There are many ways to do this, but one that I believe that you can start working on today, regardless of the size of your company, is to build superior HR practices relative to your competition. From my experience of talking to hundreds of companies, very few actually invest in creating a world class HR department. This means that there is a huge opportunity to create a competitive advantage.
Creating a Competitive Advantage through HR:
In order to create this advantage, I and my team at EngineBI recommend building what we call a performance-based culture, which is focused on:
- Most Talented Person: Hiring the most talented person based on what you can afford
- Developing Talent: Developing that talent to maximize each individual’s potential
- Working as a Team: Ensuring the team works effectively together
In order to achieve this performance-based culture, there are five steps you should take:
Core Philosophy
- All-In on Creating a Performance-Based Culture: The first thing that you need to do is be all-in on creating a performance-based culture. This means that it is philosophically a huge part of how you invest your time and money.
- Not Easy to Develop: Many of the reasons that your competitors do not invest the time and money to create a performance-based culture is that it is difficult to do. If this is the case, you will have a competitive advantage since you will be able to produce higher quality work more efficiently by having a superior team.
Structured Recruiting Process
- Twice as Effective: Research shows that structured interviews are up to twice as effective at predicting job performance than unstructured ones.
- Standard Evaluation Process: For every candidate, you should have a solid methodology for evaluating their likelihood of success. This will entail having standard questions that you ask each candidate and a method for scoring each applicant.
Talent Management
- Keep Your Talent: Once you have hired your new rock star, you must do everything that you can to develop in this individual a sense of belonging to your company.
- Employee Engagement Analysis: On a quarterly basis, you should conduct an employee engagement survey to assess the overall engagement of your employees, as well as identify the areas that need improvement. Once you are done with this, you will then want to develop an action plan to enhance their engagement.
- Quarterly Coaching Conversations: Every quarter each manager should meet with their direct reports to provide feedback on how each individual is performing. The goal of this is to give the employee an idea on what they are doing well, as well as areas that he or she could improve. It will also give the direct reports a time to discuss any concerns that he or she might have so their boss can work on improving the situation.
Compensation Strategy
- Getting it Right: The goal with your compensation strategy is to ensure that your team feels properly paid while, at the same time, you do not overpay for a specific role.
- Third Party Compensation Analysis: We recommend using third-party research so that you have an objective view of how much you should pay for each role. By using third-party compensation you will have a solid idea by market, by role, and by seniority what the proper compensation range is for hiring for this role.
- Raises and Promotions: We will also show you how to develop an effective strategy for managing raises and promotions. Part of that entails determining if there is both a company need for the raise and promotion and if the employee has earned them.
Your Company’s Organizational Structure
- Key Component to Growth: A huge driver towards growing your company is to have a scalable org structure. CEOs can not wear multiple hats and assume numerous roles on a continuous basis. CEOs should focus on identifying critical decisions and adjusting the organizational structure to speed up and validate these determinations as the company evolves.
- Roles and Responsibilities: In order to scale your business, each employee needs to understand their roles and responsibilities. This will ensure that nobody trips over each other, and the team can work as effectively as possible.
If you want to grow faster, it is imperative that you are committed to creating a high-performance culture. With the adequate tools, the desire to accomplish it and this 5-step strategy, you will absolutely have the means to revamp your organization and be in a great position to develop a high-performing philosophy and a higher quality lineup.