Having been on both coasts, as well as Canada, to meet with multiple clients has confirmed something I’ve been hearing for awhile: demand is up and businesses are seeing a resurgence in their top lines.
With the structures they’re using to fulfill business demands close to capacity, as well as an ongoing talent shortage, it’s getting harder and harder for firms to find the people they need to simply staff their legacy fulfillment structures. Where once they could count on finding a good pool of candidates, now what they’re finding is talent that is seeking the highest offer – and even the best firms are coming up short.
This, combined with higher-than-ever expectations on behalf of employees, is making it challenging for firms to simply keep their wheels turning…never mind allowing for the time or resources to plan for the future and craft effective growth.
This has a number of important implications for firms that they didn’t have to worry about even three years ago.
- All growth is not created equal. If you can’t build your infrastructure to fulfill your backlog, you’ll need to make a decision soon about the quality of your products and services if topline sales continue to rise. Now is the time to take a very strategic look at your products and services and make decisions about which ones are in your sweet spot and which you should move toward harvest and divest. This work will strengthen your focus and your brand. It will also allow you to shift more of the burden of quality work to strong internal process.
- Talent is scarcer than ever. After having nearly an infinite pool of talent in 2008 which allowed firms to be as choosy as they wanted to be, firms now have to come to grips with the idea that organic talent growth is a thing again. The new approach is to find and develop – which sounds silly to some and fresh to others. This next wave will be all about finding talent in new and unexpected places (the last government shutdown pushed a wave of talent back into the private sector, for example).
- Retention is becoming increasingly important. Keeping your best employees doesn’t have to require a salary war. Retention has always been about creating a high-quality experience for your teams – not matching dollar for dollar. My coaching to leaders is to carefully examine the view from the seat of your employees. Do they feel valued and included? Do they have the flexibility to meet the complex needs of a modern family? Are they known as a person and not just a “resource?”
- We have the ability to use the talent we do have better than ever before. We have really fresh new combinations of process, technology, training and strategy to better use the talent in our firms. By building the way we do business in a way that matches the unique skill set that our digitally-savvy team members bring to the table, we can create workplaces that people really want to participate in. Don’t discount the “analogue work” of effective interactions like team meetings, effective offsites and other paths for deeper strategic engagement. The one enduring metric is that employee engagement and customer satisfaction are intrinsically linked.
- The “gig economy” is growing. When it comes to securing top talent, many firms are starting to look beyond traditional, full-time employees to the growing army of subject matter expert (SME) contract workers that are available for freelance and short-term projects. Especially in the tech sector, these gig workers will become a critical part of the economy – and will likely become the new rock stars of our current growth wave. Firms need to get over seeing this talent pool as “not ready for full membership” and seek out those talented people who have used this delivery channel for their talent to craft a better life.
Winning this next wave of business growth and talent is much bigger than just your HR function – it demands the full firm’s attention and thoughtful insight. I have a portion of my practice dedicated to helping senior teams develop deep alignment using their core competence and very unique external subject matter expertise. If you’d like to have a brief meeting to discuss what that approach might do for your team, please call me at 847-651-1014 or by setting up an appointment at this link.
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