Innovation in Candidate Selection Methods - Crossing the Road

The numbers of people applying for jobs these days has grown to enormous proportions.

On average, 200 people apply for every vacancy, depending on the level of experience and qualifications required.

Clearly the non-skilled and semi-skilled marketplace is much more competitive.

HR departments are over busy trying to sift and filter applications and review candidates' applications, using a wide variety of strategies, approaches and homemade tools. Innovation in this area has grown enormously and led to some imaginary and dubious selection methods being adopted, one of which is posted here.

This innovative method is called: Watching how candidates cross the street.

Location, location, location
Now the first problem with this approach is, location. It can be difficult to arrange for an interviewee to cross the street within view of the HR interviewer. Perhaps they need to cross the road to enter your building, if not try to arrange for the interview to be held at a local Starbucks, cafe or restaurant. As long as it is near a busy road. Any reasonably busy city street will do.

Close Observation
The next skill is to be able to watch carefully and take notes. There is little need to undertake secret videotaping, but you can if it is particularly interesting to you.

The innovative thinking on this approach is that these few seconds of interactivity involving a sprinkle of stress / problem solving /danger, will tell you more about their workplace capabilities than an hour of tough questioning.

Consider the five standard types of crosswalkers and how it is claimed, they would perform in the workplace:

The Matador(ess).
A fearless player, the Matador(ess) flaunts their vulnerability. They think nothing of daring the cars and taxis with their elegant dance and slalom through traffic. Pedestrian crossings are just paint on the road to a Matador(ess). Red lights are mere street decorations.

The Matador(ess) cares not if the oncoming traffic shows no sign of swerving or stopping and will risk the possibility of a glancing blow.

Best Roles: These people are best suited to be entrepreneurs, super sales makers /closers, high risk financial mavericks, etc.

Caution! They are also likely to be reckless, head-strong, egotistical and difficult to control. They will need strong leadership and strategic management.

The Wader.
Bold but more attentive than fearless, the Wader is determined and eager to cross, demonstrating ample initiative but a little more common sense and less risk.

Waders may also be on the phone and texting while they are on the move but they will desist when venturing into traffic. They will consider that getting struck by any part of a vehicle, however minor, is a bad thing.

They will eagerly follow a Matador(ess) and let them run interference, slowing traffic and creating a diversion, taking advantage of any safe opening created. While the Matador(ess) is testing their luck and confronting taxi drivers, the Wader will skip to the other side first, with little effort and time to spare.

Best Roles: Excellent CEOs, vice presidents, software designers, project leaders and design heads.

Caution! They can be attentive team players, sensitive to the feelings and emotion of others but can also be non-confrontational, evasive, manipulative, somewhat Machiavellian in approach etc. and will need an intelligent leader that can see the multi-plays in motion and use the excellent team attributes on offer.

The TextWalker.
Having mastered typing, talking and walking at once, the TextWalker tends to forget that crossing a busy road is 'real' life and tapping keys on a little plastic box, is 'virtual reality'. The division between the real world and Second Life is difficult for them to sustain.

TextWalkers may appear to be assertive on the surface, a bit like the Waders or even a pseudo Matador(ess), but they have one critical distinction—progress in their case, is not so much to do with crossing the road but in moving forward with the multiple tasks and ideas that they started in the early hours of the morning.

So progress, e.g. crossing the road to get to an interview or to achieve a specific task, can be more illusionary or conceptual.

The Textwalker will meander, drift, and even pause for thought and re-assimilation midway. They may even retreat momentarily before moving forward again.

They lack the single-mindedness, concentration or presence of mind to stay on task. Especially if that task is mundane or unchallenging.

Best Roles: They are creative thinkers, conceptual designers and programmers. They exhibit creative flashes of raw talent.

Caution!: They are ill-suited and in this form, not yet ready for management or higher-levels of responsibilities and are difficult to integrate as team players. They can lack structure and good communication strategies.

They will require a good paternal leader that can capture their enthusiasm and creativeness and channel them effectively. Someone who has the time and energy and can coach and mentor them in a structured and methodical way.

The Light Jumper.
The Light Jumper is an opportunist. They start out determined to comply and follow the letter of the law, but they are impatient. So, when the crossing light turns from Green to flashing yellow, they can’t help but jump.

