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Productivity Insulation: How your business could save $27,000

Overlooking your biggest investment

One of the most overlooked parts of owning or managing a business is the need to safeguard your labour. In the vast majority of businesses, labour is the biggest portion of an organization’s operating expenses. Depending on the size and type of your business, it can be between 50-75% of your total overhead. Yet, most businesses and organizations do not put much focus on protecting and maintaining the productivity of their staff. If you look at it from a completely financial perspective, it is mind boggling! If a business has a piece of equipment that is a major expense, let’s say, 15% of your entire operating costs, it would be taken care of extremely well. Business owners and managers know that protecting and maintaining your important assets is how you ensure the best productivity and profitability from your business.

The Problem

This begs the question, why is it that people are quick to protect and maintain their equipment, but will not put the same focus on protecting and maintaining their labour?

Maybe, it is because equipment is seen as an investment, and labour is seen as an expense? Or maybe it is because equipment is a tangible, noticeable asset. Where labour is your staff, a bunch of people doing different things and different times. It’s less noticeable and more subtle.

Regardless, the why is puzzling, but not the most important thing to understand. What is important to understand is that, as with your equipment, if you do not invest time and effort into your staff, you are losing A LOT of money. This could damage the financial future of your business.

Labour Value Loss

The impact of not investing time and effort into your staff is called Labour Value Loss. It is the very scary consequence of neglecting to protect and maintain the productivity of your staff. It is the financial toll that common labour problems have on a business.

For example: According to the Center for American Progress it costs the equivalent of 20% of a person’s salary to replace them. The costs associated with replacing staff include, but are not limited to:

  • Paying overtime
  • Recruitment costs
  • Drop in productivity
  • Any associated customer loss

Labour Value Loss is a startling reality for most businesses. What makes it so concerning is that the money lost is slow and subtle, like a leaky faucet or a poorly insulated roof. This is happening everywhere, every day.

So, the real question is how do we fix it? Well, just like a drafty home, we fix it with insulation.

The Solution

To address Labour Value Loss, you need Productivity Insulation. This is the way you protect and maintain the productivity of your staff. The easiest way to think of Productivity Insulation is to look at it as robust HR policies and Employee Engagement. HR policies are important to make sure rules and procedures are clear and transparent, keeping businesses compliant and employees informed. However, the lion’s share of effective Productivity Insulation comes from Employee Engagement.

Employee Engagement is the efforts that organizations make to create a high level of motivation and enthusiasm in employees. For Employee Engagement to be effective, it doesn’t need to be complicated or costly, it just needs to be understood and consistent.

The return on your investment from Employee Engagement can be astonishing. The Labour Value Loss from Disengagement, when employees have a low level of motivation and enthusiasm, is 34% of their annual salary. This number alone makes Labour Value Loss expensive. Add other elements, like Turnover or Absenteeism, and you have a costly problem that you cannot ignore. The future of your business depends on it.

If you would like to learn more about Labour Value Loss, here is a short video. This video is part of a FREE, on-demand, 30-minute course we provide to businesses called: Rethinking Labour Costs: Increasing Profits and Productivity. Click here to check it out.

Oh, I almost forgot!

You are probably wondering where the $27,000 in the title of this article comes from. Well, that is the average Labour Value Loss that a business will experience from Disengagement each year. If you would like to know how it was calculated:

Here is where we got the numbers for our formula:

Here is our formula:

(# of Staff) x (Annual Salary)x (Percentage of Employees Disengaged)x (Cost of Disengagement)= Total Labour Value Loss due to Disengagement
4 Employees x $41,000   = $164,00050% of employees are disengaged     x 0.50disengaged employees cost 34%     x 0.34= $27,880

This is a conservative, yet well supported, number. However, it is only one aspect of Labour Value Loss.

To learn more about Labour Value Loss, and to calculate how much your business may be losing due to Disengagement, Turnover, Absenteeism, etc., take our FREE course.

Rethinking Labour Costs: Increasing Profits and Productivity.

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support reach out to us at info@roman3.ca

Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources

Does Your Workplace Have a Culture of Complacency?

Don’t you just love order and predictability?

It is human nature to look for order and comfort. There is a sense of harmony in predictable environments that ultimately lead us to what we all strive for – Safety. Feeling safe is really the ultimate goal. It is the natural by-product that comes from meaningful relationships, financial security, and continuous employment.

