his small apartment in Venice Beach, California. He asked a coffee shop if he could use their prominent address as his business address to receive mail. He emphasized several times how office space is simply a waste of money.

    What do all of these illustrations point to? The world of commerce doesn’t care how or where or who gets work done, it just cares that is done, and done with quality, of course.

    Our first inclination is to think the reason for this is because the worker wants it. Newer generations are “demanding” more flexibility and we live in a time where technology allows this to work. In fact, the search for the keyword “remote” work has increased 85% over the last two years on indeed.com. While this may be true, the reality of why these shifts are taking place is simple. It makes bottom-line business sense.

    In a study highlighted in HR Magazine, of those who telework, “77% reported greater productivity while working offsite, 23% are willing to work longer hours from home than they would onsite, and 42% feel just as connected with colleagues as if they were working on the premises.”

    Contract labor will continue to increase as the employer/employee relationship “costs” too much for both the individual and the organization. Because of this, people will be working multiple “jobs” for multiple “employers” at any given time and over their lifespan.

    Devoted “office space” in many obsolete in some industries where it is an expense that isn’t needed. Rising shared office space models will continue to grow and become the norm and people will continue to work more from home.

    If you’re a part of an organization (more on what this means for the individual stay tuned for our post on June 30thby guest blogger Stephanie Siebel) consider these steps to adapt to these changes in order to stay competitive in the war on talent and on the war for your bottom line:

    1. Assess your “workflex” against peers in your industry. To do this, visit whenworkworks.org/workflex-assessment. Not all industries are created equal when it comes to tapping into these trends. For example, many of our manufacturing clients can’t tell an employee to go make a machine run to produce a “widget” from their couch- one day maybe- but you need to consider how you compare with your industry peers when considering how, where and who gets work done. Are you behind the times?

    2. Shift your paradigm of thinking by analyzing what is really necessary to get work done at a high quality. Make a list of all the things that are absolutely necessary to meet customer or client needs. You’ll find that often a permanent physical location, an employee that works only for you all the time and/or specific hours they work, all of which can eat up a substantial amount of capital, isn’t needed. Are you stuck in the way things have always been?

    3. Analyze changes to the way work is structured from a cost/benefit perspective.  You’re paying an employee how much in benefits? Do they value those benefits, do they need them? Would they prefer to have the flexibility to work from home helping to better meet their family needs because their spouse has the benefits their family needs? This is an individual cost/benefit example, but the cost/benefits can be weighed on a larger, corporate scale in terms of real financial costs. Do your research and present the facts. The whenworkworks.org website can help with this.

    4. Make changes gradually. Try out a contract arrangement with certain duties you think would cater to that type of arrangement. Experiment with your office hours to see if you need to be open from the typically 8 am- 5 pm hours. Implement and assess knowing that all changes don’t have be set in stone and can be implemented gradually.

    What is one step you can take today to make your “workplace” more flexible?

    Like this post? You may also like:

    I may have adult ADD but I wouldn’t trade it for anything: Refusing to choose between work and life

    The Best Way to Thank Employees is to Make it Personal

    Flexibility to Reduce Workplace Stressors