Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Talent Management and Development

We provide full service talent management and talent development consulting services. Read our blogs in this category for stories and best practices from real clients and real research.

  • 3 Steps for Driving Employee Engagement through Personalization

    3 Steps for Driving Employee Engagement through Personalization

    Remember the wind chime, the umbrella, the party, snacks and bonus check in our last post?

    Well during the corporate foray of employee rewards and recognition efforts, everyone in the department, regardless of their level of involvement in the project, got the wind chime and the umbrella and the party and the snacks and, yes, the bonus check.

    In addition to the one size fits all approach whether earned or not, although an umbrella at some point is going to come in handy, and the wind chimes do actually still hang in my backyard almost ten years later, no one asked me, or anyone else if we particularly wanted any of it or we might have preferred say a rain jacket or maybe a decorative flag.

    You see, one of the main tricks of employers who do the employee engagement game well know that perks and benefits should be personalized, fitting with each individual’s motivational preferences based on their personalities, interests and place in life.

    As The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Todaystates,

    “Rather than a standard package of health, wealth, and paid time off, companies can provide employees with a budget and a widely diverse set of options. These can range from sponsoring paid community service time overseas to allowing for credits to buy a hybrid car or even financially supporting an increased personal skill, such as learning a new language. The options are endless.”

    So if you want to focus on making it personal, here are three steps:

    1. Ask.  Ask and ask often what employees want.   You need to do this in aggregate and individually.  We suggest you design a survey to ask employees what they want and value in order to design overall benefit package options and structure. However, each person should be asked individually by their manager what things actually motivate them and what situations they are experiencing in their life and in work that cause one thing to be more motivational over another. For a list of motivational factors we use, Gallup’s 12 engagement questions for this.  Regardless of the mechanism you use to measure employee engagement, these results should be positively correlated with desirable overall business results such as increased profits that every organization tracks.   More on these business results that should be seen in next week’s post…

    Are your rewards and benefits personalized?  If so, what positive results have you seen?

    If you like this post, you may also like:

    The Best Way to Thank Employees is to Make it Personal

    Want to keep great employees? Know how to compensate them.

  • 3 Steps to Winning A Best Place to Work Award

    3 Steps to Winning A Best Place to Work Award

    A wind chime.

    An umbrella.

    A large corporate hooray party.

    Office snacks on demand, at anytime, for free.

    A bonus check. One that at the age of 23 was a shockingly large one.

    All are things I’ve experienced in my career during a corporate change management project that constituted employee recognition and perks. Despite the fact that the umbrella was expensive (for an umbrella) because of its cute designer label and the bonus check as I mentioned was large for the context of my 23 year old, living paycheck to paycheck mind (so much so that my new husband and I actually went out to dinner at a place we never thought we’d be able to afford), none of them really positively affected how I felt about the job, or the hours and hours I put into the work and the project that was taking place.In short, they didn’t create engagement for me.

    By some standards, all the perks and recognition could have been seen as the things that make a great employer and drive employee performance. And in some workplaces, they might be. But as the June 2015 cover story, What Makes a Great Employer, of HR Magazine states, “The foundation of a great workplace lies in a culture of trust and engagement that unites management and the workforce in a common vision that’s not only about success but that describes the type of organization an employer wants to be.”

    The article later goes on to state, “Indeed, the leaders of these companies talk about their people not as employees who can be satisfied with the right compensation package, but as colleagues who are invested in the business.”

    When the department managers brought around the bonus checks in my example, two of the three didn’t know my name. They didn’t know what role I was playing in the project or what contribution I had made (or had not made) to it. They were just passing out bonus checks.

    In order to help people feel invested in the business, organizations need to:

    1. Build an intentional culture.  Define the purpose and vision of the organization and how each job and therefore each person impacts that purpose and takes it on as his or her own. This vision and purpose should be imbedded into all people management aspects- selection, training, evaluation and compensation and most importantly lived out through leadership.
    2. Communicate with intention. Purpose and impact should be communicated regularly and should involve two-way communication that seeks to gain constant feedback from employees on what is going well and what isn’t.
    3. Live Transparent. Communicating with intention should foster transparency, but beyond communicating the message of the business and how each person fits into this purpose, transparency should include openness about financial and operational issues and should involve each employee feeling comfortable coming to his or her manager about any issue because the manager is seen as both approachable and accessible.

    These are the larger pieces of the puzzle that lead to respect and trust that foster empowerment and employee engagement. Without them, you can have the greatest perks in the world, but they will never lead to an organization winning a great place to work award. At the end of the day, an organization wins this type of award because employees feel valued.

    How does your organization create an intentional culture?

