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The Importance of Business Acumen Training for Managers and Employees

The message to CLOs is becoming clearer and clearer. Company leaders want them to align educational offerings with the organization’s strategic objectives.

That’s not an easy challenge. They must ensure that education and communication initiatives reinforce the company’s goals. They must help employees understand these goals and develop the skills and motivation to contribute to them.

And at the most basic level of alignment, they must make sure that every employee understands how the company makes money. That includes understanding how profitability is driven, how assets are used, how cash is generated and how day-to-day actions and decisions, including their own, impact success

Developing business acumen is fundamental to business alignment. Consider Southwest Airlines, which was founded in 1971. With 33 straight years of profitability, the airline has become widely recognized for the motivational culture it creates for employees and its extraordinary dedication to customer service.

Much of the industry has suffered during the years of Southwest’s growth, including many airlines that have merged or declared bankruptcy. Southwest buys the same planes and the same jet fuel as other airlines, and pays its employees competitive wages and benefits. What’s the difference?

Unlike some of its competitors, Southwest’s management team involves employees in the company’s financial results, explaining what the numbers mean and, more important, helping to link everyone’s decisions and actions to the bottom line. The airline has an open culture, one of inclusion at all levels, and employees understand their roles in providing great service and keeping costs in line.

Certainly there are other factors that contribute to the success at Southwest, but it’s difficult to ignore the positive impact of an approach that develops the business acumen of all employees and managers so that they can contribute to the airline’s success.

An Educational Challenge

Unlike those at Southwest, individual contributors and managers in many organizations today have not been educated about the big picture of their businesses. They have a narrow focus on their own departments and job functions and aren’t able to make the link between their actions and the company’s success. Multiplied by hundreds or even thousands of employees, this lack of understanding — the lack of true business acumen — means that too many decisions are being made and too many actions are being taken that don’t align with business objectives.

How can training help bridge this knowledge gap? For many companies like Southwest, implementing learning programs designed to develop a strong foundation of financial literacy and business acumen has made the communication of financial results to employees easier and more effective.

Business Acumen: A Definition

Very simply, business acumen is the understanding of what it takes for a business to make money. It involves financial literacy, which is an understanding of the numbers on financial statements, as well as an understanding of the strategies, decisions and actions that impact these numbers.

Someone with financial literacy, for example, would be able to “read” the company’s income statement. This employee or manager would understand the terminology (revenue, cost of goods sold, gross margin, profit, etc.) and what the numbers represent (i.e., gross margin equals total sales/revenue less the cost of goods sold).

With business acumen, the individual would be able to “interpret” this same income statement, taking into consideration how company strategies and initiatives have impacted the numbers during specific periods of time.

Consider a simple comparison: In football, it’s necessary for players to know how the game is scored as well as how to play the game to change the score. In business, financial literacy is understanding the “score” (financial statements) and business acumen is understanding how to impact it (strategic actions and decisions).

Asking the Right Questions

When business acumen spreads through an organization, employees and managers begin to ask questions. These questions are directed not only at the organization, but also at themselves and their departments — questions about processes, products, systems, staffing and more that can lead to necessary and innovative decisions and actions.

Business acumen helps everyone understand that it’s not enough to ask, “How do we cut costs?” or to say, “We need to increase sales.” Digging deeper, employees with higher levels of business acumen will ask questions that take into consideration the far-reaching impact of potential decisions and demonstrate a greater ability to make the connections between performance and results.

Questions that could get to the root of disappointing operating ratios:

• Have production costs gone up? If so, why?

• Have we changed prices? If so, how has that affected our margins?

• Are there any competitive issues impacting our performance?

• Have there been any customer requirement changes?

• If our costs per unit produced have gone up, can we better control the efficiency of our production or service delivery?

• Is there a way to produce a greater product volume at the same cost?

• Can we raise prices, still provide value to the customer and remain competitive?

When questions become more specific, the right decisions can be made.

Business Acumen for Managers

Managers at all levels need a high level of business acumen to do their jobs. Every day, they make decisions about employees, projects, processes, expenditures, customers and much more — decisions that ultimately roll up into larger organizational results. Managers who make these decisions while looking through a departmental lens only, with a limited understanding of how these decisions affect financial results or how they are tied to the organization’s goals and objectives, are working in silos that can ultimately damage the company.

