Merriam Webster Dictionary, define a “leader” as 1.a: one that leads or directs another’s way b: a person who exhibits and explains points of interest c: something that provides a person with guiding information d: a person who directs another’s conducted or course of life.

Imagine if your company is guided by a bunch of employees possessing the qualities of a good leader; now imagine if you have no idea about what kind of employees you have right now. Are you just keeping them because they owe you or you owe them? Or just considering the length of service they have served your company, having the thought “she’s been with us for 3 years now”, she knows the ins and outs of the company, etc. etc. There could be more than a hundred more reasons why you are keeping your employees though they don’t meet the company’s expectations and productivity standard. You may also be wondering about your high turnover.

Indicators of Leadership Potential

High-potential Leaders Seek Information and See the Broader View

Leaders aren’t born with the phenomenal breadth and scope of thinking that characterizes successful leaders of big companies, but those with a drive to constantly search for more information and see things from a broader view have the potential for it. Some young leaders exhibit a conceptual ability to rise above the details, to see a broader context than their peers, and to place themselves and their immediate accomplishments within that broader context.

Look for actions that reveal such thinking. I know of one instance in which a high-potential executive was asked to add two more divisions to her portfolio of responsibilities. She demurred, pointing out to her boss that while she would welcome the additional responsibilities, the two divisions would be better placed with one of her colleagues because they were complementary to businesses already under him. Her willingness to put the company’s interests above her own ego reflected not just a great personality trait but also her ability to think strategically and from the viewpoint of the overall business.

High-potential Leaders Exhibit Drive and Aggression

Drive and aggression are common criteria for identifying leaders and are conveniently easy to observe even in very young people. What boss wouldn’t notice the young sales rep who pushes hard to win more and more business and outshines his seasoned peers in hitting targets? But a rep who does her job to a tee and also seems to have a handle on what her sales manager does - and even what the regional sales director does - is demonstrating something more than drive: a desire and ability to see the bigger picture.

High-potential Leaders Put Their Business on the Offensive

Leaders must also be able to make sense of all they take in and set a clear course of action. After gathering information from multiple sources and shaping several alternatives, they have to be able to sort out what is important, make a decision, and act on it. Even at lower levels, information is often muddled and the right path is often unclear, but leaders with high potential find clarity and act decisively despite the uncertainty and ambiguity that stymies others. They take disparate facts and observations and connect the dots to create a clear view of what they think is likely to happen before it actually does. Because they see the hazy outlines of change coming before others do, they put their businesses on the offensive.

High-potential Leaders Synthesize Data for Decisions

Most high-potential leaders will show an uncommon ability to analyze and synthesize large amounts of data and make a decision based not only on the data but also on intuition. They have a way of clearing the fog. They frequently use the “80-20 rule,” which states that 20 percent of factors account for 80 percent of value. They sift, sort, and select information based not only on its content but also on its source. They think in second, third, and fourth orders of consequence are extremely clear about goals and constraints, develop alternative paths, and have a backup plan in the event a decision proves wrong.

High-potential Leaders Balance Inherent Tensions

Business leaders make judgment calls on a daily basis as they balance the inherent tensions between the short term versus the long term, between shareholders and customers and employees and external constituencies, and between opportunities and aspirations versus real-world realities and constraints. Some people are simply not decisive or tough enough to lead the business. They let opportunities slip away, powerful personalities dominate, and other people set the course. These people are not leaders, regardless of the depth of their thinking.

High-potential Leaders Passionately Pursue Learning and Growth

Another sure sign of a high-potential leader, and one that is especially important in today’s environment of tumultuous change, is the leader’s passionate quest to continually learn and grow. High potentials seize the opportunity to take “stretch” assignments that tax their abilities precisely because they are stimulated by the challenge and the opportunity to increase their knowledge base about the business, people, and the external world.

High-potential Leaders Are Intellectually Honest and Dissatisfied With the Status Quo

They are intellectually honest and have the self-confidence to acknowledge when they don’t have the answers, knowing they can find them. They are dissatisfied with incremental progress and the status quo. They continually search for new ideas and different ways of seeing things. This insatiable thirst for learning tends to make them more contemporary than their bosses, more aware of leading-edge technologies and trends.

High-potential Leaders Have Integrity and Tell the Truth

Don’t forget to look at integrity and drive to screen out those who fall short. Leaders must tell the truth at all times fearlessly and without weighing the consequences. When confronted with a moral or legal quandary, they must always choose the ethical course of action. Leaders must also radiate a sense of urgency. In the course of being tested, over the years a high-potential individual will be given increasingly broad and difficult jobs. Without relentless drive and near-total immersion, he will find it difficult to maintain the endurance necessary to master tasks.

