Retain people by meeting their aspirations

Corporates must learn to act with a sense of urgency in executing programmes that meet employee aspirations. Lack of quick action might make people move on to other things and other organisations, warns Vinod Malhotra

Retaining good people is only an issue of capturing personal aspirations, reworking strategies and systems, and doing whatever else it takes to meet those aspirations. The wise management understands this and also realises the total impact of losing talent. Therefore, they work hard at retention programmes.

Companies lose large numbers of their talents because of three primary reasons: * Organisations often do what in competitive sports would be considered suicidal—they take their eyes off the “ball”. Rajeshwari Vellaru, senior vice president in an IT company, says: “Organisational strength is built through the synergistic effect of two key management actions. First, the generation of correct strategies and second, their perfect execution. Poor results in any one of them can only lead to status quo ante or worse.” Well, I couldn’t agree more with Rajeshwari. Good ideas are of little or no use without the wheels that give them motion. While it’s important to architect correct strategies, corporates must recognise that it’s equally important to gather enough management enthusiasm to convert thinking into “deliverable” programmes. * Organisational policies and satisfaction programmes are largely born of the thinking that “one size will, or rather must fit all”. In studies of successful management practices, I have found it to be on the contrary. Without “elbowroom-flexibility”, satisfaction programmes are doomed to fail. Even a programme designed to satisfy individual aspirations! It’s very difficult to simultaneously manage the socioeconomic and psychological backgrou-nds of a multitude, their personal hierarchy of needs and motivation, the pulls and pushes of organisational priorities, etc, without sufficient leeway for individualised solutions. * Many organisations are painfully slow to act. Corporates must therefore learn to act with a sense of urgency in executing programmes that meet aspirations. Because if things don’t happen quickly enough, people will move on—to other things and other companies. Following is a simple and effective retention model—the MACPEP (Map Aspirations Change Paradigms Execute Programmes): In process terms, three mission critical actions are at the foundation of the model: Map aspirations Map the aspirations of all talent that is making a positive impact on your business. This is an easy, albeit tedious, process. I would therefore encourage you to map the “high performers” in your organisation. You can then develop “eyes-to-the-ground” initiatives to make your company aspirations-friendly. Concl-usions from the data collected over the last seven years have been summarised into what I call “Six universal truths about human behaviour”. Interes-tingly, I discovered substantial similarity in behaviour, irrespective of creed, caste, industry or rank. Change paradigms Learn to change your paradigms about effective management, and admittedly, this is tough. It will help to first understand how paradigms evolve. Very simplistically, whenever the brain spots patterns in the personal experiences of an individual, it builds frames of reference or paradigms. These frames define effective ways of responding to situations and slowly a repository of paradigms gets built. This is very useful! The trouble begins when we forget that the experiences at the root of paradigms, are themselves context driven. A change in one or more elements of the context and you have altogether new experiences and consequently the beginnings of new paradigms. Characteristics of the players, the sequence of events, socioeconomic scenario, exposure to new ways, priorities of the most influential person(s), et cetera, constitute the context, and these change substantially with time. Perhaps the most important lesson in learning to change paradigms is to know that they have changed in the past. Speedy execution Speedily and decisively execute programmes that will meet those aspirations. Following are some powerful initiatives that help meet aspirations of people. However, since the programmes are drawn from various organisations, with distinctively different cultures, not all of them will work for you. In taking a pick, make the judgement keeping your particular situation in mind.

• Raise-the-standard: Every three months you are expected to raise your performance standard with respect to certain deliverables. Only consistent performance gets you bonus points.
• Take-the-challenge: Chall-enges around the primary purpose of your role are thrown at you at regular frequency. You choose the challenge, perform against tight deadlines and get recognised.
• Design for yourself a ‘one-year dream role’. The role is built within the framework of what is important for the organisation.
• Every year you get the opportunity to gamble a part of your compensation. You bet stakes that escalate with increased difficulty of the target.
• Meeting agreed productivity norms guarantees your job.
• You are first trained on a set of skills. Then you are expected to hit threshold performance levels in order to save your job.
• Sell-an-idea: These are six-monthly festivals where you participate to sell your idea to a panel for adoption by the company. Ideas must necessarily lead to substantial profits.
• Join a strategic mission: Get nominated to a strategic mission that’s important for the organisation. These are short-time work programmes.
• Elbow-room flexibility: This represents an ongoing way of life. The underlying spirit behind every transactional decision becomes the guide for elbowroom flexibility.
• Run-a-commando unit: These are self-managed, self-sufficient teams that have an unambiguously defined mission. Resources are released quarterly and reviews held fortnightly to keep things always on track.
• CEO’s Club membership: If you give outstanding performance during a business year you become a member of the CEO’s club. The club addresses, debates, decides and executes issues of strategic nature.
• Big sportslike display boards are used for recognising outstanding work that’s either a breakthrough or a dramatic improvement of an existing system.
• Every year all ‘bosses’ have to score 80 percent to stay on. You rate them on defined leadership parameters including sensitivity and value addition.
• Every quarter in an irritant removal meeting, you highlight an irritant (something that doesn’t add value), and then become instrumental in getting it removed.

Retention is a very personal issue. Sensitivity, care and credibility therefore, are expected of the person who is charged with the responsibility of addressing it. Since personal aspirations and their order of priority are dynamically changing, an ongoing early warning vigilance is necessary. An organisation-wide mentoring environment protects and nurtures retention initiatives. Vinod Malhotra is a senior change management consultant and chief human resources officer at Escosoft Technologies

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