“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don’t have to manage them.”
~ Jack Welch
Carlos oversees the human resources department for an expanding oil company. As part his goal to educate and improve abilities of HR and the staff to manage human capital, he decided to find and share great articles. “I wanted a resource that would be of value for our employees and managers,” Carlos said.
“I wanted our people to understand that they could have more control over their advancement,” Carlos said. “It’s not just HR that controls talent management, leaders and workers have a say, too.”
Carlos researched talent management articles for human resources he could draw on for information to share. “Often I’ll ask the writer of a great article if I can repost it for my people,” Carlos said. “I know it’s unethical to just lift it from the web without permission.” Even without permission, however, it is acceptable to quote excerpts and provide a link back to the original article.
Great talent management articles can offer education and value nearly equivalent to semesters of coursework. Carlos looked for articles with depth and vision.
“Ten Ways to Keep Your Star Employees” is a great example of the best kind of article for his managers. “It fit right in with both empowering employees and managing talent,” Carlos said. “Look at all the points it covers!”
Empowering Employees.
- Encourage employees to use their own gifts, which will help them feel empowered to take initiative and achieve more.
Discovering what brings fulfillment.
- Learn what tasks and projects your employees find most satisfying, so you can assign them work they find rewarding.
Focusing on what is right.
- In your feedback, focus more on what workers are doing right and less on what’s wrong. Help them to hone their areas of strength.
Communicating effectively.
- Make sure each person—including management and staff—understands their tasks, the company’s policies, and what’s expected of them.
Helping employees work smarter.
- Give your employees guidance in how to work smarter, not harder.
Offering quality-of-life enhancements.
- Even if you can’t pay them more just yet, offer rewards they’ll appreciate.
Encouraging enjoyable work.
- Renew employees’ enthusiasm for their work by prompting them to focus more on what they enjoy—either for the morning or a full day.
Giving continuous recognition.
- Share frequent praise and public recognition, so they know what they’re doing well.
Discussing advancement possibilities.
- Look for advancement opportunities for your employees, and help them find those openings within the company for themselves.
Coaching and mentoring.
- Increase your direct reports’ skills, value to the company, and chances for advancement through ongoing coaching and mentoring.
Carlos also found cost-effective ways to improve employee morale with this article: “How Managers Can Improve Their Workplaces for Employees“. The article covered the value of:
Maintaining open communication.
- Keep lines of communication open so employees feel their opinions matter.
Adjusting work schedules.
- Allow employees to use flex-time, and consider other ways to keep talent that might otherwise leave the company.
Recognizing accomplishments.
- Improve your employees’ job satisfaction by showing appreciation for a job well done.
Enhancing their skill sets.
- Develop programs and plans for workers to increase their skill levels. This increases the talent pool, allowing your company to promote from within, and dramatically improves job fulfillment.
“As I looked at talent management articles, some were particularly appropriate from a human resources perspective,” Carlos said. “‘3 Reasons to Invest in Leadership Development‘ added to my understanding of the value of outside coaching in ways I hadn’t considered.” It emphasized the following three practices:
Focusing on coaching and training.
- Upgrading your current employees’ abilities is cheaper than bringing on new recruits. The cost of training them and bringing them up to speed is much higher than training or coaching current employees.
Utilizing outside coaching.
- Engaging an outside coach relieves a burden on managers, allowing them to focus on their jobs. Plus, you gain an expert trainer with proficiency in teaching and motivating employees, in contrast to a manager, whose skills may lie in a different direction.
Creating a succession plan.
- Talent development benefits both the company and the employees. The company creates a succession plan of rising leaders and keeps proprietary information within the organization. Staff know they are valued and appropriately challenged.
“I found great value in reading talent management articles to help me with my company’s human resources,” Carlos said. “It also gave me insights into breaking news and new ways of using traditional strategies.” Carlos likes the fast learning that comes from articles and plans to continue mining top articles for more valuable information to help him retain his company’s top talent.
If you’re looking for articles on leadership, management, and work issues, visit Joel’s website. For assistance building your company’s human resources, contact Joel.