As with anything, too much of a good thing can cause problems. Accordingly, the comfort that comes from a sense of safety has its dark side too. The inherent problem that comes from too much comfort and predictability is that we become acclimatized to it; we become dependent on it and will go to great lengths to keep it, even to our own detriment. As individuals, this dependence on comfort often manifests itself as complacency. We become complacent in our lives, stop pushing ourselves, and often abandon our ambitions in order to stay comfortable – don’t rock the boat. In addition to the individual dangers that come with complacency, there is a much greater threat – working in a culture of complacency.

From an organizational and business perspective, the dangers of a culture of complacency can erode the very foundation of an organization’s business plan, as well as ruin its employee base. In short, a culture of complacency can act as a cancer to an organization’s current and future success.

What does a Culture of Complacency look like?

There are many symptoms of complacency, and they can reveal themselves in many ways. In his book A Sense of Urgency, John Kotter (2008) explains three ways in which these symptoms can manifest themselves.

– Low overall performance standards, often in organizations that have fallen asleep with the same people in leadership positions for more than a decade with little turnover.

– A lack of sufficient performance feedback from external sources, such as not really listening to customer complaints to realize that the products do not meet the needs of the client.

– A kill-the-messenger-of-bad-news, low candor, low confrontation culture, often, found in family-owned businesses where influence does not go both ways.

A Forbes article titled: 10 Signs Your Employees Are Growing Complacent In Their Careers highlights some symptoms that look like:

– Employees stop asking questions

– People stop taking the initiative

– Everyone is playing it too safe

– No one is showing passion in their work

What is a Culture of Complacency?

The Elements of a Culture of Complacency can be summarized into 4 main components.

Comfortable and Traditional Methods

Phrases like: “This is how we have always done it” and “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” accurately summarize this element. People naturally default to the steps and processes that are familiar and routine because of the comfort that comes with them. There is also an unwillingness to break from tradition, an inherent fear of change, and a fear of failure that can cause an aggressive adherence to what is comfortable and familiar.

Rigid Thinking

In a Culture of Complacency there is often a lack of awareness of what is happening outside an individual’s normal environment, as well as a lack of outside perspective to the internal habits and practices of the organization. Naively looking at information, ideas, and opportunities as good or bad overlooks the inherent complexity of most situations. Rigidly looking at the extremes of things is a common symptom of a Culture of Complacency. If you only see things as black or white you miss the grey, which is where most of the world operates.

Finding the No

When approached with a new-found opportunity or new idea, many people’s first instinct is to find the quickest way to say no. This is one of the most prominent elements of a Culture of Complacency. When something outside the norm or comfortable flow is brought up there is a compulsion to find a way to delegitimize it or over complicate it, so that it fails. This is a problem-focused approach, where people put effort into finding problems and roadblocks to stop something that does not fit into their common practice. This is the opposite of a solution-focused approach, where individuals put effort into discovering solutions and adaptations in order to establish a way to make something work that is considered outside the common practice.

Unconfident and Low-Profile Leadership

Perhaps the most impactful element of a Culture of Complacency is unconfident and low-profile leadership that creates an expectation of mediocrity. In an environment where leadership is focused on a “don’t rock the boat” mentality it creates an environment where the other 3 elements of complacency are able to fester and grow. This type of leadership is most commonly a result of two major factors; apathy and inconsistency. When leaders do not inspire their teams and inspire in them a sense of confidence in their work, teams usually turn to safety in traditional and common practice. This is often the only way to survive. A leader’s job is to make their team feel safe; safe to ask questions, safe to bring new ideas, safe to take risks. Without this sense of safety (which we stated earlier is something we all strive for), a sense of complacency starts to grow in its place.

How to Identify a Culture of Complacency

The first thing for a person to consider when attempting to identify if they have a culture of complacency is to ask – do you spend your days trying to be busy, or do you spend you time trying to be better? Many people spend their entire career going into work every day, putting in a full day of work, and being very busy while they are at work. Nevertheless, they still live in a culture of complacency. Some of the questions for a person to ask in order to determine if they are in a Culture of Complacency include: Are you trying to be as busy as yesterday or better than yesterday? Is your goal to be in a predictable environment or a productive environment?