Managers are often promoted to their positions of responsibility because of their “technical” expertise. They’ve been successful customer service representatives, great salespeople, innovative researchers or well-respected IT professionals. They are now entrusted with decision making, budgets, projects and people. They often do not have financial literacy, nor have they developed a higher-level perspective about the business. Over time, especially if they move up the managerial ladder, they may develop these. Or they may not.

Organizations need managers who operate as part of the management team, taking accountability for their own results as well as the results of the entire company. Therefore, more and more organizations have built financial literacy and business acumen into managerial competency requirements and have integrated business acumen training into management curriculums.

Business Acumen for Employees

Although there is little debate about the need for managers to develop business acumen, organizations sometimes question the need for this understanding at employee levels. But frontline contributors, those who are most directly involved with production or customer service, for example, take actions every day that impact business results.

Consider the salesperson who discounts products, or the service representative who deals with an unhappy customer, or the maintenance person who notices a problem. The actions each of them takes might erode profit margin, lose a good customer or allow safety issues to escalate. Without an understanding of how their actions impact the company’s results, they might not have the context to consider alternatives.

Many organizations have determined that financial literacy and business acumen aren’t just for managers anymore. They have decided to develop a company of people who understand the business; who know what return on assets and return on investment mean; who know how inventory turnover rates affect results and the importance of positive cash flow; who see the connection between the company’s financial success and their own health benefits, 401(k) plans and more. In other words, they need people who understand the “business” of the business.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins says, “We found no evidence that the ‘good-to-great’ companies had more or better information than the comparison companies. None. Both sets of companies had virtually identical access to good information. The key, then, lies not in better information, but in turning information into information that cannot be ignored.”

With an increased level of business acumen, managers and employees can better interpret information, making the connection between their actions and the company’s results.

Another Reality of Today’s Business World

A public company’s operating results are well known at the end of each quarter. Analysts, investors, the media, employees–everyone has access to a company’s financial results. With a significantly increased focus on accounting improprieties over the past few years, senior management has become highly conscious of the need to provide accurate and timely financial information. And employees have become much more likely to wonder about these numbers. “Is my company being honest? Are the numbers telling the whole story?”

Without a fundamental understanding of financial results and an ability to interpret them, employees may become suspicious and,

Tags: Acumen, Business, Employees, Importance, Managers, Training

Employee Retention

EMPLOYEE RETENTION

 INTRODUCTION

 Employee retention refers to policies and practices companies use to prevent valuable employees from leaving their jobs. How to retain valuable employees is one of the biggest problem that plague companies in the competitive marketplace. Not too long ago, companies accepted the “revolving door policy” as part of doing business and were quick to fill a vacant job with another eager candidate. Nowadays, businesses often find that they spend considerable time, effort, and money to train an employee only to have them develop into a valuable commodity and leave the company for greener pastures. In order to create a successful company, employers should consider as many options as possible when it comes to retaining employees, while at the same time securing their trust and loyalty so they have less of a desire to leave in the future.

 MEANING

Employee retention involves taking measures to encourage employees to remain in the organization for the maximum period of time. Corporate is facing a lo of problem in employee retention these days. Hiring knowledgeable people for the job is essential for an employer. But retention is even more important than hiring. There is no dearth of opportunities for talented person. There are many organizations which are looking for such employees. If a person is not satisfied by the job he’s doing, he may switch over to some other more suitable job. In today’s environment it becomes very important for organizations to retain their employees. 

 DEFINITION

According to Get Les Mckeown’s employee retention is define as “ effective employee retention is a systematic effort by employers to create and foster an environment that encourages current employees to remain employed by having policies and practices in place that address their divers needs. Also of concern are the costs of employee turnover (including hiring costs. productivity loss). Replacement costs usually are 2.5 times the salary of the individual. The costs associated with turnover may include lost customers, business and damaged morale. In addition there are the hard costs of time spent in screening, verifying credentials, references, interviewing, hiring, and training the new employee just to get back to where you started.”

BENEFITS OF EMPLOYEE RETENTION.

Every company should understand that people are their best commodity. Without qualified people who are good at what they do, any company would be in serious trouble. In the long un, the retention of existing employees saves companies money. As Beverly Kaye and Sharon  Jordan- Evan stated in Training and Development: “ Studies have found that the cost of replacing lost talent is 70 o 200 percent of that employee’s annual salary. There are advertising and recruiting expenses, orientation and training of the new employee, decreased productivity until the new employee is up to speed, and loss of customers who were loyal to the departing employee. Finding, recruiting, and training the best employees represents a major investment. Once a company has captured talented people, the return-on-investment requires closing the back door to prevent them from walking out.”

