Newsletter: March 2012
Great Talent Integration Begins in Hiring
A good hire not properly integrated into his or her new position and organization will very likely perform below expectations. So what is initially thought to be a positive move can quickly turn into a disappointment. Hiring disappointments are costly to the individual and to the organization.
We define talent integration as the process and practice of blending (integrating) new hires into the organization. A second level of talent integration includes the process and practice for integrating newly promoted managers and executives into their new role.
The integration of talent, whether promoted from within or hired from outside the organization, represents a critical career inflection point for the new employee. Too often this process is overlooked in small businesses or simplified in larger organizations through a quick orientation or onboarding process. This leaves people to fend for themselves and attempt to adjust to their new organization and role essentially on their own. This will negatively influence their productivity and personal experience. This will lower your new employees’ perception about your company, and ultimately your new top talent may leave. They will leave because they have options. Employees want to feel important, and they want to feel that they have been given a suitable opportunity to integrate into and succeed in their new organization.
What Distinguishes Onboarding from Talent Integration?
Onboarding, by definition, is intended to help new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective members of the organization. Onboarding tactics that we see companies commonly use include formal meetings, lectures, videos, print materials, or computer-based orientations to introduce newcomers to their new jobs in new organizations. Yet, what we see is that these activities often default to a more mechanical and routine approach (checklist style) than to a true process of personal and social (and cultural) integration with a developmental approach.
Why Bother? Shouldn’t people just be able to settle in to a new job and organization?
The key purpose of talent integration is to reduce the time for those new to their roles to become productive contributors (i.e., shorten the new job learning curve) and to swiftly anchor them into the organization through establishing strong relationships, support and loyalty. This practice helps them be successful corporate citizens earlier and helps retain employees. Strong “enculturation” also serves as a differentiator and becomes another way to attract talent to your organization.
What’s Involved?
Talent integration involves a more formal, developmentally focused transition plan to help the new employee integrate into the organization—usually covering at least the first 90 to 180 days in addition to standard onboarding tactics named above. It includes Four Core Elements:
- A foundational discussion between the new staff and their immediate supervisor within the first days of hire to:
- Define clear expectations regarding job performance and key expected results to focus on in this next year
- Discuss how best to work with each other. Consider requirements and individual preferences for communication frequency and methods
- Internal mentorship to foster relationship building for the new employee to help them understand the organizational culture and "how work gets done around here."
- Coaching for new managers (best done with an external/neutral executive/performance coach) to support the transition, especially if new skills are needed (i.e., technical/clinical person being promoted to a manager). Remember, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There (Marshal Goldsmith’s book by the same name, 2007)
- Regular performance feedback meetings (monthly at a minimum for at least the first 90-180 days) focusing on what is going well (and why), where the person is challenged and what their ideas are, what they could use for help, and how they are adapting to the organization. These discussions are dialogues and iterative in nature, verses a monologue from the boss.
Great Talent Integration Begins in Hiring
- Before hiring that new employee, make sure that you (the hiring manager or HR) have accurately assessed and planned out the role being hired for:
- What does the job require, and what really needs to be done (vs. what is stated on an outdated job description)?
- What skills, behaviors, and attitudes are required to achieve those requirements for success, now?
- What role adaptation is anticipated for the future?
- Use behaviorally-based interview questions that probe the candidate’s experience, decisions made, and the results of those decisions. Look for demonstration of leadership and growth.
- Include culture-based questions to help determine their personal career values and motivators, and compare them to your organizational values. A key question to use is: Tell me about your ideal company culture. Do this before you talk about your company’s culture.
- Include a scenario-based problem for the candidate to resolve and report on.
- Share with the candidates your organization’s talent integration process and comments and stories from staff that have experienced its value.
- Consider having top candidates complete a personality-based job performance indicator that measures their potential for success in different business environments and roles. (Though such an assessment should never be used as the sole criterion for selection, as part of a selection set, it can be a valuable tool to avoid hiring the wrong candidate for the job.) Upon hiring, it can also be used as a developmental tool to support and coach the new employee in areas that need to be addressed, to promote a faster and more effective integration.
What if your organization does not yet have a talent integration process?