If you would like to learn a little more about the impact and signs of complacency, check out a discussion on our podcast where we dig into this idea in much more depth.

How to Combat a Culture of Complacency

When endeavoring to challenge a Culture of Complacency, it can be tackled on two fronts: Individual and Organizational. When attempting to challenge it on an individual level, people need to first embrace the paradox of finding comfort in being uncomfortable. Look for challenge and personal/professional growth as where comfort can be found. The excitement that comes with being better every day needs to be what sustains individuals rather than the predictability of the job itself. When attempting to challenge Culture of Complacency on an organizational level, the first step is to institute a cultural shift toward a Culture of Innovation. This needs to start with leadership and it needs to happen both top-down and bottom-up.

The Takeaway

A Culture of Complacency is a very complex and layered concept. Its impact extends beyond the productivity of an organization and affects workplace safety, customer satisfaction, employee turnover, governance, and more. The negative impact it has on virtually every aspect of the workplace can be the breaking point of any organization.

It is important to be reflective of both your situation and that of your organization and to understand the warning signs and effects that a Culture of Complacency has on your professional life. It is important to take the time to ask yourself “Are you looking to protect your predictability or protect your productivity?”. It is also important to recognize that discomfort, innovation, and a willingness to take risks are the beginnings of both evolution and progress.

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support reach out to us at info@roman3.ca

Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources Skill Development

Quantum Thinkers Have Real Superpowers – Are You One of Them?

Quantum Thinking: What is it?

There is some confusion about what, exactly, quantum thinking means.  Some think it’s connecting your mind, body and spirit; some think it’s a tactic to better understand and embrace physics, and still others think it can be a magical way to live a happy and perfect life.

Now, I don’t know about any of that. I won’t tell you how to connect your mind, body and spirit, or help you understand physics or promise you a perfect life. I want to talk about quantum thinking from a cognitive, adult learning perspective. Quantum thinking is about a depth and speed of processing that could be a vital and game-changing skill when it comes to leadership, innovation, management and education. It involves using multi-dimensional thinking and thematic analysis to discern and synthesize complex information from seemingly random memory, in real time. In an overly simplified way, quantum thinking is about developing a seemingly limitless mental capacity. Who wouldn’t want that?

I first came across quantum thinking, or to be more to the point, “high capacity” quantum thinking, when I was a grad student doing research on cognition and transformative learning. I was reading a book by celebrated adult educator Jane Vella. She only touched on this concept in the book, but it peaked my interest and I dug further into it.  I discovered that different kinds of thinking can be expressed as an upside down hierarchy in terms of capacity and depth. In this model, linear thinking falls on the bottom, creative thinking (spreading your thinking outward) and critical thinking (reflecting and analyzing information) sit in the middle and high capacity quantum thinking has all of it and more.

So, again: What is it?

High capacity quantum thinking is the ability to simultaneously and systematically connect six different skills:

Creativity – explore alternate options and pathways, even unconventional ones.

Intuition— trusting the information, higher-order concepts, and ideas that come to your mind.

Unrelated storage – being able to learn and store information without immediate relevance and then recall and connect it once it becomes relevant.

Information integration – the ability to integrate information from all sources into actionable and practical concepts

Synthesis – creating foundational and practical knowledge from the information and concepts created and stored.

Accelerated Processing – being able to make connections, process and learn information, and master new tasks at an intensely quick rate.

How can I use this information?

The real question is, how can high capacity quantum thinking help you?  For the purposes of this article we’ll talk about how to look for signs of quantum thinking in your potential job applicants.

High capacity quantum thinkers are a gift to some industries and a curse to others. If you’re looking for employees to just tow the company line, be given tasks to repeat the same way everyday until they retire, maintain status quo, and think within the box, then you need to stay clear of high capacity quantum thinkers. They will drive you crazy, be unhappy, and most likely will not use their hyper accelerated thinking skills to make your life easier.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for more efficiency in your process, looking for new and meaningful connections, need answers to questions you haven’t even thought of yet, and want all of this yesterday—then you, my friend, need to be in the market for a high capacity quantum thinker.

So where do you find them?

