High-Performing Superstars - Building and Retaining Your Team - Part 2

In part one, we explored the underlying causes for the extreme, skilled labor shortage facing employers. This segment will begin to explore steps you can take put yourself in a stronger hiring position.

Faced with the prospect of a tighter, more expensive labor market, what can you as an employer do? If you are not already, the most obvious step is to recognize employees as the valuable assets they are and view them in a similar light as capital assets and ensure you receive an acceptable return on investment from the asset.

Most corporations have procedures in-place for determining whether to acquire a piece of capital equipment. In the simplest form, they require the segment of the organization requesting the equipment to cost justify the acquisition by setting forth the business case; with and without the new asset. Given the long-term cost of an employee, it would make good business sense to, as a minimum, implement procedures for hiring that are no less rigid than for the acquisition of new capital equipment.

Faced with a growing business, most within the organization, although not necessarily the owners, start thinking about hiring. With the increasing cost to staff an organization, hiring should not be the first consideration. The procedures for managing and processing orders through the business at today's levels are not necessarily the best way to handle the business at a higher level. New procedures meeting the needs and accomplishing the requirements with fewer people per unit of work might well be the better approach. The people within your organization, unless they have a vested interest, will not think to look at ways of getting more through the system with less people. We will explore the subject of vested interest in other sessions covering incentives and recognition.

Another approach is to implement outsourcing for certain business requirements; as a number of my clients have done with great success. An important first step is to determine what the core competencies are within your business. These are the functions that must be retained in-house to support and maintain primary competitive advantages within your products or services. If you're honest with yourself when doing the analysis, you will find there are relatively few processes that absolutely must be performed in-house. All others, therefore, are subject to being outsourced to entities specializing in the activity at a cost advantage to you. This will provide a dual benefit to you. In addition to saving money over current costs you will be freeing up existing staff, to do the more important functions within your core competency activities to meet the requirements of the incremental business.

Look for Part Three: Setting standards