Recent years drove most organizations through tremendous turmoil, whether sending employees home for remote work, laying off (or losing) employees, or hiring large numbers of employees as some companies experienced rapid growth. Through 2021 and early 2022, most organizations were experiencing a large amount of employee churn—what became known as the Great Resignation or the Great Reshuffle—all while the economy began to bounce back. The outcome for many businesses was an atmosphere of firefighting–a maddening pattern driven by reactionary and urgent response to issues while also trying to get more done with fewer and less experienced people. A case can be made: to get our operations under control and reduce firefighting, we must reduce employee churn and implement plans for better employee development and advancement.
Where to Start?
McKinsey & Company’s recent research found that one of the key causes of the high number of employee resignations is the lack of opportunity for career development and advancement. To achieve operational improvement, I believe we need to improve employee development and training programs as soon as possible and cascade them across the organization. If you’re using the same programs and practices from 2019 and earlier, you need to revamp them. The pandemic environment, remote work, and hybrid work have produced a different workforce from before–more challenging for recruiting, retention, and operational excellence.
Key Steps for More Effective Employee Development
1. Rethink employee training. Much employee training in the past revolved around off site training or modules that were several hours or days in duration. In this training approach, employees attend sessions then return to work. Managers assume employees will apply what was learned to improve performance. There have long been questions about the effectiveness of this training approach. Regardless, many organizations do not have time right now to send employees offsite for training for large blocks of time. Employees need to get their work done.
2. Try smaller snippets of training internally, perhaps in weekly or monthly short meetings. Bring in experts to share key skills with employees, and then build in follow up coaching to help employees apply what they learned. Or utilize employees with strengths to help teach peers in short sessions. One of my clients does a great job at this. Whether teaching soft skills or technical skills, employees take part in training their colleagues. One manager has a book club once a month to teach leadership skills to Supervisors and Leads.
3. Have regular coaching sessions with employees. Check in to track how they are doing with their personal and professional development goals. Coach employees in strengthening needed skills or following up on recent training modules. Remember: in any employee development, training is merely Step One. Just because someone attends training does not mean it will convert to a change in behavior or improvement in processes. Strong relationships, following up on coaching and training, reminders, feedback, and accountability must all play parts in developing employees.
4. Provide for more job changes as opportunity for advancement. You don’t have to be a large organization to do this; in fact, smaller organizations may have broader latitude for creativity. Consider moving employees across disciplines to develop skills and provide a strong foundational base of employees for the organization.
5. Don’t hesitate to explore creative options that can extrinsically, yet inherently, motivate employees and take your organization to a higher level of performance. In a recent blog, I shared an innovative idea for rethinking your organizational structure for stronger employee development while also building in flexibility for the future business. One organization provides a good example: it has a traditional hierarchical structure (with traditional pay structures), a high percentage of Millennial employees; and it has lost many of its strongest employees since 2020. We proposed that it is time to give the organization a distinct advantage in recruiting and retention by realigning to a more cross-functional structure that would allow employees to enter the organization in one cross-functional process, orient themselves to the organization, move up within months to a new level/role in that process; then within a few months move up to a new role in that process. Within a year or two, the employee will move to a new cross-functional process and progress in a similar way. And so forth. In this model, upon entering the organization, employees know their growth potential and trajectory.
For additional ideas related to developing a plan to reduce firefighting, please see my recent blog posts.
There is much more that can be discussed related to firefighting, and an additional blog will follow this one. For more information and solutions, please feel free to email me or message me in LinkedIn.