That’s a tough one. Most high capacity quantum thinkers don’t even realize this is what they are. They tend to believe that having a mind that goes a mile a minute and sees all the angles is what everyone experiences. Interestingly enough, many high capacity quantum thinkers may have been misdiagnosed as having ADHD as kids. This might be because ADHD is marked with having a need to have your mind stimulated, and looking beyond the task you are currently engaged in to find that stimulation.  The undisciplined high capacity quantum thinker may appear to be scattered, unfocused or having poor follow through. This is because having information and inspiration constantly coming at you can be overwhelming and extremely distracting. Like most super powers, they’re a burden until you learn to harness and control them.

So, let’s reframe the question.

Where do you find DISCIPLINED High Capacity Quantum Thinkers?

It’s likely they’re already applying for positions in your company. High capacity quantum thinkers know what kind of work and projects interest them and they’re eager to seek them out. You will find them among the resumes and cover letters that speak about their potential, their achievements attained in a short period of time, will likely have had three or four jobs in a ten year span, which they’ve left to pursue more exciting prospects. They won’t have the twenty years of experience you’re looking for, they will be the ones who sound confident and engaged, but whom you thought were probably “too green” or inexperienced to consider as a serious candidate.

Overlooking high capacity quantum thinkers is understandable. Lots of people claim to be great and able to meet all of your needs. Hiring people is risky, so you play it safe and go with the most experienced candidates.  It makes logical linear sense. But if you’re going to choose people who have done the job before, you’ll likely get employees who will do things the way they’ve always been done. However, if you want to increase the capacity of your business, you need to invest in increasing the “High Capacity” of your employees. The best advice I can offer to help you spot them is to look for people who have been able to complete excellent work in surprisingly short time frames, people who routinely over-deliver in terms of quality and deadlines, and people who can find connections, unique perspectives, and transferable elements in seemingly random or limiting situations. If you can harness the power of a quantum thinker you can have your very own super hero at your disposal, and again…who wouldn’t want that!

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca 

Effective Management Human Resources Teamwork

Putting a Giraffe in the Fridge – The Power of Ridiculous Interview Questions

The problem with interviews

Okay, we’ve all been there: sitting in a job interview (on either side of the table—it doesn’t really matter) and we’re thinking, “Do these questions really highlight the skills and qualities needed to be successful in this job?”

If you’re the one doing the hiring you’re also thinking, “How can I find the best employee and not just the best interviewer?” If you’re the candidate, you’re thinking, “How can I show them I’m exactly what they’re looking for without sounding like I’m telling them what they want to hear?”

Here is the crux of the problem: the skills needed to make a good impression in an interview are rarely the skills needed to do the job. For example, if you’re interviewing for a management job, it’s difficult to demonstrate that you have the necessary skills to lead, organize and make hard decisions when you’re just sitting answering questions that you had time to prepare for. If you’re doing the hiring, it’s hard to see the qualities and skills that fit your needs when the person you’re interviewing could be misrepresenting their skills and experience.

What you’re really looking for

As everyone who does hiring knows, what you’re looking for in a good employee is fit. You want someone who not only has the experience, but also the transferable skills to thrive in the position for which you are hiring. (If you want more on the importance of transferable skills check out previous article: Skills vs Experience) The real question is whether you trust people when they say they have the skills you are seeking. When applicants say they work well in stressful situations, you just have to take them at their word. There is really no opportunity to prove it, which is a huge disservice to both you and the candidate. Sure, there are options for you to give them an opportunity to prove themselves—like telling them they have thirty seconds to create a new jingle for your company’s flagship product while you dangle them out the window. But your lawyers will likely advise you against that. So what can you do?

Your main focus should be an applicant’s soft skills—over the education, over the experience, over the technical training. So the real question you should be starting with before you begin writing the interview questions should be, “What are the essential skills needed to be successful in this job?”

The right fit on soft skills is essential. A study by Watts and Watts (2008) indicated that hard skills contribute only 15% to one’s success, whereas 85% of success is due to soft skills. Another study by Klaus (2010) found that 75% of long-term job success depends on personal skills, while only 25% is dependent on technical knowledge.

So, again: How can the candidates prove it to you?

What a ridiculous question can do for you

Enter the ridiculous questions. Now, I may be getting off to a bad start by calling them ridiculous. I prefer the term “abstract”, however for the formal and rather stuffy setting of a job interview they are certainly unconventional— but that’s part of their brilliance. These kinds of questions fracture a candidate’s overly-polished and prepared responses and give you direct insight into the person behind the carefully crafted first impression.

