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.

  • Baby Boomers are Retiring – How do we fill their shoes?

    Baby Boomers are Retiring – How do we fill their shoes?

    This month, we’ve been talking about What’s Impacting the Labor Force Participation Rate.  Last week, Lorrie shared how the Benefits Cliff impacted the participation in When Working Costs Too Much. Another significant factor in this equation is Baby Boomers exiting the workforce. Let’s dive a little deeper.

    Baby Boomers account for 1 in 4 American workers. As they are exiting in droves, their absence will lead to an even wider workforce gap as companies will need to fill positions made available after the Boomers retire. Check out this article from The Washington Post to learn more: The boomers are retiring. See why that’s bad news for workers.

    Who will fill the gap? Here are 3 possible solutions:

    1. Mentorship –  Baby Boomers have a wealth of knowledge to pass along. One promising option to help with the transition is the creation of a baby boomer knowledge transfer and replacement program that focuses on senior employees transferring their knowledge before they retire.
    2. Remote workers – If given the opportunity, Baby Boomers as well as other generations who are willing to work remotely, possibly part-time, may also be a solution in some industries.
    3. Immigrant workers – Foreign workers are already filling the gap in STEM fields. According to 2018 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. workforce increased to 28.2 million foreign-born workers. There are several other fields where immigrant workers can help fill the gap.

    Stay tuned for more solutions to the Labor Participation Rate issue!

  • The Mental Health “Connection”

    The Mental Health “Connection”

    Recently, I traveled to North Carolina for our annual family vacation. On Sunday, we attended First Baptist Church of Bryson City. The guest Pastor brought the house down on that rainy day with a message on love and acceptance. He described the ways in which we used to value connection with one another through meal time and went on to emphasize how important social connection is for our mental health. If you feel connected and cared for, he argued, then love has the ability to heal. 

    That’s wonderful to hear about in Church, but how does that translate to the mental health of an organization or, more specifically, remote workers?  As a person who has experienced the struggle with mental health, I can testify that just today as I sit here from the comfort of my home writing this Blog I’ve had some anxious thoughts and feelings come up. The people that I love are gone for the day and while the silence is useful for my concentration, it can also be deafening and lonely. You see, I need that connection for inspiration and motivation.

    There are many benefits to hybrid work. Forbes said it best “Hybrid creates flexibility in our lives and workplace, which contributes to employee satisfaction and productivity. Making it easier for them to balance their work and personal lives can result in less stress and burnout. Hybrid work allows people to work in a comfortable and familiar environment, which can promote feelings of safety and well-being.”

    However, what goes up must come down, and there are pitfalls to this setup as well. When I began working from home in September, it was an adjustment. Coming from a traditional 9-5 work schedule, the idea of flexibility challenged my thinking. For a few days, I longed to catch up my with my co-workers and to hear the latest news when I walked through the door. You see, I wasn’t missing the stress or rigidity of the job, I was missing the connection with others. It is good for the body, mind and spirit.

    Thank goodness it didn’t take long for me to shift my perspective and see the way that my Horizon Point Team members valued connection as much as I did. According to Gallup analysis, “it finds that engagement has 3.8x as much influence on employee stress as work location. How people feel about their job has a lot more to do with their relationship with their team and manager than being remote or being on-site.”  

    How can your organization create space for mental health or connection in the workday or week while working remotely? Horizon Point uses various touchpoints throughout our weeks and months. Mary Ila and I meet once a week either in person, by phone or virtually to talk through what she needs me to handle. We also have a Monthly Mingle to brainstorm new ideas, discuss plans for the future and to share a meal. Quarterly Planning is a longer meeting where we, for lack of a better term, plan for the quarter. There are also One-on-Ones during the month when we meet with Mary Ila to have meaningful conversation about what’s happening and what we would like to see happening in our careers.

    What I initially thought could be a challenge has proved to be a learning opportunity. The traditional way of working doesn’t have to be my future, and I can still connect with my co-workers in various ways and environments. There are new tools that I have in my toolkit to connect with others, and when I’m feeling a little lonely, there are certainly other ways to find inspiration and engagement rather than in an office setting. 