The placid, rational Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde and once they have embarked on their course, nothing is going to deter them. A Light Jumper is not above shouting and glaring at motorists who narrowly miss them, even though the traffic have the right of way.

Best Roles: Strong civil rights lawyers, human rights campaigners and charismatic managers with badly hidden tattoos.

Caution! These people are looking for a 'cause' or a 'calling' and are excellent drivers in charities and non-profit organisations. They need managers with high scruples and integrity because once they are disillusioned they will become very 'anti' and strongly negative.

The Kerb Huggers.
No matter how empty the road is, Kerb Huggers would never dream of stepping off the pavement and onto the crossing before they have the 'authority' to do so. They will not move a second earlier than the law, or the “Walk” sign, allows.

Ironically, Kerb Huggers rarely make it across the road before the light turns red and, by delaying their walk across the road, they are often victims of anyone who enjoys jumping red lights. Kerb huggers sometimes find themselves having to run or jump the remaining yard or two.

Best Roles: Compliant tax accountants, statisticians, quality management, regulatory or rules-based occupations. Excellent at scheduling, writing agendas and attending meetings, especially when the purpose is to schedule new meetings, if it's on the agenda.

Caution! This group of people are possibly unexciting but easily managed. If you have a suitable rule book that covers all circumstances, just give them that and ask them to check in occasionally. They are not creative or imaginative risk takers and should not be expected to do anything other than follow instructions.

Anecdote
At the risk of re-enforcing misconceptions of stereotypes, I have seen people standing at a pedestrian stop sign at 02.00 am in the middle of the night, waiting for the lights to change to green, when there is no traffic and no threat of traffic for several hours. They will not cross the road until the light changes to green, under any circumstances.

Unfortunately, in my experience, this occurs most often in England, Germany and Sweden but don't take my word for it, set your alarm clock for the middle of the night and go see for yourself.

Let me leave you with another thought; How do you cross the street, and what does that say about your personality and outlook on life?

Why is your boss more like a baboon?

Research shows that whether human or baboon, your social or professional rank—your place on the torment or be tormented scale—influences your level of stress and your health, for better or for worse.

Robert Sapolsky is a Stanford University neurobiologist who's spent 30 years studying stress and illness in baboons to better understand the effects of stress in humans.

Sapolsky studies baboons because they experience the same kind of social and psychological stress that humans experience. Everything that stresses us—traffic, work, bad relationships—is socially constructed. The same is true for baboons.

We all live with stress—so much, in fact, that we accept chronic stress in our lives as a given, an inescapable force to which we're powerless. We feel we have no control over our stress, and indeed, our stress controls us—our behaviour, our emotions, our health. Some people go so far as to wear stress as a badge of honour. Their stress level, they believe, testifies to their importance, their valour and their work ethic.

By accepting chronic stress as a fact of life, we fail to realise that our resigned attitude toward this biological response will kill us. Chronic stress is an epidemic in American and European society, one that takes a devastating—even deadly—toll on our minds and bodies.

Chronic stress impairs our memory and brain function:

We can't think straight when we're stressed out. It debilitates our immune system and makes us more susceptible to illness. It elevates our blood pressure, causes our arteries to harden and leads to belly fat—all of which increase our risk of heart attack.

It can lead to ulcers, and it hinders our reproductive functions and then there are the headaches and backaches, the insomnia and impotence that stress causes.

Sapolsky notes that we seem to have lost our innate ability to shut off our stress response. We're stressed out all the time. Everything from deadlines to awkward social situations causes our bodies to produce elevated levels of stress hormones that never seem to abate. Even after we've met the deadline, we allow new stressful tasks or situations to enter our lives and replace it.

Our rank at work and in society also impacts our stress level, perhaps not surprisingly. Sapolsky's research suggests that the amount of stress we experience is directly related to our social status.

What was observed in the baboons:

By taking blood samples from them and screening them for stress hormones, Sapolsky found high levels of stress in submissive baboons and low levels of stress in dominant baboons. The reason the dominant baboons had low levels of stress was because they had a lot of leisure time.

The reason the low-ranked baboons had high levels of stress was because the dominant baboons spent their leisure time tormenting them.