The skills you need to ask ridiculous questions

Being able to get the information you need from one of these abstract questions takes some skill. Skilled interviews can infer parallels and patterns in people’s answers.   They can help you read the person and frame the kind of answer you are looking to get out of the question. It’s about analysis and synthesis: analyzing how people respond to your questions for deeper insight into their thinking process, and then synthesizing the meaning to establish proof of the skill you are seeking. Knowing the right questions to ask takes practice and you may have to dig deep into your memory, back to high school when you were analyzing poems about gardens and cloudy days, looking for the meaning and symbolism. I just hope you didn’t miss that day.

Questions and their intended results

Here are some sample questions and their potential benefits to give you an idea of how this works:

How many ways can you get a needle out of a haystack?

This question is great if you’re seeking people who can look at complex situations and assess possible solutions. Notice that the question asks how many ways?  This is important when you’re looking for someone to not get stuck on a single solution and who will look for new ways to get the job done. The answers you want to hear from positional “problem fixers” will demonstrate openness to looking at multiple angles, a logical and impactful problem-solving method, and creative approaches to challenges. I like to suggest this question to organizations looking for “problem fixers” such as Economic Developers, Career Counsellors, Auditors, etc.

How would you explain Facebook to your Grandma?

This question focuses on attention to detail, patience and understanding the perspective of the customer. It’s a good one to ask in environments with highly technical or industry-specific language where it’s easy to forget that clients may not be familiar with industry vocabulary or concepts. Your best front line people will be employees who can put themselves in the shoes of those you serve.  The answers you want to hear will be compassionate and easy to understand, using accessible language and thorough details.

Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?

This was an internet favorite from a few years ago, but is still a great abstract question. If you’re hiring for a job that needs to take theoretical, hard-to-visualize information and make it accessible, then this is an excellent question. Being able to quickly respond to a weird question like this can really show the processing speed of your applicant. Skills like being able to visualize complex verbal descriptions are a large part of many jobs like marketing, programming and customer service. The answers you want to this question are quick, logical and practical. This can also be a great way to access the sense of humor in a candidate if that’s needed for the job or team they would be joining.

Could be a game changer

This simple shift in the way you think about interviews can have profound effects on talent acquisition. I urge all my readers to put more weight on transferable and soft skills than on experience, because experience is not the same as quality of experience.  Soft skills can be taught (it’s my bread and butter) — meaning you can help shape the quality of a person’s experience to suit the needs of your company.  It’s a much larger investment, but it’s worth it.    

Before you interview applicants, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of the skills you’re looking for in prospective employees. You’ll also need a strategy for discerning the presence of these skills during the course of the interview.  Asking ridiculous questions is one way to have job candidates demonstrate, rather than just talk about, having the skills you’re seeking.

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca 

Effective Management Human Resources Improve Your Career

Skills vs. Experience: Successfully Hiring For The Future

Let’s have a serious talk about skills

Anyone who reads articles, blogs or literature about career advice or job searching will hear a repeated focus on the benefit of your personal/soft skills related to employment. Your skills, you will read, are the core value the employer is seeking when hiring, and are something you need to focus on when you are applying.

When employers are searching for an ideal candidate they are looking for a combination of the right personality, soft skills and technical or hard skills. When it comes to valuing these skills,  employment experts agree that while technical skills may get you an interview, it’s the soft skills that will get you the job—and help you keep it.

The all too important soft skills are pieces of your personality that define the kind of worker you are. These include skills like attitude, communication style, thought process, stress management, adaptability and reliability—and this makes a lot of sense.  Someone with excellent database or programming skills isn’t much good if his toxic negativity brings down the entire team or if he crumbles under the slightest pressure.

While hard skills may get your foot in the door, soft skills will keep you there. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) conducted a study on 260 employers (including Chevron and IBM, according to Forbes) and found the following five soft skills to be the most valuable in employees, in order of importance:

  1. Ability to work in a team structure
  2. Ability to make decisions and solve problems
  3. Ability to communicate verbally with people inside and outside an organization
  4. Ability to plan, organize, and prioritize work
  5. Ability to obtain and process information

Your soft skills are essential in the first few months of the job, while you are still learning the technical side of your new role. In fact, according to Mark Murphy (author of Hire for Attitude), 46% of new hires fail in the first eighteen months, and of those new hires, 89% fail for reasons associated with attitude, one of the critical soft skills!

