Stable employee retention is a top issue at management level today and a decisive factor for corporate success. For many companies, the issue is exerting enormous pressure in view of the increasing shortage of skilled labour and rising staff turnover. If employees resign or have already quietly resigned and are only doing the bare minimum of their daily workload, this costs the company money. According to the Netigate study on employee engagement from 2023, the intention to resign has increased and one in four people are considering quitting in the current year. How can a company counteract this trend and retain its employees in the long term?
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In order for a company and its organization to be future-proof and marketable and to be able to constantly question, develop and change accordingly, it needs, among other things, a lively learning culture. Nowadays, with all the fast-moving changes and requirements, organizations and their employees should continuously learn and tap into their knowledge. The focus of change is therefore shifting more towards the employee, and with it the continuous learning of the individual and the development of knowledge and skills. Can the company’s current knowledge and learning tools provide employees with the necessary resources and opportunities for continuous learning and knowledge reference? Or do other formats, tools and methods need to be used and practiced?
It’s the combination that makes the difference! Different skills, practical experience and solid expertise are the basis for our business. As diverse as our team is, our common basis is our affinity for medium-sized businesses and for the people who shape them.
Eugen Feth – Senior Consultant Digitalization
Change not Keep – Digital Transformation is today
Competence management is important in a company to ensure that employee resources are used optimally. Through competence management, the skills and competences of employees can be developed and used in a focused way. Competence management is a demanding task. How does the company know what competencies a person has outside their field of work? And how can these competences be used professionally?
In order to solve these and many other challenges in competence management without spending a lot of time and personnel, the use of skill management tools can be a useful method: The right tools ensure that skills management can be implemented efficiently. Digital tools can be used for every step along the employee life cycle and significantly improve the results. The tools start at different points along the employee’s career path. Which tool or mix of tools a company needs depends entirely on individual needs. All-in-one solutions are often very powerful for SMEs. The key question in the selection process is: What requirements should be met by the competence management system?
In recent years, rating portals have become increasingly important for a company’s image – especially as an employer. How employees, former employees and applicants have rated a company as an employer has become an indispensable source of information for potential applicants. The ratings can be submitted anonymously and free of charge and can be accessed worldwide and permanently. Rating portals thus create enormous market transparency and have a considerable influence on whether and how a company is perceived as an attractive employer. The ratings of one’s own company on the various online platforms have a strong signal effect in the environment of potential applicants and customers. Read more
Resilience was the topic of our Event & Dialogue, which we held at our Nuremberg location in April 2023. Together with our cooperation partner stg Die Mitar-beiterBerater, we looked at resilience from different angles with our guests. Read more
High-performing junior staff and high potentials are vital for the survival of any company. They fill key positions and shape transformation processes. Thanks to their outstanding performance, the company can react faster, more creatively and more nimbly to the challenges of the time. Their productivity is particularly high, and their skills are critical to the success of the company. But these special team players are rare on the labour market. The term “war for talents” is well known. It was coined in 1997 by the management consultancy McKinsey and is more topical today than ever. The competition for talent is fierce. Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, which must compete with large corporations on the labour market. To find and retain talent and high potentials, to empower and promote them, strategic talent management is a core task. And some even see it as the top issue of the future for companies.
Talent – what is that anyway?
“Talent” is a word that smacks of the elitist. After all, who has talent? Isn’t there hidden potential in every human being? Even if the definition of talent varies among scholars, there is a consensus on one point: a talent excels through special achievements. The Latin “talentum” translates as a special gift or ability. But having the potential is one thing. Using it in such a way that it generates the desired and potentially significant added value for the company is another. This requires a holistic and strategic talent management that is closely interlinked with competence management.