    At Horizon Point, we value work-life integration, and it turns out that my stress level is much lower. Even on days like today when I have some anxiety, a nice walk or phone call with a co-worker or friend decreases that feeling. I am much more comfortable than I would be experiencing those feelings in an office setting. Therefore, my overall mental health is much more in balance. 

    Does your organization support your mental health? At Horizon Point, I feel connected and cared for, which translates to love and healing.

    To read more about connection and working remotely, browse through these topics at The Point Blog:

    What’s Relationshipping, and How Do I Do It?

    Building the Bridge Between Survive and Thrive in the Workplace

    4 Ways Leaders Can Keep Remote Work Pros from Becoming Cons

    Benefits of Remote Work for Employees

  • 4 Workplace Innovations on Repeat

    4 Workplace Innovations on Repeat

    Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to serve on a panel discussing workforce and skills challenges created by the automotive industry’s shift to electric vehicles (EVs).  

    I’m no expert on EVs.  I’m no expert on cars. 

    But I drive one. And it broke down at the end of last week. 

    I got off the interstate from a work trip, headed into my hometown on a highway connecting the interstate to my neighborhood.  When I went to accelerate on the highway, the RPMs jumped way up, and it did not want to shift gears for me to accelerate effectively. Luckily, I got home going about 10 miles per hour, not trying to force the car to shift into second gear. 

    We had it towed to the dealership where I was told that the issue was “probably the transmission.”  I was then told it would take two weeks to get a technician to diagnose it. Then, if it was the transmission, it would be about two months before they could get to it.  

    I took a deep breath (I’m in my car A LOT, I’m not quite sure how to go without a car for a day, much less two months) and asked, “So is the challenge you all are dealing with because you don’t have enough labor?”

    He breathed a sigh of relief- I think he was afraid I was going to bless him out- and proceeded to tell me in great detail about all the labor challenges they have. Namely, that they had the only transmission guy in our county and that it takes two to three years to train someone effectively to fix transmissions.  He also told me there were 40 cars in front of mine if it was, in fact, the transmission that needed to be replaced. 

    We have a workforce shortage with the current labor skills needed to make and fix cars.  If we can’t handle the current challenges, how can we expect to handle future ones?  The good news is EVs don’t have multi drive transmissions, I have learned :).  Do we have people trained to work or gearboxes (my understanding of what replaces a transmission)?  I doubt it. 

    This is not just a phenomenon in the automotive industry, it is in almost all of them. As we innovate products, services, and technology exponentially, we’ve also got to continuously innovate our workplaces through people practices.  And, unfortunately, we are lagging behind here, thinking that what worked yesterday will work today.  It won’t. The labor force is telling this loud and clear. 

    We also need to capitalize on the opportunities brought about by innovation that can help us rethink the workplace and how work gets done and in what types of cultures it can succeed. 

    I think we could all take a good look back at the automotive industry and how Henry Food transformed it approximately 100 years ago to help pose us well for the next 100 years:  

    1. Early Exposure Matters: Henry Ford showed that early exposure to a variety of skills and work opportunities need to be widespread and that skills in one industry are readily transferable to another.  For example, Ford grew up on a farm. He taught himself to fix watches and this helped him learn basic mechanical skills. These skills, no doubt, helped him in creating “horseless carriages.”
    2. Learning by Trial and Error: This tinkering also shows that Ford learned by trial and error.  By doing. Failing. Trying again, and again, until it worked. 

    We need to be applying these truths in our homes and schools.  Exposing kids at an early age to a variety of domains and subjects and ways of thinking and giving them tools to “tinker” with is necessary for them to learn by trial and error.  I would also postulate that time to be “bored” fosters this tinkering too.  When kids are over scheduled, they don’t “play” and therefore they don’t “tinker.”  