Credits:

Profiles International Vietnam
About.com/ Human Resource

Do you have a plan for the emerging workforce crisis? This article will provide you with information that can help your managers and business leaders develop a strategy for recruiting, hiring and retaining top performing employees. Whether you’re an executive, a manager or a supervisor, the following information will be beneficial to you.

Handle the workforce crisis by preparing for an emerging talent crisis by development recruitment, hiring, skill development and employee retention strategies.

A workforce crisis, a new term for the coming talent shortage, will cost your organization time, money and resources unless you plan now. Developing an effective workforce crisis strategy is the first step in making sure your business can respond to challenges like preparing for the emerging talent crisis, cultivating the skill sets of your current workforce and retaining highly talented employees by protecting them from competitors. Since the widespread recognition of the importance of human capital in organizations, companies are creating strategies for taking action before the talent crisis hits full force.

Workforce planning strategies have evolved significantly in the last few years as technological advancement becomes a calculated, competitive edge for businesses.

By investing in new technology and ongoing research, your organization can proactively eliminate hiring, on-boarding, employee development, talent retention and career planning issues before they begin and address challenges that already exist. Progressive companies use workforce crisis solutions to interface, or even integrate the multiple solutions they employ, empowering them to recruit, hire, develop, retain, engage and promote top talent seamlessly.

Identify areas where you can improve your workforce and prevent the workforce crisis from affecting your business.

Here are a few tips that will help you learn how to overcome talent management issues and quickly take action:
- Focus on recruiting and retaining workers
- Capitalize on current workforce skills
- Keep employees engaged and productive
- Ensure employee job fit and redeploy if necessary
- Employee training and development
- Minimize turnover

Over the next few years, most organizations will begin to experience a talent crisis that will affect the way businesses are run. It will affect the employee/manager relationships, succession opportunities, approaches toward employee development, our philosophies toward retirement, and the fundamental way work together. Workforce crisis planning is important because it addresses all of these issues before they become a problem.

Workforce crisis planning helps you understand the capabilities and role of everyone in your workforce by giving insight into the core characteristics of each employee, regardless of the culture, age or gender. As the talent shortage nears, it’s increasingly important to create a business culture that is welcoming and engaging for talented individuals from all backgrounds and all levels of experience.

Managers must find new ways to create the capacity for innovation in your organization by encouraging collaboration, sharing knowledge and working together to create new ideas. Workforce crisis planning will help you do just that.

Workforce compatibility measures critical workplace compatibility information between a manager (executive, director, supervisor, team leader) and their employees. Organizations use it to improve the relationships of every member of the workforce.

Jim Sirbasku - co-founder and CEO of Profiles International, a leading provider of human resource management solutions and employment assessments for businesses worldwide.

In a web article by Gregory P. Smith employees quit for many reasons but, in general, there are five important areas that motivate people to leave their jobs.

5 P’s

1. Poor match between the person and the job
2. Poor fit with the organizational climate and culture
3. Poor alignment between pay and performance
4. Poor connections between the individual, their coworkers, and the supervisor
5. Poor opportunities for growth and advancement

Smith wrote:

As you know, it is getting difficult to attract and keep skilled employees. Many businesses and industries are desperate for help and can’t find good people with the right skills and attitudes.

While many leading companies place more effort in employee retention, most are clueless. They accept employee turnover as a normal part of doing business. High turnover organizations spend disproportionate amounts of resources on recruiting and replacing their workforce, while smart organizations invest in employee retention. Yes, there is going to be turnover no matter what you do, but blindly ignoring the reasons for turnover is foolish and expensive.

The five P’s can be addressed successfully. Employee retention begins by paying attention to what causes low job satisfaction as well as what attracts, retains, and motivates your workforce.

Here are a few items to consider:
Identify and weed out poor managers. The relationship with the employee’s front-line manager is the most common reason people leave. La Rosa’s is a large restaurant business with over 3000 employees. As part of their employee retention strategy, all employees evaluate their bosses twice a year using a special report card. It asks the employees to give their managers a letter grade from A to D in four categories. Any score less than a “B” requires a specific comment from the employee. After it’s completed, they tabulate the comments and design action plans for improvement.

Hold managers accountable for turnover. Set specific responsibilities for Human Resources, supervisors, and executives on what their specific role is in employee retention. Train managers so they understand what leads to higher retention and greater job satisfaction. Hold managers responsible for retention in their departments, set turnover goals for each manager, and track accordingly. Promote managers whose behavior is consistent with the organization’s values and philosophies.