So, the case is made by employment and career experts for why employers should be really excited about your employment soft skills that you bring from your past experiences to their workplace. The only problem is that the people who aren’t really getting that message tend to be the employers.

It comes down to risk

Employers—well, most employers anyways— are not heavily weighing employment soft skills in their hiring practices. This fact is all too well known by Millennials. The problem with skills is that they are less tangible and more risky than experience. So when push comes to shove and employers have to choose someone to trust with their position and their business, they might want to roll the dice and hire the person who has less experience but a lot of skills and potential. However, most of the time employers decide to play it safe and hire the person with more experience. But should we really blame them?

Skills are about potential, which is fine, but potential is realized down the line and employers are hiring someone for right now. This is a classic investment concern. Do I invest my resources in something that is less proven but has the real potential to have a high rate of return, or something that has a long history of consistent performance?

This is why employers often care more about your experience than your skills or why employers hire the most experienced candidates over the less experienced, but likely more skilled, ones. They just don’t want to take the risk.

Some of that risk centers on questions like:

“If I invest in this person’s potential and it pays off, what if they won’t stay with my company?”

  • Well, if you’re questioning the commitment of a younger worker, according to INC: 64% of Millennials would rather make $40K a year at a job they love than $100K a year at a job they think is boring. And nearly 80% of Millennials consider as a top priority, how they will fit with the people and the culture of their targeted job, followed by the career potential of the position.

“If someone isn’t proven in the job, how can I be sure they’ll be able to do the work?”

  • According to Skills Survey’s Three Hard Truths Every Hiring Organization Needs to Learn. “Hard skills are rarely the reason that people fail in your organization.” Most of the time the reasons employees don’t work out are around absence, personality conflicts, and not fitting in. If they have the skills to learn and a strong work ethic, they will be able to do the job, I just might take a little longer.

“If I don’t hire the most experienced people, then how can I make sure I have the best people?”

  • There is some influential research on this subject, including work by Professor Robert Kelley from Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business that has clearly demonstrated that technical skills alone do not distinguish standout employees. Competencies such as initiative and business awareness, as well as skills in leadership, collaboration, communication and presenting are the indicators of your key employees.

Who the Person Is vs. What the Person Was

As an employer, it’s important to remember that you are hiring a person, not just a collection of experiences. There is more to the job than doing the tasks that you are hiring someone to do. Employment soft skills are where the person will succeed in those other essential, but less tangible areas such as reliability, innovation, creativity, and dedication. Experience can be gained, taught and crafted. It is much harder to mold who the person is because individual identity is much more entrenched. We’ve all seen how a single toxic person can damage staff morale, customer relations and the profit margins of businesses. We’ve also seen how a hardworking, morale-building, approachable and dependable employee can become the person everyone turns to for help and makes the business a better place to work. According to Talent Acquisition Factbook 2015, it costs $4,000 to replace an employee. That is not including the loss of productivity, morale and knowledge base that leaves when employees do. This makes it organizationally and financially essential to choose the right person when hiring. When you hire for experience you’re hiring someone’s past, which might be all they can give you. When you hire someone’s skills, you are hiring their future, which is really what they are looking to give you.

How do I show them I fit?

Here is the reality facing job seekers:  despite the overwhelming research demonstrating that employment soft skills are the core, essential, standout qualifications for almost any job, employers remain shy about focusing on them when filling vacancies. So what do you do?

You need to focus on your fit. Research the needs and the cultural atmosphere of the company to which you’re applying, then really show them who you are by showing them all of the technical and employment soft skills that you possess.  You can’t control the thoughts and fears of the employer, but you can make a compelling and engaging case for why you are worth the risk. If you want some tips on how to do that, check out one of my past articles titled: A Successful Job Search is Simply about Telling a Good Story.

The Takeaway

Employment soft skills should be something that excites us all. Job seekers should be keen to share them and employers should be eager to hear about them. But the risk and fear of the “unproven” is what is holding us all back. The research proves time and again that the reward far outweighs the risk. I think it’s time for all of us to stop playing it “safe” and start being focused on people’s future and not just their past.