    1. Compensation Matters:  Ford’s company was plagued by very high turnover rates.  According to The Henry Ford Foundation, “Turnover was so high that the company had to hire 53,000 people a year to keep 14,000 jobs filled. Henry responded with his boldest innovation ever—in January 1914 he virtually doubled wages to $5 per day.”   Ford realized that he needed to pay people a premium for the repetitive work they were doing, and that doing this would help lower costs, not raise them.  He also was very clear that the people he employed needed to be able to afford what they were producing.
    2. People don’t want to work all day, every day. They are more productive when they don’t.  Ford is largely credited with the creation of the 40-hour workweek (although union pressure may have led him there). He changed the workweek from six days to five without changing compensation. We are now in a world largely talking about the value gains in a four-day workweek. As innovations increase productivity, should people be able to take advantage of these gains to work less with the same pay? Or should we at least provide people with autonomy to decide how to do the work in order to produce the results that are needed?  I think these are discussions of merit. 

    Innovating is not just about creating something from scratch.  It also includes recycling the old to create the new. 

    How will you innovate your workplace through old lessons learned? 

  • The Crossover of Adaptive Leadership and Storytelling

    The Crossover of Adaptive Leadership and Storytelling

    I recently read an article by the Huntsville Business Journal about adaptive leadership, and I immediately sent it to everyone on the HPC team. I thought, “This is what we’re always talking about!! The HBJ gets it!!” We truly believe that leadership behaviors rooted in CODE have significantly higher impact, and we’re seeing this play out in a big way with one of our clients. 

    Four years ago, a client asked us to explore gender equality in their organization. This included analysis of leadership demographics, a comprehensive survey to all employees, and focus group discussions. During the study, some challenges beyond the scope of gender equality emerged. As a result, we implemented a pilot Encounter Group program. Encounter groups are defined as “a group of people who meet with a trained leader to increase self-awareness and social sensitivity, and to change behavior through interpersonal confrontation, self-disclosure, and strong emotional expression.” In other words, we gather in small groups and share perspectives, life-changing events, backgrounds, and factors that affect decisions across the workforce. The end goal is to bring about mutual understanding and respect in order to address issues of polarization and awareness.   

    Our Encounter Group curriculum addresses the CODE model of adaptive leadership through storytelling and conversation. 

    Our very first exercise with Encounter Groups is Share Story, where the facilitator creates a safe environment for participants to share real stories about their lives and listen respectfully to others, aligning with the EQ element of the CODE model. 

    Through a series of implicit bias exercises, including examining bias in workplace practices, we discuss organizational integrity in the context of DWYSYWD: do what you say you will do. If you’re going to have policies and procedures that are meant to establish fairness, it’s just as important that everyone is equally held accountable to them. In other words, if you’re going to preach fairness, you have to practice it, too. 

    We also read stories of others. Business leaders, athletes, veterans, immigrants; we read stories of people that are different from our stories. This exercise stretches and develops our understanding of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace culture. 

    The capstone session of our Encounter Groups includes a critique of stories we consume day-to-day, whether from news outlets, social media, or managers in our own organization. We talk about getting out of your filter bubble – intentionally seeking stories and information that represent people who are different from you and your “feed”. We talk about silos in workplaces, in-groups and out-groups, and how important it is to examine who or what is shaping your perspective. Is your opinion of your workplace shaped by a person or group of people you work with? You might think your workplace is fair and inclusive, but are you missing a key perspective that’s different? 

    Now, four years later, the Encounter Groups are ongoing, and the organization has strengthened its support for an employee-led DEI Council. Through storytelling and adaptive leadership principles, people are becoming the focus once again.  

     

  • 2 Key Places Where You Need a Rule Breaker

    2 Key Places Where You Need a Rule Breaker

    I was a hardcore rule follower as a child. I didn’t question rules in any form or the adults or organizational or societal factors that put them in place. I was on time, didn’t question when or how things were done in school, on the sports field, in my home, and in my community.  I did all the things I was “supposed” to do.  In fact, I don’t think I thought much about the why and reason behind much of anything, I just did as I was told. 

    For example, if a school supply list told me I needed 48 Ticonderoga brand pre-sharpened pencils (I don’t know if I actually ever had this on a school supply list with such specificity when I was a child, but you better believe my kids do now) on the first day of school, that’s what we brought regardless if it meant going to ten different places to find them.  Also, regardless of whether I liked that kind of pencil or thought they were the best tool to use. And if my mom wasn’t on board, I’d worry her to death until she followed the “rules” to the exact specification. I wasn’t coming with the “wrong” thing on the first day of school.  And the truth is, a lot of this probably helped me succeed in school. Education today is still by and large very much geared towards the industrial revolution environment that created it. 