            When an employee leaves a company for a direct competitor, there is always a chance that they will take important business strategies and secrets with them to be explained by the competition. This is yet another reason why the retention of employees is so crucial to some businesses. While this practice seems a bit unscrupulous, it skills happens quite frequently. As Bill Leonard stated in HR Magazine: “ Because employers know that the best-qualified applicants

will come directly from competitors, recruiting and hiring employees away from mother of inventive and sometimes controversial business practices. Recruiting and hiring from your competitors is probably as  old as business itself. But what is new—and a hot topic among employers – is how to attract and retain qualified candidates in a highly competitive labor market while also preventing their own intellectual capital from winding up in the hands of competitors.

One way for a company to prevent employees from giving valuable information to competitors is to make it a policy to enforce strict noncompete and confidentiality agreements amongst its employees. The existence of such agreements could in fact deter a competitor from hiring a valuable employ because they might not want to risk possible legal entanglements with the other company. Of course, all this could possibly lead to animosity with the employee who could feel that his or her options are being limited. Many employees don’t always remember signing such a document, so a copy of it should always be kept on file for the employee to refer to. This area could prove to be a highly sensitive one between employer and employee, so extreme caution is suggested in all instances.

  IMPORTANCE OF EMPLOYEE RETENTION

Why is retention so important? Is it just to reduce the turnover costs? It’s not only the cost incurred by a company that emphasizes the need of retaining employees but also the need to retain talented employees from getting poached.

The process of employee retention  will benefit an organization in the following ways

1. The Cost of Turnover: The cost of employee turnover adds hundreds of thousands of money to a company’s expenses. While it is difficult to fully calculate the cost of turnover (including hiring costs, training costs and productivity loss), industry experts often quote 25% of the average employee salary as a conservative estimate.

Loss of Company Knowledge: When an employee leaves, he takes with him valuable knowledge about the company, customers, current projects and past history (sometimes to competitors). Often much time and money has been spent on the employee in expectation of a future return. When the employee leaves, the investment is not realized. Interruption of Customer Service: Customers and clients do business with a company in part because of the people. Relationships are developed that encourage continued sponsorship of the business. When an employee leaves, the relationships that employee built for the company are severed, which could lead to potential customer loss. Turnover leads to more turnovers: When an employee terminates, the effect is felt throughout the organization. Co-workers are often required to pick up the slack. The unspoken negativity often intensifies for the remaining staff. Goodwill of the company: The goodwill of a company is maintained when the attrition rates are low. Higher retention rates motivate potential employees to join the organization. Regaining efficiency: If an employee resigns, then good amount of time is lost in hiring a new employee and then training him/her and this goes to the loss of the company directly which many a times goes unnoticed. And even after this you cannot assure us of the same efficiency from the new employee

EMPLOYEE RETENTION TOOLS

            Hiring individuals who re truly fit to succeed in the position for hire will dramatically increase the chances of that employee being satisfied with his or her work and remaining with the company for extended period of time. By far, we have found this to be the biggest predictor of future employee retention.

communication: Communication has become so heavily stressed in the workplace that it almost seems cliché. However communication couldn’t be more important in the effort to retain employees. Be sure that team members know their rules, job description, and responsibilities within the organization. Communicate any new company policies or initiatives to all employees to be sure that everyone is on the same page. Nobody wants to feel that they are being left out of the loop.

Include employees in decision making: It is incredibly important to include team members in the   decision making process, especially when decision will effect an individual’s department or work  team. This can help  to create of employee involvement and will generate new ideas and perspectives that top management might never have thought of.

 Allow team members to share their knowledge with others:The highest percentage of information retention occurs when on shares that information with others. Having team members share when they have learned at a recent conference or training workshop will not only increase the amount is information they will retain, but also lets a team member know that he is a valuable member of the organization. Facilitating knowledge sharing through an employee mentoring program can be equally beneficial for the team member being mentored as well as mentor. 

Shorten the feedback loop:Do not wait for an annual performance evaluation to come due to  give feedback on how an employee is performing. Most team members enjoy frequent feedback about hoe they performing. Shortening  the feedback loop will help to keep performance level high and will reinforce positive behavior.  Feedback does not necessarily need to be

scheduled or highly structured;  simply stopping  by a team member’s desk and letting them know they are doing a good job a current project can do wonders for morale and help to increase retention.