Create a positive work environment. Money and benefits may bring employees through the front door, but poor work conditions drive them out the back. In its National Study of the Changing Workforce, the Families and Work Institute showed earnings and benefits have only a 3 percent impact on job satisfaction. “Job quality” and “workplace support” have a combined 70 percent.

Develop an “Onboarding” program for the first 90 days on the job. Don’t hire and abandon your new employees. Insure they get the support, training, and assistance they need. Quint Studer, CEO of the Studer Group, a consulting firm in Gulf Breeze, Florida, finds companies that take steps to “re-recruit” new employees can improve performance and reduce turnover in their first three months by as much as 66 percent.

Enhance connections between co-workers, managers, and the organization. To build stronger bonds between the top management and employees, one corporate office practices something called Employee Scavenger Hunt. Once or twice a year, they give every executive or manager five names of employees. They find each person, meet them, and learn about them as individuals. The process builds a better bond, improves communication, and builds trust within the organization.

Hire the best and avoid the rest. Research shows those organizations that spend more time recruiting high-caliber people earn 22% higher return to shareholders than their industry peers. Cisco CEO John Chambers said, “A world-class engineer with five peers can out produce 200 regular engineers.” Instead of waiting for people to apply for jobs, good organizations are always on the lookout for high-caliber people.

Provide learning opportunities. For many people, learning new skills is as important as the money they make. Identify career paths and provide developmental opportunities for employees early in their jobs with the organization. Promote on-going, two-way communication between employees and their immediate managers regarding career progress. In a study by Linkage, Inc. people said they would consider leaving their present employer for another job with the same benefits if that job provided better career development and greater challenges.

Make people feel appreciated. People want to be paid well, but also would like to be treated with respect and appreciation. Find creative ways to make people feel good about their job. We have helped organizations set up something called, “peer recognition.” Peer recognition allows people to reward each other for doing a good job. It works because employees are in the best position to catch people doing the right things. TD Industries in Dallas, Texas, helps their employees feel valued by using one wall within the company to place photographs of all employees who have been with the them more than five years. They also try to make everyone feel equal and have no reserved parking spaces for executives. That is one reason why TD Industries was listed by Fortune magazine as one of the Top 100 Best Places to Work.

Measure attitudes of your workforce. High-retention workplaces are using employee climate assessments to measure the attitudes and feeling of their workforce. Every organization should conduct some form of climate assessment periodically during the year.

Focus on individuals. You must manage retention one employee at a time. Focus on the key jobs that have the most impact on profitability and productivity. Everyone has a different set of needs and expectations about their jobs. By conducting an individual retention profile, managers can quickly identify the employee’s unique motivations, goals, level of job satisfaction, as well as other expectations.

Focus on the family. One small company gives their employees’ children a $50 Savings Bond twice a year when they get straight A’s on their report cards. Another survey of 1,000 companies showed half of them let workers stay home with mildly ill children without using vacation or sick days. Two-thirds permit flextime defined as allowing employees to adjust work hours on a daily basis.

http://www.businessknowhow.com/manage/retain-employees.htm

A “perfect storm” is an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically.^[1] The term is also used to describe a hypothetical hurricane that happens to hit at a region’s most vulnerable area, resulting in the worst possible damage by a hurricane of its magnitude.(source: Wikipedia.org)

The Workforce Crisis A common myth about the impending workforce crisis is that the issue is about an anticipated talent shortage. The issue is much larger than one could imagine. The United States has never had such a large proportion of older workers in the workforce, or a generation as large as the baby boomers preparing to retire. The growth rate of the labor force has never dropped and stayed so low in our history. We never before relied so heavily on intellectual rather than physical labor. Business owners cannot anticipate the compounding effects that will take place when these trends collide. There is a concept known as the “Perfect Storm” in which critical weather fronts come together to create a storm of catastrophic proportion. The collision of these three factors will in fact create a “Perfect Storm” that can create waves so large the challenges of the millennium bug and the impact 9/11 had on business could look like only a squall on an otherwise gentle sea.

The demographic composition of the workforce has become more diverse than ever before, not just in age but in gender, ethnicity, country of origin, level of education, family status, personal ambition, wealth needed for retirement, and corporate loyalty. Put these forces together, and tomorrow’s labor market will be characterized by more than slow growth and shortages. Will you be prepared when your employees think and act quite differently than their parents, grandparents and previous generations?

So what does this impending workforce crisis mean to you and your business? If we break the crisis down to its simplest elements, you have a supply and demand problem. As a leader, you must have a ready supply of skills and talent to implement and sustain the execution of your business strategy and achieve your performance goals. The issue won’t just be about achieving business goals; it is much broader with even greater implications to your business. Do you have aggressive plans for growth? You may have the people and leaders you need to achieve today’s goal but will you have the people and leaders to take advantage of the economic boom that is before us?

