Fickleness: Thy Name Is "Employee"

WHAT ARE YOUR EMPLOYEES doing between noon and two p.m.? If you think they are munching sandwiches behind closed doors, think again.
Chances are, more than a few are logged onto the Internet, surfing for jobs. According to CareerMosaic, the largest job-posting service outside the U.S. Government, its site is visited almost four million times a month – with the heaviest frequency on Mondays and Tuesdays between noon and two. (Absence from work over the weekend does not, apparently, make the employee heart grow fonder.)
Four million visits does not equal four million visitors, since hard-core job-seekers may return to the site several times each week, but it still represents a lot of traffic. And CareerMosaic is but one of many such job sites constituting the electronic classifieds of the ‘nineties.
Your employees may be heeding the advice of a current newspaper ad from the search firm Korn/Ferry International, whose headline reads:
BEING IN LOVE WITH YOUR JOB
DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T FLIRT
WITH A FEW OPPORTUNITIES.
And when an old-line search firm begins advertising for candidates, skilled employees know they are in heavy demand. Those who feel disloyal or insecure, however, about responding to jobs on the World Wide Web – or who may even be in love with their current job – do not have to worry about missing the Big Opportunity. It will find them, thanks to the "old-fashioned" breed of executive recruiters who know how to locate people whose resumes are not in play.
Some mega-corporations not only expect attrition, they actually encourage it – trying to weed out those whose careers have peaked. Several, in fact, have created a job bank that allows the expendable employee from Company A to investigate job possibilities at Company B.
In most organizations, though, attrition – especially of the unplanned variety – is more disruptive than productive. You may be furiously sending signals to the bottom ten percent that you’d dearly love to see them leave, but there is no guarantee (short of firing) that they will be the ones to do so. The increasing propensity of many companies to heap lavish counter-offers on those who have tendered their resignation reflects the difficulties today of finding qualified replacements, not to mention the costs of hiring and training them.
How to Build a More Stable Workforce
Marketers use a term called "switching costs," which simply means the direct or indirect cost, if any, of switching from one brand or provider to another. If, for example, you purchase your car from that rare dealer with evening and weekend service hours, there may be a cost to you in terms of convenience if you buy your next car from a dealer with traditional service hours.
This principle can be used to great effect in building employee retention. Another employer can always come along and offer one of your employees a fatter salary – but what will the employee give up in order to accept it? In the celebrated case of the Atlanta consulting firm that recently bought every employee a BMW, the switching cost is obvious. Less dramatic and less costly ways, however, may work as well.
Companies, for example, try to offer competitive benefits packages – meaning that they are little better or worse than what similar companies appear to offer. While that approach may neutralize the appeal of a competitor’s benefits, it also means your employees may leave precious little behind by jumping ship. An alternative approach might be to select one key benefit and enhance it, such as the co-pay provisions or deductible on a group health-insurance plan, the company match on the 401(K) plan or the treatment of unused vacation. Another approach is to survey employees to determine the one missing piece of your benefits package that they would most value receiving – dental coverage, vision care, a medical savings plan, etc. The widespread use today of cafeteria plans allows many employers to increase the range of benefit options without significantly increasing costs.
"Soft" benefits, such as a day-care center, also can be used to demonstrate an employee-friendly environment – even to those who may not have need of the service. Working Mother magazine recently honored a select list of large corporations that have established formal programs to track the career progress of working moms. On a smaller scale, one innovative company has established a "personal shopper" service that frees employees from the tyranny of grocery shopping (and probably results in their working longer hours).
At the individual employee level, most business organizations do a more diligent job of criticizing employee weaknesses than they do of saying thanks for a job well done. Managers in even the smallest of units or remotest of facilities can assume responsibility for correcting the imbalance by instituting employee-recognition programs. These may be no more elaborate than a thank-you letter (with copy for the personnel file), a company-paid dinner for two or an extra vacation day at the end of an important project.
Targeting the Key Employee
As the pig said in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." Certain of your employees are more equal than others by virtue of position or performance – and they are exactly the people in your organization whom recruiters are trying to target.
You should keep them in your sights as well. The mission with the key employee is threefold: to remove any hidden irritations, to create a visible career path and to encourage tenure through creative long-term compensation plans.
As we have said in these pages before, executive search consultants know one great truth: employees who change jobs have some kind of dissatisfaction with their current work situation that their employer has failed to address. It may be money, but more likely it is elsewhere in the hierarchy of needs – a lack of recognition, a lack of perceived upward mobility, an overbearing or indecisive boss, a lack of "perks" (from larger office to company car), or – worse yet – a nagging concern about the company’s future or sense of direction. Any performance review worth its salt should provide ample opportunity for the employee to express his or her concerns and desires.
As an ample number of court cases have demonstrated, the employee who is promised a job for life will certainly have one. So never promise what you can’t deliver – or later may not want to deliver. Instead, demonstrate your interest in a key employee through faster than average promotion (or lateral "broadening"), bigger than average salary increases, expanded responsibilities and high-visibility assignments. Your thoroughbreds don’t want to be stuck in the stables, unable to show their stuff.
Finally, there are a wide range of deferred compensation options that can build long-term commitment to the organization while making it costly for the key executive to change jobs: for example, stock options, restricted stock grants, multi-year incentive plans, forgivable loans, split-dollar life insurance policies, etc. Companies that fail to take advantage of them do so at their peril. (For a fuller discussion, see our July 1997 issue, "How Attractive Is Your Compensation Plan?")
Why Are We Bringing You This Message?
Executive search consultants succeed or fail on their ability, day in and day out, to extract top performers from organizations just like yours. But top-drawer firms like Sanford Rose Associates build long-lasting practices by developing long-lasting partnerships with important clients whose needs we serve over many years.
If one of your people flirts with another job and takes it, we certainly stand ready to help you fill the void. More important, however, we want to see the people we put into your organization stay and contribute to its growth. As long as our clients grow, we’ll never run out of search assignments (or other companies to recruit from) – and that’s motivation enough to share these thoughts.
 