Balance work and personal life:Family is incredibly important to team members. when work begins to put a significant strain on one’s family no amount of money

Tags: Employee, Retention

Conducting an Employee Satisfaction Survey or Employee Engagement Survey: 21 Reasons to Do It Now

Why Employee Engagement and Employee Satisfaction are Really Important to Your Bottom Line: 

Employee compensation is likely the number one or number two cost category at your organization. In a highly competitive world with continuous pressure on profit margins and the need to increase employee productivity and contain costs, anything your organization can do to get more done with the employees you have produces an immediate payback. If you can get more done with fewer employees, that is even better, especially if you can drive up sales and increase customer service and quality while containing employee costs. 

Fortunately, your employees have the answers. They know what it’s like to work at your company, what your customers are telling them about your company, and about your competition. You just need to ask your employees and they will tell you. They will also tell you how dissatisfied or satisfied they are working at your company, and how engaged they are and what can be done to increase their level of engagement. 

Your employees also know what needs to be done to increase your company’s customer service levels, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, productivity, quality and profit, and what can be done to reduce potentially costly risks. 

While most companies are aware of the need to take action and make improvements to become more competitive, they often miss important hidden actions that can really make a difference for customers, employees and the bottom line. That’s where employee surveys come in, uncovering the hidden information, suggestions and insight you need from across your organization. 

Highly satisfied employees are more engaged in their jobs, their productivity is higher and they do more to generate profit for your company. Company financials and other “hard data” measurements are missing important information and insight that can only be gathered by directly asking your employees. Employee engagement surveys and employee satisfaction surveys are the best, most cost-effective way to gather comprehensive information accurately from a large portion of your employees about how satisfied and how engaged they are, and what needs to be done to increase employee satisfaction and engagement. 

Employee Engagement Definition 

Your employees are engaged when they are fully committed, involved and enthusiastic about their jobs, your organization and your customers. 

·  Your engaged employees are able, willing and actually do contribute more to your organization’s success. 

·  Engaged employees regularly put effort into their work above and beyond what is expected of them. They go the extra mile. They eagerly and willingly work longer hours and focus their energy, inspiration, skills, intelligence and experience on achieving success for themselves and your company. 

·  Your engaged employees thrive when they are working in a supportive company culture. Their energy. inspiration and enthusiasm enhance your company’s culture. 

Are your employees really engaged? How do you know?: 

How many of your company’s employees are highly engaged, how many are somewhat engaged and how many are disengaged? Employee engagement surveys and employee satisfaction surveys measure employee satisfaction and engagement levels and provide actionable information for driving employee engagement to significantly higher levels. Assessing employee engagement levels and then taking action to shift somewhat engaged and disengaged employees up the curve will significantly increase employee and company performance. 

Which is the right survey approach for your organization, employee engagement surveys or employee satisfaction surveys?: 

It’s possible for employees to be satisfied but not engaged in their job, and it’s also possible for employees to be engaged while not being satisfied. Therefore the best approach is conducting surveys that include both employee satisfaction and employee engagement issues. 

21 Reasons to Conduct an Employee Satisfaction Survey / Employee Engagement Survey (aka Employee Opinion Survey): 

When action is taken based on the survey findings, employee satisfaction surveys and employee engagement surveys generate significant bottom-line benefits and a very strong payback. Here are 21 reasons to conduct employee surveys now: 

1. Gathering employee feedback that either validates what company leaders think they know about their organization, or identifying hidden problems and opportunities, and possible solutions 

2. Increasing employee engagement in their jobs and with customers 

3. Identifying quality and customer service shortfalls and what can be done to fix these problems 

4. Gathering information and insight for creating a roadmap for making breakthrough improvements 

5. Assessing employees’ awareness and understanding of your organization’s vision, mission and values 

6. Learning how employees feel about your senior leaders, their leadership effectiveness and the direction in which they are taking your company 

7. Learning how employees perceive their manager/supervisor and what it is like to work for them (approachability, fairness, leadership effectiveness, etc.) 