For years you could contract or expand your workforce based on business conditions because you knew there would always be a labor pool in your marketplace. The combination of the baby-boomers’ rush to retirement, coupled with the dearth of new births, has led to fewer and fewer people entering the labor force.The result is a labor pool that is shrinking rapidly.

There is serious doubt whether ready-made, already qualified, locally available candidates will form a large enough labor pool to meet a company’s needs. So, you will have to change your thinking about how you manage your workforce. You are going to have to anticipate your labor and skills needs in the context of the longer term trends. Some of the first tactics you need to take are the retention of key employees, increasing the level of engagement of existing employees, changing how you select new employees, changing your approach for developing new hires, and tapping new sources of labor and skills.

You may be thinking, “I read enough, this is one more problem on my desk I have to solve.” The reason that Age Wave, The Concours Group, and Harris Interactive united with Profiles International to conduct the study about the workforce of the 21st century was not just to cry out, “danger ahead, crisis on the horizon.” Because of the breadth of the study, practices and actions of progressive companies were identified, tools have been created and processes pioneered that can help you survive and thrive during these periods of turmoil and lack of people resources.

(Read more)

http://www.workforce-analysis.com/Reports/Workforce_Crisis_Whitepaper_PS.pdf)

When you don’t like your job, going to work every day can be a challenge. Your problem might be with a pesky officemate, a bad manager, that you constantly feel stretched to the breaking point, or that you are resentful about taking a pay cut. Or, the whole environment may just feel toxic. You might need to stay in your job because it provides health benefits, or maybe you’re only staying while you look for another position. Whatever your reasons for being unhappy, you need to maintain your professionalism and prevent a bad attitude from sabotaging you.

Being unhappy might indicate that there’s a part of the self that is not heard. There’s a need to deal with that feeling of unhappiness and try to figure out what went wrong.

Sometimes people just don’t match well with their jobs, employees tend to rationalize their job dissatisfaction rather than consider that they may be part of the problem. But if you are part of the problem, you may be part of the solution, too.

Knowing your capabilities and capacity might help to avoid dissatisfaction and being unhappy in the workplace. You should know what you CAN and what you CAN’T do. It would also help if you will be responsible for every change that you will make. Never ever assume that nothing will ever change. Making the best of a bad situation will also help for you to feel great about yourself. Never ever allow negative thoughts to rule you because it will ruin all your hardship at work.

Focusing more on the advantages that you have at work will lessen the thoughts of being unhappy rather than thinking of the disadvantages or reasons that made you unhappy.

Leadership is stated as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership).

Real leaders are effective when other people acknowledge them by listening seriously to their ideas, valuing and following their suggestions for action, and turning to them for advice.

To lead aren’t limited to times when one has the formal authority to do so. Leadership in each individual is inherent. We just need to develop and practice the art and science of it. When you demonstrate leadership even if you’re not the boss, you will not only contribute value to a project or enterprise but also fortify your leadership skills.

Being a leader even if you are not the boss involves five-step method according to Harvard negotiation specialist Roger Fisher and coauthor Alan Sharp in their book Lateral Leadership: Getting Things Done When You’re Not the Boss (2nd ed., Profile Books, 2004).

1. Establish goals

People accomplish the most when they have a clear set of objectives. It follows that any group’s first order of business is to write down exactly what it hopes to achieve. The person who asks the question “Can we start by clarifying our goals here?”–and who then assumes the lead in discussing and drafting those goals–is automatically taking a leadership role, whatever his or her position.

2. Think systematically

Observe your next meeting: people typically plunge right into the topic at hand and start arguing over what to do. Effective leaders, by contrast, learn to think systematically–that is, they gather and lay out the necessary data, analyze the causes of the situation, and propose actions based on this analysis. In a group, leaders help keep participants focused by asking appropriate questions. Do we have the information we need to analyze this situation? Can we focus on figuring out the causes of the problem we’re trying to solve?

3. Learn from experience–while it’s happening

Teams often plow ahead on a project, then conduct a review at the end to
figure out what they learned. But it’s more effective for teams (or individuals) to learn as they go along.

Anyone who prompts the group to engage in regular minireviews and learn from them is playing a de facto leadership role. Why is this ongoing process more effective than an after-action review? The events are fresh in everyone’s mind. And the team can use what they learn from each minireview to make needed adjustments to their work processes or their goals.

