8
HR
West
®
Workforce Strategies
I
n 1997, the influential business consultancy
McKinsey declared a “war for talent,”
advising clients to focus on retaining top
talent by creating compelling value propositions,
investing in employees and developing
underperforming workers. And yet, those lofty
ideals seem anachronistic in the current state
of employment.
According to Gallup polls, 70 percent of American
workers are disengaged. They feel overworked,
underpaid, underappreciated, unchallenged and
unsupported by their employers. The issue is
becoming so pronounced that people such as Dr.
Charles Handler, a recognized talent evangelist,
believe the war is no longer “for” talent, it’s “against”
it. Handler credits the problem to “outdated and
convoluted hiring processes, thoughtless treatment
by employers, communication breakdowns, and
an inability to connect with people on a real and
meaningful level.”
To succeed in this new era, especially as socially
conscious Millennials take center stage, we need
to find ways of gaining trust, acceptance and
nurturing relationships — making love, not war.
However, if there really is a war to be won, our
goal is to enlist and develop the best troops — to
fight against the common enemy of failure, not the
people filling out the frontlines.
Here are 10 strategies that will help you enlist the
right talent to maximize the success of your business:
1
Hire for attitude, train for success
Placing workers in environments that mesh well
with their values, support needs, work-life goals
and ongoing development leads to success.
Too often, we find that corporate recruiters
concentrate on matching hard skills to keywords
in job descriptions, while disregarding vital soft
skills that establish ideal cultural fits. What are
soft skills? They’re personality characteristics
and interpersonal aptitudes. Although they
can’t typically be taught, they can be refined
and nurtured. We’re talking about attitudes and
inherent abilities in people skills, communication,
collaboration, teamwork and leadership.
Hard skills, such as expertise in accounting or
software engineering, are transferrable. Even when
perfected, they diminish with age, yet they’re also
easily relearned. So a worker might be an expert
today in his or her field, however in two years that
professional will need to go back and hone those
functional skills or expand upon them. Soft skills,
on the other hand, follow us throughout our lives
and define who we are, how we interact and how
we integrate and contribute to a company’s culture.
Hire for core areas,
2
outsource the rest
The products and services you deliver speak to the
heart of your enterprise. So it stands to reason that
you need highly skilled workers who can transform
those visions into realities. If your core business is IT,
you need talent with outstanding technical prowess.
If you run a law firm, you need attorneys and the top
legal minds in your area of practice. These specialists
represent your strategic producers — your primary
workforce. Ancillary support, while still important, is
more incidental. Running a lean, focused operation
optimizes cost and process efficiencies. We
recommend outsourcing administrative, backend
or corporate support tasks to less critical roles
within the organization or to external partners who
specialize in them as their core offerings.
3
Hire diversity
It’s been proven time and again that a diverse
workforce produces positive impacts on any
organization. A diverse workforce yields greater
levels of creativity, fresh perspectives and new
approaches that spur innovation. Diversity in the
21
st
century has expanded to encompass values
— the motivating factors that inspire talent to join
a company, embody its organizational visions with
passion, strive to make meaningful contributions
and reach higher levels of productivity.
A truly diverse workforce also reduces attrition.
A company that promotes diversity is one free
from discrimination. And an environment that
embraces differences is more likely to attract and
retain top performers.
FOR TRANSFORMING THE “WAR” FOR TALENT
INTO A MUTUAL JOURNEY OF SUCCESS
10 STRATEGIES
By Sunil Bagai