8. Identifying specific process and technology problems and deficiencies and their impact on customers and employees, including suggested solutions from employees 

9. Focusing managers’ attention and energy on areas with the highest priority and the largest payback 

10. Identifying communications problems within and across organizational units, a significant cause of dissatisfaction and poor performance 

11. Sending a message to your employees that you care about them and their opinions, and that you are willing to take action based on what they are telling you 

12. Strengthening the culture of teamwork, collaboration and change 

13. Enhancing your organization’s “employer of choice” reputation, enabling hiring of better employees 

14. Identifying reasons for and reducing costly employee turnover 

15. Avoiding costly discrimination and abuse law suits 

16. Learning about problems with execution and compliance with your company’s performance management system 

17. Making better, more informed decisions based on comprehensive feedback from employees 

18. Facilitating innovation and smart risk-taking 

19. Identifying ways to increase the company’s focus on external and internal customers 

20. Reducing the “People Performance Gap”, the costly gap in performance between the most and least effective employees performing each job in your company 

21. Establishing important baseline employee survey information that can be used to track progress and changes over time from annual employee surveys

Tags: Conducting, Employee, ENGAGEMENT, Reasons, Satisfaction, Survey

Exit Interview Surveys & Employee Retention Surveys Identify Ways to Decrease Employee Attrition

Why it Makes Sense to Manage and Reduce Voluntary Employee Turnover:

While some employee turnover can be healthy for your organization, excessive employee turnover can be very costly. High levels of employee turnover often indicates dissatisfaction with one or more aspects of working for your organization, including ineffective managers and leaders, uncompetitive compensation and benefits, insufficient training, development and career opportunities, and other possible factors.

Employee turnover surveys, employee retention surveys and exit interview surveys gather information and perceptions from former employees and/or current employees about what it is like to work for your organization and what it takes to keep employees. These employee surveys identify why employees are satisfied, engaged and are likely to stay with your organization for the foreseeable future, or why employees are thinking about leaving, or in the case of former employees, why they left your company.

The high costs of excessive voluntary employee turnover include:

·  Costs for recruiting new replacement employees

·  Costs for training and developing replacement employees

·  Learning curve costs – While they are learning their new job, learning about your products and services, about your organization and other important information, it often takes many weeks or months for new employees to reach their potential performance

·  The negative impact on customers while replacement employees are not yet hired and while new replacement employees are not yet fully trained and fully proficient

·  The negative impact on customers and employees covering for staffing shortfalls due to employee attrition

The negative impact on your organization’s “employer of choice” reputation due to high employee turnover

The types of Employee Retention Surveys / Exit Interview Surveys Include:

·  Employee Turnover Surveys (feedback or opinion surveys of former employees). Employee turnover surveys identify why former employees left your company, where they went and why, what could have been done to improve their work experience and keep them with your company, and other pertinent information and insight. These surveys are typically conducted semi-annually or annually and are sent to all former employees that left your organization on their own initiative.

·  Exit Interview Surveys (employees complete the employee exit interview survey prior to leaving your company). Exit interview surveys identify why employees are leaving your company, where they are going and why, what could have been done to improve their work experience at your company, and other pertinent information and insight.

·  Employee Retention Surveys / Employee Turnover Surveys of Current Employees with a particular focus on employee retention. These surveys are highly effective for companies with high employee turnover throughout the organization, or with high turnover in one particular department such as sales or a call center, etc. These employee surveys assess key aspects of employee satisfaction and employee engagement, and the likelihood that employees will stay with your company for the foreseeable future. These employee surveys also identify reasons employees are likely to leave your company and what can be done to reduce voluntary employee turnover.

Employee Retention Survey/Employee Turnover Survey and Exit Interview Survey Metrics:

Employee retention surveys provide a wealth of information and insight regarding why employees are thinking of leaving or are actually leaving your company. Acting on this information and insight, your company can significantly reduce unwanted employee turnover, generating a strong payback on the surveys and bottom line results.

Employee retention surveys. employee turnover surveys and exit interview surveys are especially useful for organizations or specific departments experiencing high levels of turnover. For example, these surveys can identify what needs to be done to reduce turnover and increase performance of a company’s sales force, a department that often experiences high levels of turnover.