    Now I see this on a supply list for my kids, and if Target doesn’t have that exact number packaged neatly in that brand, sharpened or not, we get what is available. And I’m getting what’s available for drive-up pick up. I’m not going into the store, and I’m most definitely not going to hunt them down. Invariably, they come in multiples of 18 and that never adds up to 48 evenly and because of all the other rule followers out there, they have zero left of the brand on said supply list.  I’ll grab two Target brand packages of 18 (yes, I know that is 36 not 48, and yes, I know some of you are just cringing thinking anyone would get less than what is on the list) because I know from experience to expect approximately 30 never used pencils to come back unopened in my kids stuff at the end of the year.  I just can’t bring myself to care, or have the time to do it.  What does it matter?  Especially when they don’t even use them!

    Basically, I’ve switched in my old age to someone with a much lower level of rules orientation. Described this way, “people with a high level of rule orientation will have a more rigid view, seeing fewer conditions under which it is generally acceptable to violate rules. People with low rule orientation will have a more flexible view, seeing more conditions under which it is acceptable to violate rules.” 

    Rules orientation is really a sub dimension of conscientiousness, one of the most researched dimensions of personality. And as Psychology Today says, “conscientiousness is generally a key ingredient for success—in love as well as work. It’s also a major predictor of health, well-being, and longevity.” 

    Here’s the breakdown of conscientiousness dimensions in a tool we use to help leaders build self-awareness called the Work Behavior Inventory: 

    Of course, you read through these and most people would think, man I’m going to hire someone that is high on all this stuff! Conscientiousness is, in fact, one of the key predictors of success across almost all job types. 

    But, I’d encourage you to pause on the rules orientation and consider whether you need someone that is high or low on this dimension if you are charged with hiring people.  And if you are considering career direction or wondering why the heck you hate your job so much, I would encourage you to pause and question whether you are low or high on rules orientation. Nothing creates a recipe for disaster more than a round peg in a square hole, and rules orientation is most often the lynch pin. Kris Dunn describes the need to understand rules orientation for cultural fit better than almost anyone else in his Workforce.com post. Read it. 

    So, where do you want to consider hiring someone with low instead of high rules orientation? Or if you are low in rules orientation, where are you going to thrive? I think there are two key spots: 

    1. In start-up and high-growth organizations where you are trying to create things, not maintain the status quo (as Kris’ post states, when you are in need of pirates, not the people in the Navy) you need someone with a lower tendency towards rules orientation.  

    One of the places we really like to use the WBI assessment because of its analysis of rules orientation is when we are advising Alabama Launchpad finalists.  These are entrepreneurs working to create and grow high impact start-ups across the state. A lower level of rule following contributes to higher levels of “Creative Innovator” and “Business Start-Up” occupational fit as seen through the WBI. These people are trying to create something entirely different from the pencil, so they most definitely aren’t following the rules in the pencil buying market in order to succeed.  They want to make the pencil obsolete. 

    2. Secondly, you’ll want to consider the need for low rules orientation folks in organizations that have always played by the rules, heck they invented them, but things are no longer working. Typically, they have major issues on their hands. This is often because they are more concerned with the rules than anything else, and that has led to the downhill slide.  

    These organizations need someone to come in and say, why did you buy that type of pencil in the first place?  Does the supply list even serve a purpose? Do your kids even use pencils anymore in school? Well, they use computers all the time now, so six pencils for the school year will do, and it doesn’t matter what kind they are because they are on a computer now all the time anyway. This is the case where you need to bring in a pirate or a band of pirates to ask a bunch of questions, challenge the status quo, shake things up and fix stuff, also most likely saving you some money too and restoring profitability in the case of for-profit businesses. 

    I find myself in the middle of both these scenarios right now as I’m trying to grow our business and also help a few key clients shake things up.  

    I think I’ll be a pirate for Halloween this year.  I would have never gone for a pirate custom as a kid, probably citing something like pirates are boys (cultural rules and norms).  Well, bring me an eye patch now!  In my view, being a pirate is a heck of a lot of fun.

    Are you a rule follower or a rule breaker?