Does that sound familiar? I'm sure you've observed similar behaviour —and its consequences—where you work. Ever feel like your boss's primary role is to make your life miserable? Perhaps he has too much time on his hands.

UK Civil Servants
Sapolsky's findings on stress and rank corroborated an earlier study of British civil servants. The British study, which examined the health of British civil service workers, found that low-level civil servants had higher stress levels and were more prone to illness than high-ranking civil servants despite the fact that they all had access to the same healthcare.

Extrapolating from this research we can conclude that lower-level IT workers experience more stress and illness than IT executives, while IT executives are more stressed and sickly than the chief executives. What goes around comes around!

HR: Dress Well and Look Clean Cut for Job Interviews

When seriously looking for a new and challenging position, have you considered the fact that not only your CV is a little scruffy but that your appearance may also need a bit of polishing, too.

Well, you could be right, because that is just the conclusion of a recent survey of 514 HR professionals.

The survey results emphasise the role personal grooming plays in one's career growth and job search success. 90% of the HR professionals surveyed said that a job seeker's visual appearance i.e. whether he or she looks presentable, neat and clean, is the most important factor to making a good first impression prior to a job interview.

Your appearance is more important than eye contact and a firm handshake. It's an arguable point, that well-groomed candidates project more confidence than candidates who don't pay close attention to their appearance. This is certainly backed up by more than 90 percent of the HR respondents.

Candidates who show up for job interviews with a five-o'clock shadow, grit under their fingernails, wearing wrinkled or dirty clothes, or with their hair in disarray, come off as unprofessional and put themselves at a serious disadvantage, allegedly.

More than 50 percent of HR professionals surveyed said that candidates who show up for job interviews looking slovenly or unkempt give them the impression that they are not fully committed to the situation and may not even want the job.

What's more, well-groomed employees tend to be more successful than slovenly employees: 84% of HR professionals said that neat, clean employees climb the corporate ladder faster than employees who aren't well-groomed. HR professionals estimated that 20% of their employees are 'slobs'. How very judgemental!

Lest you dismiss these HR professionals as shallow and superficial, you should consider the fact that many of the non-HR IT executives interviewed, say that candidates should always show up for job interviews looking well-groomed.

Some more enlightened IT executives and professionals believe that 'substance' should always trump 'style' in a job interview i.e. that an individual's personal appearance shouldn't matter so long as he or she possesses the knowledge, skills and experience required to do the job.

The HR Response to this is that those IT professionals who prefer 'substance' need to accept that 'substance' and 'style' are not mutually exclusive and that the best candidates can house both.

Adaptive Change Management - Part 1 The Art

Talk to any project manager and they will underscore the importance of change management support from their colleagues in HR.

Also, most PMs believe that, even when solid capability is brought to the table, they still struggle to include change methodology into initiatives, let alone leverage its value for improved project success.

The difficulty of incorporating change management lies less in the construct of the particular change methodology, and more in the challenge of integrating the rational structure of project management with the irrational and unpredictable process of managing human behavioural change.

Successful change managers have learned that they must enhance the adaptive capability of their project teams by applying both the Art and Science of Change, to create more project successes.

The change 'team' must lay down the strong foundation early in the project;

• assign resources,
• identify their methodology,
• conduct stakeholder readiness and awareness assessments,
• establish a high-level project plan
• Create a project 'theme', develop key messages,
• conduct numerous and varied 'communication' and 'awareness' presentations
• Establish an executive sponsor council and a customer board, keeping the business case uppermost in your head and on the agenda
• Create consensus about the solution with senior executives and HR leaders worldwide.

Closely review and audit progress every 6 weeks and recognise that corrective actions are likely every three months after the project starts. Look for the wobbly wheels before they fall off.

There will be disagreements within the work streams between company and vendor resources. HR leaders and senior executives will suddenly baulk at proposed changes to processes, especially if it concerns performance management and reporting formats.

The change team will find itself marginalised and on the edge of the project. The project managers will be increasingly elusive and evasive, missing or re-scheduling change update meetings.

No matter how well structured, conceived and planned, once a project begins there will be obstacles and challenges that require 'change'; redesigning the plan or creating work-around solutions to help meet broader project objectives.

