Developing People

Take Some Time and Do it Right
Corporations all over the world spend millions of dollars each year trying to improve the way their business operates. They look for ways to make their production more efficient, hire financial advisors to allow operations to occur on a tighter budget, but often forget to develop their most important resource, people. People, or human resources, are the backbone of business today despite the trend of shifting towards computer reliance and automation. People need to be selected correctly, trained effectively, reimbursed fairly, and most importantly, treated with respect. Some corporations are professionals at these skills, but others have trouble from the beginning and these troubles are evident throughout the entire employee development process. There are steps that can be taken to ensure proper employee selection and interviewing, employee training, and coaching and counseling of employee performance and emotional problems. With the adaptation of a proper protocol for these actions, corporations are able to develop highly stable and performance orientated teams of employees and avoids unnecessary conflict.
People make the generalization that the proper qualifications, the right resume and the perfect interview will land them a job. However, corporations have to be more careful nowadays. Approximately sixty percent of all resumes contain false information. This is just one of the pitfalls that can lead to hiring the wrong person for a position which will lead to more employment problems in the future. Corporations must develop an applicant selection plan in order to screen for potentially negative qualities of applicants. One starting point for this plan is to determine whether to employ a multiple hurdle selection process or a compensatory process. In a multiple hurdle selection process applicants must fulfill a number of criteria in the application process or else they are automatically disqualified for the position. For example, if company requires five years of experience in the field and the applicant only has three years of experience, the applicant would be disqualified under a multiple hurdle process. A compensatory selection plan allows for applicants weak areas to be offset by their strong qualities. Their application is judged on a composite basis. A lack of education, for example, may be counter balanced by prior work experience or exceptional recommendations from prior employers. Once a selection process has been chosen there are several other factors that need to be considered before the interviewing stage of the process. The most basic and commonly used selection tool used by companies is an application form. An application form helps with simple applicant classification, pre-screening, and internal record keeping. However, companies should not require too much information from an application form or rely solely on it for a selection decision. On some occasions companies will use a supplemental application form that is more job specific and inquires about experiences and responsibilities at prior jobs. After the application process is completed companies often conduct background investigations to ensure no criminal record is present, or more importantly the applicant did not falsify their references and previous employment record. There are many intuitive tools companies can use to prescreen applicants and select candidates for interviews.
Interviews are a strong tool for determining an applicant's character and work ethic if they are conducted properly. Companies often view interviews as a formality in the hiring process and do not use them to their full potential. The more the interviewer is willing to put into an interview, the more an applicant will be able to demonstrate their true feelings about a position. Most people relate their bad experiences with interviews to all interviews in general and seldom do you hear the positives. There are simple guidelines that should be followed to make the interview process a positive experience. Most people, no matter how prepared, have a tendency to feel nervous at the beginning of the interview, and it is up to the interviewer to try and alleviate these feeling in order to administer a productive interview. Acts as simple as offering the candidate a beverage can relieve some of the pressures of an interview and let them be themselves. Another factor that is important is informing the candidate as to how the interview will be conducted. Let them know the how long it will take, so they can plan their day accordingly if they have another job. Also, if they have to wait for the interviewer, inform them how long it will be. The longer they wait the more nervous they will become and the harder it will be to get them to relax. These are basic guidelines that should be followed before the interview, but during the interview is imperative to practice good business etiquette. The interviewer should have a structured interview guide in order to keep things moving smoothly. It is important to ask open-ended job related questions that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Give the interviewee your full attention and take notes when appropriate. If the applicant is scheduled for a series of interviews, be sure brief the other interviewers on the information you gathered to avoid duplicating questions and wasting time. When the interview is over be sure to inform the candidate how the process will be finished. Let them know an approximate timeframe in which to except a response from the company and how you plan to notify them about your decision. Following these guidelines does not guarantee a perfect interview resulting in hiring the perfect employee, but it does take some of the pressure off the candidate allowing them demonstrate their true abilities.
After an employee is hired, they must be trained. If this is done incorrectly from the beginning it must be corrected at some point or the employee will be a burden on the organization. However, sometimes training is done in order to improve an already effective employee, as in the case of the managers at Saint-Gobain Pipelines. There are a lot of things that go into making people effective in a management position. In our part of the book we are focusing on developing people. Developing people is a major part of keeping an organization growing. By teaching and developing people within your firm it is proven to make your company better, and more successful on both sides of the spectrum, making money and good personnel. The article I found told me exactly the things that I wanted to find out about a company who is focused on developing their people. The company is Saint-Gobain Group and is one of the world's largest industrial multi-national corporations. In the article it explains how the group instead of looking for new people to hire for better management positions they instead took it upon themselves and developed their own program to make better people in upper management. The company developed a five day leadership program for its "high flyer" managers as they put it to give these managers the skills to move up in the organization. The company decided to organize a target group of thirty managers who were under the age of thirty-five who they felt had the potential to be leaders or even general managers in the future. The company then decided to research their upper management to find the five things that make them good managers. The first was vision, then organizational awareness, motivating and developing others, and last was achievement orientation. The company then went on to take these thirty managers and split them into two separate groups in order for them to receive better one-on-one attention. The company found this to be a better way of ensuring both for the company and the people in training of achieving the best results. They went on two separate weeks to develop these managers and the results came out to be very successful. The company found that this was a much better way of finding the right kind of people to manage in their organization. It gives the people in upper management the ability to see how the younger people in the company are performing as well as let the younger employees see how things are done and what is expected of people at the top. I thought that this was the perfect article for the subject of developing people. It gave clear thoughts of how people should be used in organizations to further develop their employees. I myself truly believe that it is crucial for organizations to do things just as the Saint-Gobain Group did in order for their company to have the same kind of success and results.
Corporations spend millions of dollars a year developing the wrong aspects of their business. The most important part of a corporation is the people. Through the development of program for applicant selection, interviewing, and employee training, companies can make the most out their employees. They will have motivated and enthusiastic that care about the job they are doing and the company they work for. People development is the first step to successful business operations.