Start by looking at what you do have in place and what is missing based on the advice we offer above. If you are not the decision maker, offer a recommendation to your boss or to management about what can be added, emphasizing why it’s important and the value it offers in attracting and retaining top talent.
Healthcare Corner
End-of-Life Care
There is one event in life that is 100 percent certain for all of us: our death.
Yet how poorly prepared we are to deal with this reality. Whether it’s due to fear, denial, or discomfort, most people tend to avoid discussing death. And in avoiding this discussion, we avoid giving the gift of information about our end of life wishes to our loved ones. Surveys show that 70 percent of the people surveyed say they want to die at home (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,997968,00.html), yet 70 percent die in a hospital or nursing home (CDC study 2005)
Ellen Goodman, cofounder of the Conversation Project, writes in the January-February 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review:
“Dying at home” means not just where people want to die but how: in comfort, among people who care about them, and doing what matters for as long as possible.”
This issue hit home in January when my Mom and best college friend (who was also a client) passed away. They died three weeks apart. My Mom died of multiple organ system failure (she was 91), and my friend died of cancer (he was 65).
And this got us at KLC thinking. How would we like to die? How do your parents, siblings and adult children want to experience their end of life? The lack of talking about and planning for it results in the negatively inverted survey numbers above—70% die in a hospital or nursing home.
Who do you need to talk to (family or beloved friends) and what have you done to make those wishes (and decisions) easier for your loved ones to deal with during your death?
In having this conversation, in letting your wishes be known or in helping your parents and other loved ones let their wishes be known, there are actions you can take to make the final days and decisions better:
- Prepare Advanced Directives
- An Advanced Directive is a written document indicating your choices about medical treatment
- The advanced directives usually include:
- Living Will – tells healthcare providers what type of life-prolonging treatment or procedures to perform if you have a terminal condition or are in a persistent vegetative state
- Medical Power of Attorney – enables you to chose a person who can make medical decisions on your behalf
- Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) – tells the health care providers not to resuscitate you if you have a cardiac or respiratory arrest. A DNR is not the same as a living will.
For more detailed information on these definitions and others related to end of life care see: http://www.emedicinehealth.com/advance_directives/article_em.htm
And do remember:
- Advanced Directives need to be updated periodically as your situation changes or if you move to another state.
- Be sure you keep you Advanced Directives and other key healthcare-related information and documents in a readily accessible place. And furthermore, be sure others know that these documents exist, the role you have requested them to play, and how to access them.
- With each physician who provides care, be sure they have a copy of this information – all of them.
- Have an advocate. Someone who knows your wishes as expressed in the Advanced Directive, Medical Power of Attorney (may or may not be your advocate) and DNR. And be sure that your interests are clearly and vocally represented during the care process.
Unfortunately, when end of life care is discussed, it is sometimes distorted through political positioning and polemics. One reason is that oftentimes end of life care is connected with the economics of health care. And quite unfortunately the social/compassionate reasons are morphed into financially driven motives.
It is widely reported that 25 percent of Medicare expenses are incurred by 5 percent of the recipients in the last year of life. And yes honoring a patient’s wish to die of cancer without receiving heroic treatments, to ensure that the DNR is in place and honored, to withdraw life support when the health care providers indicate that there is no chance of recovery saves money. But to connect the two in a way that ends up talking about “death panels” is a gross disregard for the wishes of the patient and can strip the patient of the very thing they want most: to die with dignity and loved ones.
Ellen Goodman wrote, about a generation ago the birthing process was transformed. It was transformed from a hospital operating-type room place of birth where only the physician and nurses were present, to a birthing process that included the father, video cameras, soft lighting, and comfortable rooms. And it wasn’t the medical profession or the hospitals that drove this transformation, it was women – the mothers.
Our population is aging, and with that we must reexamine how we want to die, and we must make that known to those around us – including the medical profession. The medical profession and health care process will change; they will honor our request. They have in the past and they will again in the future. But it is ours to lead. Without leadership and clear direction, the likelihood will be the default position- to die in a nursing home or hospital.
We encourage you to look into writing a living will, identify a person to serve as a medical power of attorney and to think about writing a DNR. And to have the discussion on how you want to die with those you love most.