Some problems are technical problems that can be solved by applying expertise. Others, require solutions that are more adaptive and focused on navigating human emotions and behaviour.

Most problems are a combination of both and require adaptive capability that allows change leaders to navigate the ambiguity and create flexible solutions to keep initiatives on track.

The change team can struggle in the first phase of the project if they place too much emphasis on the Art of Change — assessing, interpreting and understanding the emotional and behavioural factors that influence people during the course of an initiative.

This will be made more difficult. if they remain removed from what's really happening and continue to articulate the project vision and key objectives.

They need to listen actively, ask tough questions, and create good, honest communications that helps to clarify and define the real problem. They also need to be concerned about maintaining and building good relationships which will help work stream and project leaders stay 'collaborative' over the long haul.

Examining the Art of Change will produce valuable information that will help projects adapt and evolve, successfully. Any behavioural obstacles identified can be difficult for highly structured and logical project managers and technical resources to understand and address. That's why you may need assistance with this.

The flow of information can seem to work against the flow of the project process; the deadlines and budgets established for the initiative. There is a big risk that the Project managers will be left puzzled and wondering how to create actions that fit within the structure of the overall project plan, and as a result, they will see the change team as an obstacle and reject their meaningful 'collaboration.'

Women Bullies as Managers

Women Bullies in the Office as Managers

Bullying Bosses and Women

Do Not Neglect Your Workforce: Your Future Depends on it

IT executives are constantly challenged to retain skilled IT employees and attract new talent whilst, keeping the budget square and the cost of labour in line with recession-related staff cuts.

In the midst of all this brinkmanship, juggling and balancing, they have to remember that neglecting the IT workforce will definitely damage the long term prospects of the company and themselves.

Do not cut your staff out of your IT budget:
It is clear that the majority of organisations do not plan to add staff in the coming months. Nearly two-thirds of those asked say that IT hiring has been put on hold until the 1st Quarter 2010, and the rest said they expect to increase head count modestly, in the same timeframe and only to replace shrinkage.

The problem is that despite the need to contain costs, the greatest priority in IT departments is the need to maintain and update skills, whilst at the same time adding enough staff to help support their companies' business. This is clearly more important in times of rapid growth and expansion but needs to be taken into account.

The Biggest Piece
Consider that the HR budget is the largest part of the IT budget, one of the primary challenges for executives and HR leaders, will be finding ways to better control those labour costs while engaging and retaining the workforce, effectively.

Morale
In addition, the current trend to restrict and reduce compensation and potential benefits coupled with additional workload will continue to stress and de-moralise the current IT workforce at many companies, and IT leaders need to be aware of retaining their key talent to ensure a potential for recovery from the current recession.

It will take time for the economy to stabalise and re-establish a new normal, the impact of this recession will continue to affect the organisation's bottom line, as well as on the overall job market. This will tempt companies to consider making further cuts in workforce-related spending.

Key Skills

Additional cuts, despite the budgetary need, could be false economy or at worst, a very big mistake. Certain IT skills remain in demand despite numerous IT professionals looking for work during the downturn. Key skills areas such as Oracle, SAP (All Flavours but particularly HR), Java EE, Microsoft .Net, SOA, Java and PeopleSoft (SAP-HR) continue to be sought after.

IT managers find it difficult to fill positions for enterprise architect, database administrator, project managers, ERP programmer/analysts, Internet/Web architects and Web application programmer positions. The issue isn't about the number of candidates available for hire, but rather their quality and skill profiles.It is ironic, because these are the very skills needed to implement the efficiency driven ERP system suites that are being put forward as essential to transform organisations in a crisis.

Dilemma
Here is the dilemma for IT executives. First you need to invest in powerful ERP Systems to transform, and re-shape an inefficient organisation but you don't have the skills on board to manage it, you do not have the skills to maintain it and your budget is so restricted that it does not allow for a quantum leap in demand for re-training. Even if you did re-train everyone, once they were trained they would be snapped up by other organisations!

IT Consultants
The good news is that the ERP System are being introduced and implemented by willing outsourced IT Consultancy group allied to the company, which is great in the beginning but unless your people can quickly gain the knowledge and skills required to manage the systems, then the consultants will be with you for a very long time ,at a huge cost to the organisation.