Depending on your industry and the products and services your company sells, employee turnover metrics include these and other criteria driving employee retention:

·  Communications effectiveness

·  Support from and treatment by managers

·  Recognition received from management

·  Work environment

·  Adequacy of tools and information needed to perform the job effectively

·  Effectiveness of sales performance feedback and mentoring

·  Satisfaction with compensation and benefits plans

·  Satisfaction with career opportunities

·  Clear understanding of job

·  Job is what was promised when hired

·  Clear expectations for job performance

·  Availability/effectiveness of training and development

·  Company culture

·  Empowerment

·  Receptivity of management to employees’ ideas

·  Competitiveness of company’s products and services

·  Satisfaction with the job and company

·  Satisfaction with company direction

·  Likelihood of staying with your organization for the foreseeable future (in surveys of current employees only)

·  Willingness to recommend your company for employment

Benefits of Employee Retention Surveys / Employee Turnover Surveys / Exit Interview Surveys include:

·  Gaining information and insight for attracting and retaining employees

·  Reducing costly employee turnover

·  Identifying ways to increase employee satisfaction and employee engagement

·  Increasing “employer of choice” status

·  Increasing effectiveness of managers

·  Improving the recruiting & hiring process

·  Avoiding hiring employees who are not likely to be successful

·  Eliminating obstacles impacting employee performance

·  Improving communications with employees

·  Identifying drivers of employee turnover enabling changes based on employee feedback

·  For retention surveys of former employees, learn why they left your company and what they like better at their new company

·  Gathering suggestions for running your organization more effectively

Conducting an Employee Survey – Final Thoughts:

Employee surveys generate significant bottom-line benefits and a very strong payback when action is taken based on the employee survey findings. Survey companies have the experience, expertise and objectivity to conduct these surveys well and to quickly provide reports that are full of actionable information.

Organizations that conduct employee satisfaction surveys, employee engagement surveys or employee opinion surveys can, to a lesser extent, also identify causes of employee turnover and what needs to be done to increase employee retention.

Tags: Attrition, Decrease, Employee, Exit, Identify, Interview, Retention, Surveys, Ways

New Employee Acculturation: Measure, Engage, and Immerse

Onboarding a new employee is often myopically defined as quickening a new employee to effectiveness. While this achieves a particular objective of a strategic onboarding process for many companies, it falls short of a complete definition and leaves managers of human capital with a goal so vague as to nearly render it useless (how fast is quick, and what is effective?) Furthermore, quickening effectiveness for many employers in blue collar industries is such a trivial endeavor that instituting an initiative to quicken new employee effectiveness might not make sense (a furniture mover’s path to effectiveness might be measured in minutes). On the other hand, all employers share the compliance, paperwork, and logistics burdens associated with new employees, regardless of the blue-shading of their industry.

In Employee Onboarding; An HR Technology Seeking a Definition we define two approaches to onboarding. Transactional Onboarding utilizes the automation of the onboarding business process to transition a new employee into their new role; automating the federal W-4, I-9, and state tax forms are examples of business rules and forms best automated through transactional onboarding. Return on investment is realized through making the process more efficient, eliminating costs in handling forms and data, eliminating latency and errors in data, and minimizing risk in the compliance-sensitive area of hiring. Transactional onboarding’s value is objectively measurable and is of value to any employer; particularly so for employers with compounding factors such as high turnover or regulated industries; one can think of transactional onboarding as the science of onboarding.

We defined Acculturation Onboarding, or simply Acculturation, as quickening the new employee to effectiveness. Acculturation is sometimes also known as socialization, and is touted by many vendors as the singular approach to onboarding, despite the fact that acculturation is appropriate to a subset of employers who might be interested in a strategic onboarding initiative. Return on investment for acculturation is realized through earlier and more rapid productivity of the new employee and improved long term employee satisfaction and retention. Acculturation’s value is subjectively measurable and is valuable to employers with high costs associated with recruiting and retaining employees, typically those in more professional roles in the organization; it is this subjectivity that is the Achilles Heel of acculturation onboarding. If transactional onboarding is the science of onboarding, acculturation is the art of onboarding.

While it’s obvious that value from transactional onboarding can be achieved through investing in a system that is flexible enough to meet the organization’s unique process and compliance requirements, it may be less obvious whether the same system, or any single system, can accomplish the value objectives of an acculturation approach. So how could an organization in need of acculturation take a systems approach to automation? Let’s take a simple A to B viewpoint to the acculturation system question:

Point A is the candidate who has just accepted the offer, and point B is the fully productive and contented employee. Transactional onboarding resides as a sliver of a process just as the candidate begins following the path to point B, albeit an intensive process that is laden with risk. The objective of an acculturation system is to shorten the path—the length of time to get—from A to B for all new employees, encompassing the transactional onboarding event at the onset, while maximizing the level of satisfaction of the new employee (contentedness) once they reach point B. It’s easy to see why the return on investment in an acculturation system is a subjective measurement, as the objective is peppered with challenges to measurement. What is meant by fully productive? How do you determine when someone achieves full productivity? How do you account for differing times to productivity due to varying complexity of roles? What is considered a good time to productivity, and how do you help employees who are not meeting expectations? How does the organization know (objectively) it is making improvements to the time to productivity? What is employee contentedness and how do you measure it?

