Success multiplies, never divides...isn't it great to share your success? Though I'm on vacation this week, a dozen HCI members, whom I met in Chicago at our Engagement and Retention conference, share s'more successful practices in their companies to engage, collaborate with and retain top talent.
Retain
1. Conduct “Stay Interviews,” and use a structured set of questions; prep managers and the organization to respond to what they discover - Gary Beu, West Monroe Partners, Chicago
2. Make health part of the employee brand. At Kaiser Permanente, a focus on a healthy workforce matches the “thrive” brand for members; to improve the health of people at KP, there are multiple health initiatives for staff. – Maryanne Malzone, Kaiser Permanente
3. Senior Culture Team (at Bristol Meyers Squibb) identified “culture ambassadors” (key influencers) to be the action arm and provide continuous feedback loop on ideas from the senior culture team. – Renee Parratore, Starcom Media
Recognition
4. “Excellence in Construction” Senior and junior individuals, nominated by their district, present an accomplishment they just finished building; their video-taped presentation is shared live to all other districts- Jennie West-Correia, PCL Constructors Canada
5. HR and Marketing collaborated to merge brand on the customer and employee experience; “Horatio” (a fictitious character) is brand ambassador for internal and external customers. Therefore, Horatio can say things HR can’t; Horatio went on road show to 40 locations which included recognition of front-line staff -Janet McNulty, Hertz
Innovation
6. To encourage investment in innovation, conduct “Fed-ex days”- beginning Thurs at noon people start working on an innovative idea (they’ve been thinking about), and by noon Friday they share it in group presentations - Joris Luijke, Atlassian
Development
7. People apply to be developed for leadership and enter a two-year rotation. Eligibility in part depends on their performance rating. People rotate every 6 months (10 spots were selected from the first 150 applicants) who go through four rotations in technology and one rotation outside of technology- Kathy Martin- Paypal
8. Leadership brand; director level and above brainstormed eight principles about what leadership should look like, based on the belief that everyone can be a leader. This becomes yardstick by which to measure all performance and hold each other accountable. Renee Charles, The Forzani Group Ltd.
9. Mentorship pairs across functional groups, now have 45 pairs with the program in place 4 years- Christy Martin, Parker Aerospace
10. Branding leadership, with homegrown competency strategy called “ministry leadership competency.” The CEO walks the talk to be stewards of the organization’s assets; beginning with self-awareness; now people talk in this language and it’s integrated into supervisor development program to help people transition from peer to supervisor -Chris Hechinson, Franciscan Healthcare
Collaborate
11. Use Social Text (similar to Facebook but for internal use) to share questions and ideas across organization; it reduces amount of email; helps from engagement standpoint because people can see what other offices worldwide are doing; helps travelers prep for trips/deployments - Kate Rash, Getty Images
12. Cross functional groups work on activities on each work station with a consultant from HQ sitting in as neutral facilitator for “station meeting.” They’ve learned best practices, built camaraderie from different workgroups and found tenure increases and promotional rate, because could better move into manager roles having had insight to operations. – Laura Tolar, American Airlines
Engage
13. Extra bonus to add to your summer reading list: Our Chief Learning Officer, Dave Forman, recommends “Hundred Percenters- Challenge Your Employees to Give it their All and They’ll Give You Even More” by Mark Murphy... I took it to the beach!
Send me s'more of your successes, and we can discuss in our Executive Conversations :-)
photo courtesy of Kasia/flickr
Thank you for collecting these best practices into a format that is a quick read. I attended the Engagement and Retention conference in Chicago this year as my first HCI conference and your article has inspired me to pull out my notes to determine what I can apply in my work environment.