You have to ask yourself, "Where are the savings and benefits now?" and "What's my position and prospects for the future in all this?" Discuss!

The Changing Role of HR now and in the Future

Human Resource functions and responsibilities are changing and intensifying at a faster pace and to a greater degree than many other areas of the corporate organisation.

Once relegated to the back office and concerned mainly or exclusively with transactional processes and functions, HR organisations are taking a greater role in strategic business activities.

Efficiency remains the foundation of HR. More transactions must be completed at a lower cost, while processes are becoming increasingly complex to manage.

A typical 10,000 employee company handles more than a million employee related transactions annually, each of which costs in the region of 50 Euros.

The top 10 recruiters in Europ report that they are placing 35k to 95k employees annually. Managing the recruitment pipeline, the selection process, and the induction process is a complicated endeavour.

At the same time, however, leading HR organisations are looking far beyond the execution of HR transactions, to a more value-added and strategic focus.

These organisations are aligning human resources and workforce planning functions with the overall business strategy, to help increase profit margins and support long term goals.

The study analyses several dimensions; staffing, cost, organisational model, IT deployment, and best practice adoption. The following key conclusions demonstrate how companies are meeting today's human capital challenges;

1) As a first step, HR managers strive to optimise the efficiency of transactional processes by standardising, automating and integrating business processes, based on Best Practice process and technology models.

2) Optimising transactional processes frees up resources that allow HR organisations to invest in more strategic functions that facilitate business growth and increase employee productivity.

3) Centralising and consolidating HR operations in a shared services environment helps increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the HR processes.

4) Outsourcing, while used frequently for transactional processes, does not always drive top performance, either in cost or service quality. Organisations need to carefully evaluate the value, performance and cost benefit trade off in outsourced versus in-house service delivery.

5) Information Technology continues to provide the basic foundation for efficiency and acts as the key driver for efficectiveness and future innovation.

Leading organisations recognise that IT supports the development of many best practices and they continue to invest in IT to integrate systems, data and processes across the enterprise.

Briefly, the study finds that the best human capital management organisations are constantly re-assessing their processes, to strike the correct balance in the drive to optimise efficiency, cost and service delivery in a continually changing global environment.

Top performers in this area balance the traditional demands that drive company profits and growth and help prepare for future innovations.

Recession's Impact on Recruitment

Use the Power of persuasion

Are you hunting for a new job or the next step up the ladder? Well, it may come as a small surprise to you to hear that one of your main objective is simply to be persuasive.

What are the most effective approaches?

• These days networking is sited as the most effective way of finding a new job. So firstly, you need to build your personal network and then persuade the loyal members of your network to introduce you to people who might connect you with someone who knows someone ..........who has a suitable opening for you to fill.
  
• Secondly, you need to get your CV read and acknowledged. So you need to persuade HR professionals and recruiters to not just read and discard résumé but to consume, digest and ruminate over it.
  
• Having got as far as the HR dept, you need to persuade the hiring managers that you're the perfect candidate for their organisations. The missing link they have been seeking, even if they didn't realise it themselves
  

Be convincing - Some people are easier to convince in your job search than others. Getting friends and colleagues to arrange introductions for you doesn't require much persuasive effort because they know you and some may even like you or owe you money. Therefore, they're willing to play their part on your behalf. After all if the circumstances were reversed, you would do the same for them. Your powers of persuasion over your friends should stem from your mutual friendship, natural charm, credibility and likeability, not from your rhetorical prowess or physical strength.

The Gatekeeper - The hiring manager, knows nothing about you, apart from the fact that he has seen your name in a pile of CVs that need to be filtered. He has to create a short list of candidates fit for interviewing and you must be on it. How are you going to stand out from the crowd and rise loftily above the other candidates. You have to think better and work harder to convince them that you're worthy of their time. In such situations, job seekers need the advantages gained from fully understanding the fundamentals of persuasion.

Easy as ABC
Effective persuasion combines equal parts communication and observation. It hinges on having good people skills;

1. being able to read people,
2. being a good listener and
3. being empathetic.