Our recommended approach to implementing an acculturation system that meets the stated objective and answers these questions is based on three tenets: measure, engage, and immerse. All three should be considered when implementing a strategic acculturation process, and if executed properly, the subjectivity Achilles Heel of acculturation onboarding can be minimized.

Measure

Determining the resulting value, and therefore the return on investment, of any technology initiative requires the ability to establish incremental objectives and measure their achievement. Few onboarding systems that take an acculturation or socialization stance provide the means to measure their own effectiveness, yet practically all of them cite Aberdeen Group’s estimates on the potential cost savings of automating onboarding . This is akin to a car salesman assuring a buyer their new car will save fuel costs but not citing what kind of gas mileage the car gets or even whether the mileage can be measured. Hence our first recommendation to implementing an acculturation system is to establish how the system will set objectives and how those objectives are measured.

An acculturation system should allow the organization to establish specific objectives that collectively measure productivity, or should be able to recognize those objectives established in complimentary systems such as learning and competency management systems. The objectives could be events that are either incomplete or completed, or they may be tasks that can be completed in degrees or stages. Objectives might be achievable in any order, but some objectives may be dependent on the prior completion of others. Individual objectives should be scored and weighted with respect to an overall Acculturation Index (AI), which we recommend be calculated on a percentage scale (the weighting and calculation of an acculturation index will be the topic of a future article). Examining the AI for a specific individual would indicate how far along the A to B path the new employee is, and analysis of composites of the AI’s of multiple employees from one period of time against another will provide insight into how the company is influencing—positively or negatively—the effectiveness of acculturation onboarding.

Another interesting analysis of the acculturation index would illustrate the constantly increasing index over time for either a single employee or a composite of employees. For example an AI analysis as such:

indicates that the majority of acculturation objectives are achieved within the first 3 days, while an analysis as shown below:

indicates a more gradual achievement of acculturation objectives. Neither outcome may be more correct than the other, but correlated with less than desirable outcomes, the method of engaging the employee, which will be discussed shortly, should be reconsidered.

There are three types of acculturation objectives: competency objectives, social objectives, and satisfaction objectives. Competency objectives, such as completion of assessments that demonstrate proficiency in skills associated with the employee’s position, are excellent candidates to extract from learning or competency management systems. Social objectives—such as completion of a profile on the company’s social network, connecting to contacts or “friends” in the network, and participating in the company’s collaboration tools and wikis—may pose a greater challenge in collecting due to the diversity of data sources. Satisfaction objectives, or measurements regarding the employee’s contentedness with their new job, are most likely to be collected from directly querying employees, coworkers, and supervisors using a survey or data collection tool.

Acculturation objectives should also be defined according to the organization’s structure. Company wide objectives include those that apply to all employees, such as passing the company’s network security policy exam, creating a company social network profile, and indicating satisfaction regarding the company’s group health benefits. Departmental or business unit objectives provide greater specialization, such as passing the IT department’s help desk usage test, or publishing a technical post on the engineering wiki. Specific skills associated with the position, inherited from the job description, represent the most specific objectives, and if measured through the use of a competency assessment system represent the most objective measurements of productivity in the AI and should be weighted accordingly. Finally, objectives might be established for the specific individual assuming the role, particularly if the individual needs remediation in certain skills. A good implementation of an acculturation system would allow for the assumption of the majority of acculturation objectives for individuals based on the position, job, and organization structure (location, business unit, department, division, etc.), including company wide objectives, and allowing for the dynamic specification of objectives specific to the individual; otherwise, the burden of establishing objectives for each new hire would hinder the consistent application of acculturation objectives.

It should be obvious that an integration strategy is critical to an acculturation system, as the sources of acculturation objectives are myriad. Furthermore, to facilitate the reporting, analysis, and data mining critical for measurement and continual

Tags: Acculturation, Employee, Engage, Immerse, Measure