 
 
 

Use This Checklist for a Successful Interview

EVERY COMPANY CONDUCTS THEM, and every candidate endures them. We’re speaking a- bout interviews, of course. They are the most critical part of the hiring process, and the future of both the organization and the job candidate can rest on the outcome. Yet, for all their importance, far too many interviews are cobbled together – instead of thoughtfully planned and carefully executed.

Over the past four decades, the search consultants of Sanford Rose Associates have debriefed companies and candidates on thousands upon thousands of "face-to-face" job interviews, from the almost flawless to the hopelessly flawed. During that time, some critical elements of successful interviews have emerged.

While the following checklist will not guarantee a perfect interviewing process, it may help your organization avoid a fiasco. And if we have omitted what you believe to be a crucial detail, please take the time to tell us about it.

Before the Visit

• Confirm the interview date and schedule with all concerned.
• Clarify the role of each individual who will participate in the interviewing process. (Ideally, they should be top performers who can help "sell" the company to the candidate.)
• Have at least two back-up interviewers, in case of last-minute illness or travel.
• Provide detailed information about each interviewer to your search consultant.
• Designate a "Shepherd" (usually from the HR function) responsible for guiding the candidate throughout the visit and keeping everyone on time.
• Confirm travel and accommodation plans with the search consultant.
• Make sure the candidate has received company literature well in advance.
• Likewise, distribute information about the candidate well in advance.
• If the candidate will arrive the night before, decide whether he/she will be met at the airport, taken to dinner, etc.
• If the candidate won’t be met, arrange for a fruit basket and/or welcome letter at the hotel. (Create a good first impression.)
• Make similar plans concerning breakfast the next day, travel to your site, etc.

• Be sure the receptionist expects the candidate.
• Have the Shepherd available to greet the candidate upon arrival.
• Schedule time apart from the interviewing process for the candidate to discuss benefits information with HR, complete an expense-account form and handle any other administrative matters.
• Make luncheon plans. (Issues: private dining room or company cafeteria, social break or working lunch, friendly faces or interview panelists?)
• Practice the Golden Rule and treat the candidate throughout the day as an honored guest.

Interviews are opportunities for companies to gain information and insight about candidates – and vice versa. That opportunity can be wasted by focusing on detail readily available from the resume itself (e.g., "What is your current position," "What were your major accomplishments," etc.), as opposed to learning what makes the candidate tick (e.g., "Tell me how you typically manage conflict").

Interviews need not be stressful, but they should create opportunities to observe job-related performance attributes. Thus, the candidate for a public relations job might be asked to write a press release about the company’s most recent earnings report, while the candidate for a general-management position with frequent Board exposure might undergo questioning by a small group of people in a conference room to test his/her persuasiveness.

And why does the candidate trudge from interview to interview throughout the day? Defenders cite the need for consensus decision-making. Detractors make subversive comments about "safety in numbers" and "no one gets all the blame." If your organization believes in interview panels, assemble one that makes sense for the open position – e.g., the hiring manager, the hiring manager’s boss, a human resources professional and two or three people from other departments who interact frequently with the position.

To gain control of the interview process:

• Determine the information you want about the candidate and don’t yet have.
• Assign responsibility to specific interviewers for obtaining it.
• Review prohibited questions under EEO and ADA guidelines.
• Structure one or two situations/assignments that allow the candidate to be observed "in action."
• Ensure that the candidate has ample opportunity to ask questions, and evaluate his/her inquisitiveness and insight.
• Remind all interviewers that the impressions they create will form the candidate’s impression of the company itself (warm vs. aloof, decisive vs. indecisive, dynamic vs. static, etc.).
• Encourage everyone to be a "salesman" by explaining something they like about their job, the company, the community or opportunities for future growth.
• Avoid exclusionary questions, such as "Why should we consider you for this position?"

Candidates for certain positions require the top person’s blessing. In these situations:

• Schedule the meeting, if at all possible, for late in the day.
• Just before the interview, brief the Chief on general impressions thus far – along with any key questions to ask or selling points to make.

• Cancel the interview if the candidate is bombing out.

• Keep in mind that the candidate probably has a plane to catch, which will take off at a particular time unless the company jet is standing by.
• Thank the candidate for taking the time to visit you and assure him/her that they will hear from the company (or its search firm) in the very near future.
• Avoid impromptu evaluations (e.g., "You’d be a real asset to our organization") and on-the-spot job offers.
• Have transportation standing by.

• Obtain everyone’s evaluations, meet (if possible) with the interview panel as a group and reach a decision. (A negative decision should remove the candidate from further consideration. A positive decision, in some cases, may await one more round of interviews or the evaluation of two or three other finalists.)
• Obtain any post-interview feedback from your search consultant, along with any issues that need to be addressed (e.g., compensation, perks, title, responsibilities, etc.).
• Be sensitive to particular needs, such as relocation assistance, spousal re-employment, etc.
• Working closely with HR and the search consultant, construct an offer that is likely to "stick."
• Extend the offer orally through the search consultant, even though the company will confirm it in writing. (This allows minor adjustments to be made before the offer is cast in concrete.)
• Include any employment contract with the written offer.
• Congratulate the candidate upon acceptance and thank the panel for a job well done.

 Ó 1999 SRA International, Inc. All rights reserved. This SRA Update is published for the clients of Sanford Rose Associates. "Dimensional Search" and "Sanford Rose Associates" are registered service marks.