You need to be a keen observer of the person you're trying to persuade. Otherwise how can you match the tone and language you use in conversation to the other person's tone and language. Watch how the other person reacts to what you are proposing, either physically, through their facial expressions and body language, or in their tone of voice. If you notice a negative reaction, or discomfort, you should be alerted and quickly change or slightly adjust your approach.

Under your Influence - To be an effective influencer, you also need to be likeable, outwardly open and trustworthy. It doesn't matter whether you're selling an idea, a service or a product, people tend to buy from people. If I like you, I will listen to you. If I don't like you or your message, I won't listen to you. Getting someone to listen to you is the first stage of persuasion.

Persuasion isn't inherently difficult. To do it right, people just need to focus on listening to the person they're trying to persuade and adjusting their communication accordingly.

Whether you're seeking a new job, clinging to an existing one or out to climb higher, persuading people of your value is going to be your key to success, especially during times of low market confidence and recession.

How do you persuade others without appearing pushy and what about the dangers of steamrolling people into submission. The Hard Sell!

What is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when trying to influence or persuade others?

One of the worst crimes you can commit is the lack of true or active listening. Far too many people only half-listen to other people who are speaking and the same people are equally unlikely to closely observe people either. We sentient humans have the capacity to think at four or five times the rate of someone who's speaking. Consequently, we can often listen badly because we're too busy looking ahead and formulating our responses while the other person is still speaking, or we're thinking about something else entirely, like shopping or the size of the other person's nose. We fail to pick up clues that indicate what the other person is really saying or thinking because we are not even listening.

Body Language

Observing body language is the closest we can come to mind-reading. If you make a statement, and that statement produces a grimace or a shift in posture of the other person, their body is telling you that something you said doesn't gel with them. It's a clue for you to change your tact or to inquire what it is that's bothering that person.

Negative pressure

Some individuals lack the level of people skills that are needed to persuade others. However, they can and are able to sway and influence their co-workers by taking a dominant posture. This is observeable, because they always have a response to a point or counterpoint. Their constant pressure exhaust others' patience and endurance, leading to submission. It is more like verbal tennis or squash than persuasion.

Is there anything wrong with this sporty method of persuasion if it accomplishes the persuader's goals?

Clealry. beating someone into submission is not good practice. It is not what we understand to be true persuasion. A truly persuasive person will not leave you in an exhausted state. The ultimate goal of effective persuasion, is that the relationship between the two people hasn't suffered, even after one has changed the other person's belief or behavior. There should be no 'losers' as there are in competitive sports.

Certain personality types are better at persuasion than others?

Extroverted people tend to be more persuasive than people who are prone to introversion. Extroverts are often in people facing jobs, such as sales or advertising, where they have to influence or persuade people to buy a product, take some kind of action or adopt a different lifestyle goal.

Introverted People will take jobs that are less people-focused and more facts and figures focused. They are the back-room people, often evry talented but lacking the self confidence that their knowledge should bring. Therefore, they have less experience of dealing with people than extroverts. Consequently, they don't develop the people skills that extroverts develop. It is a vicious circle that is not so easily broken.

Introverts can be good persuaders, when dealing with other introverts; people of their own type. Introverts have more difficulty in persuading extroverts because extroverts tend to speak louder and faster than introverts. Whereas, the introverts tend to conduct their interactions in a much slower manner.

Extroverts have similar difficulty in trying to persuade introverts. When you look at workplace disputes, some can be attributed to personality clashes between introverts and extroverts.

Logical arguments besides, just do it!

May I also postulate a theory that the extoverts are more emotionally open and accepting of emotive reasons for doing something. Whereas, extroverts may be less willing to expose their feelings to scrutiny and therefore take the safer option of discussions based on known facts. It is easier to dis-arm an introvert using facts and logic than it is an extravert. Discuss!

Is there a difference between persuasion and manipulation? Some people don't like the idea of having to persuade or influence others. It strikes them as unseemly, pushy or manipulative.

Persuasion is essentially about changing someone's perception, questioning their assumptions. You are trying to alter their beliefs and behaviour. Persuasion is really about moving someone from point A to point B.

Manipulation implies coercion. When we're talking about persuasion, you are seeking a win-win scenario, where both parties are happy. Manipulation implies that only one party is satisfied and the other is out-manouvred.

