Job Alignment

In previous blog posts on effective induction processes, I introduced you to the concepts of the Area of Motivating Performance and the Dead Zone. I also described the importance of the first few weeks of a new hire’s employment and suggested that aligning responsibilities to their skills/knowledge can significantly improve their chances for becoming both a high performer and a long-serving employee.

Now, I know some readers may tend to baulk at this suggestion because it flies in the face of the perceived wisdom that employees should be matched to jobs and not the other way around. However, in the real world, no job ever remains static in terms of its challenges. Through the deployment of our online Performance Appraisal and Task Action Planning Module we have observed that the responsibilities of all jobs are constantly adjusted by supervisors. What tends to happen in the case of supervisors who manage to build high-performing teams, is that they use the changing challenges they face to improve the fit between each direct report and their respective job.

Expanding the Area of Motivating Performance

As I also mentioned previously, each of us prefers to do things we can do well. Through gradual job alignment of the kind referred to above, it is possible to increase the activities with which direct reports will remain motivated. As with all things in life, moderation is important.  It is not necessary that all of a direct report’s responsibilities should be fully within their skills/knowledge. Indeed, if a direct report is to be properly developed, it is vital that there should always be some areas of responsibility that will stretch each team member. Provided the main core of each direct report’s responsibilities is kept within their capacity to perform well, each direct report will respond well to challenges that require them to increase their skills/knowledge.

Keep in mind that, as this process is implemented, the area of motivating performance will be continuously increasing. As this happens, teambuilding activities become easier because each direct report has a greater range of skills/knowledge for the supervisor to draw on. The increased flexibility this brings makes ongoing job alignment efforts both smoother and more effective. In this manner, highly tight knit teams can be built and both productivity and talent retention can be radically improved.

New Hire Innovation

Typically, once the first few months have been successfully navigated, the new hire will have sufficient experience of their new job not only to be reasonably proficient but also to see new and improved ways in which they can fulfill their responsibilities. Because of the Hysteresis Effect, it is not at all unusual for a supervisor to retain an out-of-date stereotype of a new hire. A stereotype that was formed during the employee’s early days of employment. As a result, it is frequently the case that useful suggestions and innovative ideas are missed. Even worse, when their ideas are ignored, new hires can become quickly demotivated. This is particularly true in the case of high-driving employees who want to make a real contribution.

To overcome this problem, it is vital to make the ongoing search for new and improved ways of doing things a normal part of each employee’s responsibilities. Additionally, each employee’s performance in this area needs to be measured regularly in just the same way that their performance in terms of their core responsibilities is measured.

This raises another matter – in most organizations, a week is a long time. We have been able to demonstrate that quarterly appraisals are not only feasible but highly beneficial if they are wrapped into a process that includes task action planning backed up by clear goals that will help an employee overcome existing limitations in their performance.

Avoiding the Dead Zone

Thinking about these issues from the new hire’s point of view can help. Imagine that the individual has come up with some ideas for improving the way in which they can do their job. The data generated through the deployment of Talent Chaser, shows that, if implemented, such new ideas will typically also make the job more motivating for the new hire. These early-days ideas therefore contain not just workflow improvements but also an invaluable insight into what the new hire likes doing (and therefore what they will invariably be good at doing) and what they don’t like doing (and therefore potentially what they may be less capable of doing well).

Making every effort both to encourage new hires to come forward with their ideas and to implement wherever feasible will go a long way towards avoiding the dead zone and turning every new high into a high-performing and long-serving employee.