Engage Employees and Boost Performance - Hay Group

To guarantee that employees
receive feedback, a company
must create systems that
managers find easy to use.
16
W O R K I N G
PAPER
To guarantee that employees receive feedback, a company must create systems
that managers find easy to use. Amgen, a biotechnology company based in
Thousand Oaks, California, recognizes the importance of helping employees
manage their careers. Once a year, the company requires that all managers sit
down with their subordinates and have a “non-performance-related” discussion.
The idea is simply to talk to them about their careers. Are they happy? Are
they using their skills and abilities to the fullest extent? Are they moving in the
direction they want to go?
As part of its initiative to engage employees, GDDS instituted “Individual
Training and Development Plans” (ITDPs). Every employee has such a plan,
which connects training to goals. Managers meet with employees four times
annually to discuss four different topics, most of which touch upon ITDPs:
salary, training and development, career planning and goal setting.
HR Director Lipa says managers at GDDS have been good about making sure
the training gets done. His records show that 98 percent of the 3,600 training
courses and other “development inputs” were completed in the first year of the
program. “This sends the message to employees that we’re serious about developing
them,” Lipa says.
Managers too often get caught up in day-to-day tasks and see employees’ work
merely as a means to accomplish the organization’s objectives. They forget that
for employees, their daily work is a means of fulfilling career aspirations. Smart
managers understand the need to align the company’s objectives with the
employee’s long-term career goals. That’s how you engage employees.
3. Quality of Work
R
ecently, a solar energy firm placed the following recruiting ad in a
London newspaper:
Belief in what you’re doing is perhaps the most important perk of them
all, so if you looked at the salary offered before reading about the job,
perhaps we’re not right for you.
A bomb disposal expert in Britain who had taken over for a colleague killed by
an IRA bomb was asked by a reporter: “You are risking death doing this and
only getting paid an army salary. Why do you do such an awful job?”