THE TALENT OPTIMIZATION FLORIDA NETWORK

1. Diagnose

By diagnosing, a leader can pinpoint the true cause of a business’s talent gaps. Many of our common business challenges are really people problems underneath. We’ve identified four forces of employee disengagement—and when these aren’t corrected, they manifest as high turnover, not meeting sales goals, bad hires, toxic culture, etc.

Ideally, you’d diagnose preventively to stay ahead of any brewing problems. But the reality is that you’ll likely need to diagnose when problems start brewing, too. To uncover the root cause of your business problems you’ll need to do the following activities:

• Measure what matters.

• Analyze the evidence.

• Prescribe improvement actions.

These three activities repeat in a loop. By completing them, you’ll unearth insights that will lead you to make changes to the way you design, hire, and inspire within your company.

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2. Design

It’s important that you design your organizational structure, senior leadership team, and company culture intentionally—and you want all three to align with your business strategy. Too many companies build teams without first stopping to consider team dynamics. What’s more, they put people in management positions simply because they’re good workers even when they lack the self-awareness to be effective leaders. These companies are making a muck of their businesses—but it doesn’t have to be this way.

The design aptitude is where you’ll complete the following activities:

• Select your organization’s structure.

• Evaluate your leadership team fit.

• Understand senior team dynamics.

• Establish your culture.

When you do these four activities intentionally and strategically—supported by data—you’ll be in a much better position to shift your company into a higher gear.

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3. Hire

Poor job fit and poor team fit are two of the four key factors that disrupt employee engagement and productivity. That’s why hiring the right people and placing them on the right teams is such a critical activity.

By following a prescriptive plan for defining the job and then using behavioral and cognitive assessments to evaluate your candidates, you’ll improve your hiring outcomes. It’s like having a superpower to see beyond the surface and predict on-the-job success. 

The hire aptitude is composed of the following activities:​

• Define and communicate job requirements.

• Equip your leaders to land top talent.

• Predict new team dynamics.

• Determine candidate cultural fit.

When you nail hiring, wonderful things happen. People feel energized by their jobs and their teams and go the extra mile. Performance and engagement soar. You delight your clients and boost your brand reputation—and as word grows about your winning ways, it attracts other top performers.

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4. Inspire

The 2019: State of People Analytics report found that more HR leaders are realizing the power of using workforce analytics to improve hiring and management outcomes, yet obstacles stand in the way and prevent them from harnessing that power.

Most employees don’t have access to people data insights that would help them be more self-aware of their workplace behaviors and work better with their teammates. A talent optimization approach gives employees the tools they need to address communication problems and other issues that pop up when working collaboratively. 

Inspire includes four activities:​

• Create new jobs and career paths.

• Develop your leaders.

• Create high-performing teams.

• Reinforce your culture.

While designing strategically and hiring smart are both critical to your business success, you can’t end your efforts there. The most successful companies know they must continue to inspire their employees and protect their culture as time goes on. When teams gel and everyone feels inspired by the company culture, magic happens.