Finding and Keeping Great Employees

Rating:
Summary: Core Culture and Alignment
Review: "This book reflects certain fundamental beliefs. First, we believe in people. In our view, people are the real competitive advantage of any company. Having good people decreases turnover, improves individual performance, attracts a flow of new applicants, and fosters growth in organizational profit...Second, we believe in corporate culture. Employees can find a job anywhere, but they commit to and want to remain with an organization whose culture they connect with...Third, we believe the organizations most successful in their staffing and retention practices are those that leverage their core culture to attract and retain like-valued employees. Although job fit is important, culture fit determines whether someone is highly likely to remain with and be successful with the company...Fourth, we believe in a strategic, more than tactical, approach to finding and keeping great employees...Fifth, we believe in simple, doable concepts and guidance, rather than rambling, esoteric prose...Sixth, we believe that any attempt to find and keep great employees must be flexible...Finally, we believe that this book can make a significant difference in organizations-a difference in performance, in productivity, and in profitability" (from the Preface).

In this context, Jim Harris and Joan Brannick, in Chapter 2, focus on culture. They argue that aligned companies base their staffing and retention processes upon one of four forms of core culture:

1. Customer Service- The underlying purpose of a customer-service culture is to create customer solutions (more detailed discussion see Chapter 3).

2. Innovation- The underlying purpose of an innovation culture is to create the future (more detailed discussion see Chapter 4).

3. Operational Excellence- The underlying purpose of an operationally excellent culture is to create a process that minimizes costs while maximizing productivity and efficiency (more detailed discussion see Chapter 5).

4. Spirit- The underlying purpose of a culture of spirit is to create an environment that inspires employee excellence (more detailed discussion see Chapter 6).

They write that "the four core cultures are separate but equal. No one core culture is superior to another. None is more likely to quarantee outstanding financial performance than another. All are equally powerfull in driving long-term organizational success", and argue that "the key to finding and keeping excellent employees is to align your staffing and retention to the one core culture that best propels your company's succes". Then they list the benefits of alignment as following:

* Alignment is strategic.

* Alignment is simplifies the staffing and retention process.

* Alignment strengthens the core culture.

* Alignment builds strong company connections.

* Alignment builds strong job connections.

* Alignment builds strong personal connections.

* The ultimate benefit is a unique competitive advantage: the ability to consistently find and keep to talent.

Finally, they define three steps to the process of alignment as following:

1. The organization must clearly understand how each core culture uniquely contributes to employee connectedness.

2. The organization must embrace one core culture as its operational driver.

3. Management must then align all staffing and retention strategies to the core culture.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Core Culture and Alignment
Review: "This book reflects certain fundamental beliefs. First, we believe in people. In our view, people are the real competitive advantage of any company. Having good people decreases turnover, improves individual performance, attracts a flow of new applicants, and fosters growth in organizational profit...Second, we believe in corporate culture. Employees can find a job anywhere, but they commit to and want to remain with an organization whose culture they connect with...Third, we believe the organizations most successful in their staffing and retention practices are those that leverage their core culture to attract and retain like-valued employees. Although job fit is important, culture fit determines whether someone is highly likely to remain with and be successful with the company...Fourth, we believe in a strategic, more than tactical, approach to finding and keeping great employees...Fifth, we believe in simple, doable concepts and guidance, rather than rambling, esoteric prose...Sixth, we believe that any attempt to find and keep great employees must be flexible...Finally, we believe that this book can make a significant difference in organizations-a difference in performance, in productivity, and in profitability" (from the Preface).

In this context, Jim Harris and Joan Brannick, in Chapter 2, focus on culture. They argue that aligned companies base their staffing and retention processes upon one of four forms of core culture:

1. Customer Service- The underlying purpose of a customer-service culture is to create customer solutions (more detailed discussion see Chapter 3).

2. Innovation- The underlying purpose of an innovation culture is to create the future (more detailed discussion see Chapter 4).

3. Operational Excellence- The underlying purpose of an operationally excellent culture is to create a process that minimizes costs while maximizing productivity and efficiency (more detailed discussion see Chapter 5).

4. Spirit- The underlying purpose of a culture of spirit is to create an environment that inspires employee excellence (more detailed discussion see Chapter 6).

They write that "the four core cultures are separate but equal. No one core culture is superior to another. None is more likely to quarantee outstanding financial performance than another. All are equally powerfull in driving long-term organizational success", and argue that "the key to finding and keeping excellent employees is to align your staffing and retention to the one core culture that best propels your company's succes". Then they list the benefits of alignment as following:

* Alignment is strategic.

* Alignment is simplifies the staffing and retention process.

* Alignment strengthens the core culture.

* Alignment builds strong company connections.

* Alignment builds strong job connections.

* Alignment builds strong personal connections.

* The ultimate benefit is a unique competitive advantage: the ability to consistently find and keep to talent.

Finally, they define three steps to the process of alignment as following:

1. The organization must clearly understand how each core culture uniquely contributes to employee connectedness.

2. The organization must embrace one core culture as its operational driver.

3. Management must then align all staffing and retention strategies to the core culture.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Practical Guidance & Breakthrough Thinking
Review: In my work with line managers and other HR professionals, the things that are keeping them up at night are directly related to finding good people and keeping them. With labor shortages and knowledge gaps, I believe that this is the number one issue for HR professionals in the next decade. Jim Harris and Joan Brannick address this issue directly in a framework that gives the reader specific, implementable ideas to improve their staffing and retention efforts.

The breakthrough thinking in this book is establishing a clear link between corporate culture and staffing and recruiting efforts. The authors encourage readers to define their culture clearly, then be intentional about matching recruiting efforts and retention programs to the culture. By providing examples of best practices that match each of four basic organizational cultures (operational excellence, customer service, innovation, and spirit), the authors provide readers with practical guidance on how to align staffing and retention efforts with the cultures at their companies.

I found most helpful of all the guidance the authors provide on retention. In 25 years of work as an HR professional, I've found that the topic of retention is a lot like the weather - everyone talks about it, but nobody knows how to make it better! This book is different. The authors describe specific ways to influence retention and build a company where employees will want to stay. Immediately after reading this book, I went to work creating a retention plan built around nine specific management practices that will support my company's culture and foster retention. My counterparts on the company's leadership team are enthusiastic about the plan, and are actively at work implementing the management practices.

Finally, I recommend this book because it is well written. The authors avoid jargon and buzzwords. They speak from the heart about HR practices that will engage the soul and generate employee commitment.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful!
Review: Job seekers and job holders alike tend to think they're National Football League free-agents when it comes to getting and keeping jobs in this low unemployment era. Thus, corporations can find it very tempting to act like football teams - throw money at recruits, throw money at employees with wanderlust - and then throw up their hands when people leave. No need for all that, say authors Jim Harris and Joan Brannick. Finding and keeping great employees isn't about winning the bidding, it's about getting to the source of employee alienation and rebuilding connections among people, their jobs, their lives and your company. We at getAbstract recommend this book to employees, especially unhappy ones, and to human resources professionals of all stripes, from recruiters to compensation analysts to development specialists, and even football coaches.