Total Rewards #11- Opportunity for Advancement

Total Rewards #11- Opportunity for Advancement

by | Aug 3, 2012 | action plans, rewards, training and development

The perception:
“McJob- a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement” (Webster dictionary).

But how wrong they are!

The reality:
According to a recent article by our firm’s founder Dr. Jerry Newman and McDonald’s Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Richard Floersch, McDonald’s actually has very high employee perceptions of advancement opportunities.

Reward/ Percent Who Love This About McDonald’s:

  • Learning and development -80%
  • Skill development and opportunity -79%
  • Career opportunity -76%

Contrast McDonald’s results with numerous studies that consistently show about half of employees do not see long-term careers at their company, and more than one-third of employees believe they must leave their current employer to advance to a higher-level job.

Opportunity is Key to attracting employees: A recent Experience Inc survey of 2011 college graduates, 55% list career advancement opportunities as the most important factor in choosing a job (just above pay and challenging work).

Opportunity is Key to engaging employees: Aon Hewitt found that a clear career path and career development were two top drivers of engagement.

Typically organizations have positions with multiple levels, but they are not always clearly defined or communicated.
For example, a client had production workers with three levels of responsibility and skill, but they were not apparent to employees.

The company decided to title these three levels production, senior production and team leader. The job levels corresponded to different performance expectations and pay levels. Managers were trained to discuss with employees performance against their current job, communicate the “next” level job responsibilities, and mutually agree on a development plan with each employee who was interested in that next level.

Employees now know the clear career path, how they get there, and what the reward will be when it is achieved. (Or they can choose to stay in their current position as long as they perform to expectation). Managers now have a clear development plan for every employee and can focus their feedback and training on this plan. This also provided a succession plan by building a core of senior and team leaders to assist the Plant Manager and identified an Assistant Manager who is now quite successful.

Image courtesy of ratch0013 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Total Reward #4- Training and Development

Total Reward #4- Training and Development

by | Jun 21, 2012 | Uncategorized

Henry Ford said, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”

When employees feel they are acquiring new skills, have development opportunities and a clear career path they are more likely to be engaged with their job and stay with the organization.

It is not enough to offer training programs, it is critical to communicate and provide appropriate and engaging learning and development opportunities to your employees (especially to Gen Y employees). If you identify high potential employees and systematically increase and broaden their skills, you will also do more to retain rising stars in your organization.

There are two types of development Job specific or in current knowledge area (depth) and new skills (breadth). Both are important but there are many reasons to expand the skill set of your employees to add new potential strengths:

  • You don’t know what they might turn out to be great at, or interested in, beyond what their current role involves.
  • You need to build a broader talent pool, a network of possible replacements that could be tapped as business needs change (or as key people leave the organization).
  • You need to develop a strong learning culture, one where employees naturally seek out new skills and competencies with less explicit prodding from you or your HR partners.
  • You want your people engaged and interested in the work and research shows that new, challenging assignments are one of the best ways to accomplish this.

(source: Taleo Research White Paper -Learning and Development: The New Business of Business Leaders)

Large employees are continuing to use training and career opportunities as part of their Total Rewards portfolio.  A recent Aon Hewitt Total Rewards survey reports that over half of organizations focus on Career development (61%) and training/ learning (56%) to increase engagement and retention.

Image courtesy of PinkBlue at FreeDigitalPhotos.net