4. Engage others

A high-performing team engages the efforts of every member, and effective team leaders seek out the best fit possible between members’ interests and the tasks that need doing. Suggest writing down a list of chores and matching them up with individuals or subgroups. If no one wants a particular task, brainstorm ways to make that task more interesting or challenging. Help draw out the group’s quieter members so that everyone feels a part of the overall project.

5. Provide feedback

If you’re not the boss, what kind of feedback can you provide? One thing that’s always valued is simple appreciation–”I thought you did a great job in there.” Sometimes, too, you’ll be in a position to help people improve their performance through coaching. Effective coaches ask a lot of questions: “How did you feel you did on this part of the project?” They recognize that people may try hard and fail anyway: “What made it hard to accomplish your part of the task?” They offer thoughtful suggestions for improvement, being careful to explain the observation and reasoning that lie behind them.

Having an authority is not necessary to be a leader.

Good leaders are made not born. If you have efthe desire and willpower, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience (Jago, 1982)

Workforce planning is a systematic process for identifying, acquiring, developing, and retaining employees to meet the needs of the organization.

Workforce planning is an effort to focus on developing information that can help an organization make decisions for both the short and long term, yet allow for flexibility in a changing environment. The plan is intended to help solve staffing problems related to managed position movement into, around, and out of an organization.

IMPORTANCE OF WORKFORCE PLANNING

Workforce planning has become increasingly important to organizations over the last several years, due in large part to increased retirements, as well as retention and restructuring initiatives. Global trends that illustrate the importance of workforce planning include:

• aging of the population;
• baby boomers redefining the idea of what retirement is;
• harnessing of technology to change the human resource function;
• proliferation of rules and regulations, with new legislation often competing and colliding with existing legislation; and
• the sheer number of people with advanced educational degrees is advancing human knowledge at an unprecedented rate.

The implementation of the workforce plan should result in the desired workforce the organization needs in terms of the number of employees, with the appropriate skills, at the right locations, etc. The workforce plan should be continually measured for its success in meeting both efficiency and effectiveness parameters. While efficiency will measure the time, speed, cost, and volume regarding the plan, effectiveness will measure whether the plan is achieving the desired result of “having the right people with the right skills at the right time.”

Source: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/hr/pdf/workforceplanningmanual.pdf

“Strategic Workforce Planning and Talent Acquisition”

9:00AM- 11:00AM

“Surviving the Workforce Crisis”

1:00PM- 4:00PM

6th Floor Executive Lounge

Development Academy of the Philippines

San Miguel Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City

for more information and inquiries email us at corp@profilesasiapacific.com.

WorkForce Compatibility

Unhappy employees because of work, career opportunities, challenges, dissatisfaction, conflict with the management or compensation causes high turnover. A high turnover indicates that few employees give satisfactory performance and is unsafe or unhealthy condition in a company.

Following are some of the more common reasons for high turnover in businesses:

• A bad match between the employee’s skills and the job. Employees who are placed in jobs that are too difficult for them or whose skills are underutilized may become discouraged and quit. Inadequate information about skill requirements that are needed to fill a job may result in the hiring of either underskilled or overqualified workers. The requirements of a specific job should be carefully studied for the required skills, and workers should be tested for the requisite qualifications. Use job analyses and job descriptions to minimize the chances of this happening.
• Substandard equipment, tools, or facilities. If working conditions are substandard or the workplace lacks important facilities such as proper lighting, furniture, restrooms and other health and safety provisions, employees will not be willing to put up with the inconvenience for long.
• Lack of opportunity for advancement or growth. If the job is basically a dead-end proposition, this should be explained before hiring so as not to mislead the employee. The job should be described precisely, without raising false hopes for growth and advancement in the position.
• Feelings of not being appreciated. Since employees generally want to do a good job, it follows that they also want to be appreciated and recognized for their work. Even the most seasoned employee needs to be told what he or she is doing right once in a while. Make sure your employees know that they are appreciated.
• Inadequate or lackluster supervision and training. Employees need guidance and direction. New employees may need extra help in learning an unfamiliar job. Similarly, the absence of a training program may cause workers to fall behind in their level of performance and feel that their abilities are lacking.
• Unequal or substandard wage structures. Inequities in pay structures or low pay are great causes of dissatisfaction and can drive some employees to quit. Again, a new worker may wonder why the person next to him is receiving a higher wage for what is perceived to be the same work. You should have a wage and job evaluation system in place not only so that you are sure to comply with equal pay for equal work requirements, but also to avoid this problem.

If you suspect that you have a either a turnover or a morale problem, look at your employees and ask yourself if any of the above apply (http://www.toolkit.com/small_business_guide/sbg.aspx?nid=P05_7135).