    If you like this post, you may also like:

    What You Pay Does Matter

    The Best Way to Thank Employees is to Make it Personal

  • What’s Your Leadership Mindset on Empathy & Expectations?

    What’s Your Leadership Mindset on Empathy & Expectations?

    Having high expectations of people. Being empathetic. I’ve written about this balancing act before. Are they in conflict with each other, or are they actually complementary? When they seem to be in conflict with each other, which way should we lean?

    No greater example illustrates this than something I’ve been struggling with lately. In three particular instances (two recent, one a few years ago) I’ve had someone tell me and/or a family member that they are going to do something or take care of something. Not one of these things has been followed through on. Being that one of my first premises of leadership (following a close second to putting others first) is DWYSYWD- Do What You Say You Will Do, I’ve written this leader in title off as something far from a leader.

    When you don’t do what you say you will do, especially when you show a pattern of not DWYSYWD, these are the reflections I have about that person and their leadership ability:

    1) You’re incompetent. You say you will do something, but then you don’t have the wherewithal to follow through. This may seem pretty bad, but the second reflection is worse:

    2) You’re a flat-out liar. You had no intentions of doing what you said you would do, you just told me what I wanted to hear. I would rather you not say you will do anything, even if I expect you should, than to tell me you will then not do it.

    In reflecting, well let me be honest, in stewing over this for the last few days, I came across this nugget of insight from one of my favorite blogs, Fistful of Talent:

    In discussing the importance of curiosity for leadership, the author says,

    “Belief in the rationality of others – I once heard one of my heroes (Doug Stone) say that everyone is typically acting in rational ways that makes sense in their minds. If you don’t understand their behavior, ask questions to better understand them instead of writing them off as irrational. A slightly more famous leader (Abraham Lincoln) was also quoted as saying “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” If you chalk up the behavior of others being “mad or bad,” then you miss out on an opportunity to learn from them. If instead you get curious, you just might change your mind, or at least understand better how to relate to them.”

    Whereas I haven’t written this person off as irrational, I’ve written then off as maybe worse- an incompetent liar. So, rather than stewing, should I be asking the person questions? And what should my questions be? When someone doesn’t DWTSTWD are he or she acting rationally?

    Although I still hold true to the importance of DWYSYWD to establish creditability as a leader, my judgment isn’t reflecting too highly on my leadership mindset either. First, I should act in empathy- because lets face it, if I’m honest with myself there are times when I have said I would do something only not to do it. And I always had some “rational” excuse for not doing so.I assume people will understand, and asking questions and making sense of the situation(s) is the right thing to do.

    Then maybe acting in empathy, especially if a pattern of DWYSYWD is present, requires calling them on this behavior in an empathetic, non-judgmental in a way that leads it to stopping. But first I must look in the mirror and call myself on similar behaviors before doing so. And now I’m back to my first rule of leadership- people first.Thank you Fistful of Talent for helping me come full-circle J

    When have you struggled with someone who didn’t do what they say they would do? How did you respond?

    If you like this post, you may also like:

    Balancing Empathy and Expectations as a Leader

  • 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?

  • Goal Setting for Students

    Goal Setting for Students

    I’ve always been a list maker. I love to make a list at the end of each work day, so I can draw a red line through item after time the following work day. And, by the way, I don’t just do this for work. I do it for everything: grocery list, kid’s activities for the week, Christmas shopping list, cleaning for the week and the list goes on and on. I’m the queen of lists.

    That being said, even though I’m a list maker, I’m still not as organized as I would like to be. But, when I began the process of quarterly goal setting and implemented a weekly tracking process, organization and my life ran much smoother.

    I believe this process can not only be valuable in a person’s career, but is a great tool to help students become more organized and, long term, be ready for college or career. What a great habit to begin as a high school student?

    First things first words written on the chalkboard
    First things first words written on the chalkboard

    To quote Stephen Covey, first things first, developing a mission statement is a great way to get on the right track. Check out Developing a Personal Mission Statement to prevent stress and burnout  and Power of 3 – Mission and Purpose to help you develop a mission statement. Then, you are in a great position to begin your quarterly goal setting. You can begin this most any time of year, but I suggest beginning on January 1 or in the summer before the upcoming school year. Develop 3 or 4 goals for the quarter. Then, document how you will achieve those goals. This will help you as you begin entering action items into you weekly tracking spreadsheet.

    Even if you are very disciplined, it is great to have an accountability partner. So, grab a friend and begin the process together. How great will it be to be entering your senior year of high school and already be on the right track for college or career? You could have your portfolio complete, applications completed to your top college choice, job shadowing experience and even taken the ACT for the fourth time. You will be leaps and bounds ahead of some of your classmates.

    Check out our Goal Setting Worksheet to help you get started.