It's all about the approach

Manipulation is often synonymous with some kind of threat: If you don't do this, this will happen. Persuasion is a meeting of minds: You are persuading another to come around to your point of view. Ideally, no one gets hurt. You have simply changed a person's perception, not by coercion or threat.

It is better to have cross-pollination than a cross Polynesian

(old Hawaii proverb, alledgely)

HR - New Start Integration

DIS - Dynamic integration support in a rapidly changing, cost conscious and fast growing enterprise

The dynamic integration support process will supplement and enhance the services provided by the organisations stressed-out HR staff and management team. The consultant addresses the volatile requirements of stakeholders both in the rapid uptake of candidates and in their effective integration into the new environment. The consultant decreases the time taken to assimilate new staff and embed them into the team and organisation, maximising their effectiveness and motivation throughout.

Chief Executives

Dynamic integration in a rapidly changing 'cost conscious' enterprise is able to support and supplement the HR staff in addressing the 'cost versus talent' argument by supplying focused coaching skills to candidates that may be less qualified, less experienced or unused to the new environment that they find themselves in. Free from this responsibility, the HR team can then concentrate on sourcing candidates with the greatest potential and the right motivation to grow without worrying about precision skills matching and the integration of candidates that may have different or unmatched energy levels and personalities from the incumbent team.

Hierarchy awareness and Buy-in

The DIS process also requires that the managing environment and team understand the changing team dynamics and that they are also positively managed through this period. Working on behalf of the organisation and the team, the DIS process ensures the rapid uptake of new skills and knowledge by the candidate. Supplying the provision of a mentor to manage the changes and to mitigate or resolve any risks or issues, envisaged or arising. The consultant will establish a buffer or de-militarised zone to allow the free flow of dialogue and negotiation, minimising disruption to the team’s effectiveness and to managerial goals.

Performance enhancements realised

It is vital to be able to positively manage the organisational expectations coming from forthcoming changes in staffing levels and the introduction of new skills and personalities. The organisation must maintain team and goal cohesiveness and remain focused on moving forward, not at the same pace but with greater efficiency, greater capability and rapid growth. To do this you need to increase effective integration rates and decrease staff fall-out and turnover. The loss of experience from an organisation is taking the life blood out of it, in the form of loyalty, commitment and hard-won knowledge. Thus compelling them to make the same mistakes over and over again and sustain losses repeatedly.

Finance Officers placated

By supporting the management from within, the stakeholders’ expected benefits, established goals and ROI can be truly realised and even exceeded with the correct level of coaching and mentoring, targeted at the right people, time and place.

Operational success

Left to their own devices a new candidate and the installed team will take up to 3 months to fully integrate and become truly effective to the organisation. The first 6 weeks will find the candidate isolated and floundering to find knowledge and develop new skills on his own initiative whilst the installed team circle around them, sizing and testing this new guy. No organisation can afford to wait that long for a return, especially if it is ‘disappointing’. If you are left wondering why the increase in numbers does not relate to a direct increase in revenue, we have the answers for you. We will be happy to support you. Contact me on kenwbudd@lycos.co.uk

Team integration issues - example

As a new start, it is at this time the candidate will bond with, or be be-friended by, one or some of the team but not all. This may not be with the positive thinking, forward thinking group that you would want them to join. In fact it is more likely to be with other members of the team that have become isolated and withdrawn.

If this trend continues then the team dynamics will start to move in the wrong direction, because every new candidate will be drawn to, recruited by or be-friended by, the ‘outsiders’. The team will start to experience a new division instead of an integration. A divided team is very un-focused, difficult to re-unite and the devil to manage effectively.

Cause and effect

Circumstances like this lead to overloading or repeated distraction of the next level of management, keeping them away from their core activities. Instead they find themselves increasingly involved in ‘territorial’ disputes and trivial ‘personality’ clashes. The intended growth of the organisation is diverted or worse, stalled and, because of the push on recruiting and taking on of new staff, suddenly you now have greater overheads.Unless rectified the company is heading for a self-destructive downward spiral.

Your operational managers are faced with issues that began a long time back and have now become established and possibly cultural. In the words of the Irish philosophers ‘If you were trying to get to Dublin city quickly, I would not have started from here!’