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca 

Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources Teamwork

Is Your Understanding of Diversity All Wrong?

Do you know the true value of diversity?

Lately I have been consumed with recruiting. I recently hired staff positions at one of my organizations, where I’m also currently looking for new Board Members. I also just finished the process of recruiting committee members and advisors for my other organization. Lastly, I am consulting with a government group looking to recruit members for a very exciting youth council. So lately I have been living and breathing recruitment, which is par for the course when you specialize in talent development. To be honest, I actually kind of like recruiting, especially when it’s for the assortment of levels, positions, skill sets, and experience that I normally work with on a regular basis. But more than the recruiting, I really like maximizing the skills and potential that new people bring to their new roles. The unique viewpoints, backgrounds, strengths, and ideas really excite me. I am a true believer in a strengths based approach to teamwork, which means working with people with wide reaching skills and knowledge that have little overlap and letting the people work primarily within their strengths, while keeping them away from their areas of weakness. As an example, is I have an Economic Development Officer (EDO) who is an amazing relationship builder and an innovative problem solver, but lacks administrative organizational skills. So I let my EDO focus on his strengths and we share the more administrative tasks within his team to someone who has great skills and leadership with organizational tasks. Why hold them back from the things they do well? The other piece of maximizing skills and potential that I am a true believer in is discourse. Maybe it is the academic in me, but I adamantly believe that divergent views and lively debate are essential to true progress and innovation. Impactful discourse can only come from diversity… but this may not be the diversity most people think of.

Diversity of Perspective

Now, I don’t want to lose anyone by talking about diversity. I know there are strong opinions when the term is uttered. While some people get on their soapbox to shout their thoughts about political correctness, others feel that only people who are a part of underrepresented groups have the right to speak about diversity. These are just a few examples. But, I want to be very clear right at the start, the value of recruiting for diversity has nothing to do with political correctness. I’m not talking about, or even remotely supporting tokenism (the practice of doing something, such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group, only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly.) In fact, I’m kind of disgusted by the lack of respect and the lack general decency that tokenism invokes. What I’m saying is that the true value in hiring for diversity is gaining the diversity of perspective.

As I mentioned earlier, two important elements of maximizing the skills and the potential of groups, organizations, or individuals are a strengths based approach and discourse. These elements can only exist in a team when there is a dynamic of diversity of perspective; new viewpoints to share, unique experiences to pull from, different struggles that have been conquered, and distinctive approaches to common issues, just to name a few. If this diversity of perspective does not exist then all efforts for development and innovation are doomed to fail or at best, be mildly impactful.

We don’t need Ambassadors

When most people think of diversity, they think of a group of people whose members represent different cultures, races, languages, sexual orientation, gender, class, and abilities. These are some of the different backgrounds that create the common understanding of diversity. The problem with thinking of diversity as a form of representation is that even the most well meaning efforts become tokenistic in their desire to have all backgrounds visibility represented.

The true value of diversity is the range of perspectives that it allows. The differences of culture, race, language, sexual orientation, gender, class, and ability inherently give people individual experiences that build the uniqueness of their perspectives. At the same time, each person is allowed be an individual and not an “ambassador” for their particular minority group. We want the whole person to be involved and engaged. Their background will form their perspective, not define it.

The Dull Grey of the Homogenous Perspective

Without the commitment to recruiting diversity of perspective we run the risk of putting a lot of work into something that is only valued by a particular segment of the population we are trying to inspire, sell to, develop, or whatever. We all like to surround ourselves with like minded people, but we need to be careful and consider why they are likeminded. Are they likeminded in goals and vision? Appreciation of progress and challenge? Or because we have the same background and perspectives?

Recruiting for diversity of perspective is simply the best way to be the best. I personally look for the strengths based approach and truly value discourse. Reaching the largest audience, finding innovative marketing segments, creating competitive advantage, and accelerating problem solving efforts, are just a few of the possible benefits.

The Takeaway

Value diversity because you truly want to be the best. Don’t value diversity because you want to have nice pictures of unique faces. Recruit people who will have many different viewpoints and insights. Don’t recruit people who look different and define their value by their differences. Perspectives are essential to business, problem solving, teamwork, ethics, training, personal growth, and maximizing potential. Put great efforts into gathering as many as you can.

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca