Yesterday a friend of mine asked me. “I’ve hired many young graduates, gave them good pay, treated them like my family members, gave them training, but at the end they still leave us, so what’s the point of treating them nice and training them? I might as well hire experienced staffs and let them do it on their own, at least that will save my time.”
My answer to his question was rather simple. “Will that help your business in long run?“.
Many business owners have confused themselves when it comes to talent management. They do what they believe are good to the staffs and expect the staffs to repay them with what they’ve expected.
Talent management is just the same as with communication. It’s vital to know what’s in both parties mind to work towards a win-win solution, then offering all the “good stuff” on table. Yes, Business Owners are the ones who pay the money, they should have the larger say, but do you want a talent or you want an ordinary employee?
Here are some tips for business owners if you have problems dealing with your talents (especially the younger generation):
- Don’t treat them nice, treat them fair . Being nice to them may give them pressure – as if you are their parent. Imagine their parents at home, always reminding them to eat well, drink more water, sleep early, do homework, don’t play computer games, etc; when they come to work, you are just another “parent” who behaves more or less the same. ‘Treat them fair’ simply means “fair” to everyone, no favouritism, fairness in reward and punishment, fairness in scope vs remuneration, etc. Many businesses has their KPIs, Incentives schemes and Promotion criteria set for staffs. Unfortunately the saying “Top Management makes the final decision” has invited unnecessary politics to office, which ultimately leads to lost of talents.
- Stop the Google Office thought, unless you have Google’s culture. I’ve visited so many offices which has Game Stations, Pool Tables and recreational facilities. Sad to say, these are perfect ground for spiders to build their empire. The Business Owners believed that these can attract young talents to join them, and true enough, they’ve got many young people responding well. But the fact is that when someone plays the PS4 during office hour, he/she will be seen as “non-productive”, therefore the bosses believed that these game facilities should only be used during lunch/rest time or after working hours. Thus, these facilities become “tools to keep staffs in office after working hour” and not “the tools to encourage/inspire innovations and creativity”. I’m sure you know what I mean.
- Do you really meant “Result Oriented”? I once asked a client, “If your salesman’s target for a month is RM1million, can he stop meeting customers if he hit RM1million sales within the first week?“. And I almost fell of the chair when my client responded. “Well, he must have gotten the wrong sales target, I will revise his target in week 2 itself.” KPIs are set as a guide, and targets are meant to be broken. I do understand business owner’s aggressiveness, thus I always encourage my clients to give higher reward for those who performed exceptionally well, instead of paying them according to the KPIs table. The element of “surprise/bonus” will somehow encourage talents to do more.
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