Implementing Talent Management Systematically
Talent management is about filling the most important key positions and thus about the future viability of the company. It is developed from the corporate strategy and is not only the task of HR managers, but also the responsibility of the company’s management. The development of a suitable talent management concept is based on qualitative and quantitative personnel requirements: Which talents does the company need for which key positions? Which retirements in critical positions are due and when? Are expansion plans to be considered? A systematic approach is used to analyse which specific positions and roles need to be filled by high potentials in the short, medium, and long term. The required competences and requirement profiles are defined for the needs. Once a company knows the current and future demand for talent, the search for talent begins: How does the company find the right talent? And which talents does the company already have on board?
Finding, Promoting and Retaining the Right Talent
The search for qualified and suitable talents is about finding the employees and potential future employees who fit the company’s requirements with their special performance and high potential. The goal of talent management is to systematically and in a focused way find the special employees that the company needs to achieve the set company goals. Talent and position in the company must be a good match. To achieve this, the focus is on the achievements, the current performance, and the individual goals for the future. With a clear profile of the requirements and the key position to be filled, the necessary transparency is created to find the right talent for the company. Systematically identifying and integrating high potentials is an important basis for succession planning. Especially for critical roles and positions in the company, it is important to act with the appropriate lead time. If it is foreseeable that a key position will have to be filled in the future, the suitable successor should be identified at an early stage. Sufficient lead time can prevent valuable knowledge from being lost in the succession process.
Challenges in medium-sized Companies
Recruiting new talent is also about the external impact of the company: Does the employer brand have the desired external impact? Is the company attractive for talents? This is where medium-sized companies face challenging competition for talented employees from large corporations, as their brand, product or service is less well known. With a well-thought-out employer branding strategy, they open up the best possible opportunities to attract talent. In addition to the right personnel marketing, suitable personnel planning and development also pave the way.
SMEs have a wide range of instruments at their disposal for developing and retaining the talent they have acquired, such as transparent career paths, regular feedback interviews, specific on-the-job training, targeted management development or suitable further training measures. Development plans tailored to individual requirements and needs, non-material rewards and meaningful tasks are important criteria for long-term talent retention. THE MAK`ED TEAM develops a holistic talent management concept for its medium-sized clients that has proven itself in corporate practice. Our HR experts know how to efficiently design the interfaces of needs-based personnel development processes within personnel management. We implement structures that enable medium-sized companies to identify, optimally promote and retain talent in the long term. Because one thing is clear: talent management is not just a topic for the big players. It is also a decisive competitive factor for medium-sized companies.
Finding staff, retaining staff: What used to be an everyday routine is now a supreme discipline in management and HR departments. More than ever, staff retention is an important key to corporate success. And in the highly competitive labour market, it is a real challenge, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. Attractive and transparent development paths play a key role in employee retention.
The corporate world is changing dynamically and with it the challenges for leadership and management. Managers are constantly confronted with new tasks as a result of the permanent changes. In order to successfully cope with change, focused further development is essential. Structured development of executives is best achieved using an individually designed development model. It ensures that leaders are best equipped for current and future business tasks and challenges.
Systematic development of executives in medium-sized companies is currently the exception rather than the rule. Leadership development therefore offers many companies a great, previously untapped opportunity to strengthen their team, find new talent and successfully move the company forward even in phases of major change.
Supervisors play a Key Role in Employee Retention
The structured development of managers is an important basis for the company’s future – and for staff retention. According to a recent Personio study*, 46% of employees in small and medium-sized companies across Europe are planning to change jobs in the near future. One of the most important reasons cited for this is a lack of appreciation. Leadership style, social skills, empathy and corporate culture are key factors in determining how much employees identify with the company and feel comfortable there. This means that supervisors play a particularly important role in the onboarding process.
Success is no coincidence
Reflecting on oneself, deepening one’s own competencies, learning, networking, motivating … In times of such rapid and major changes, a modern manager is characterized above all by the willingness and ability to develop further. This applies to younger managers as well as to experienced ones. The concrete design of the personal development model depends on many individual factors such as the management level, the area of responsibility or the personal experience values. A younger manager who wants to prepare optimally for taking on greater management responsibility will set completely different priorities in his development model than an experienced manager who wants to drive major change processes in the company. The earlier a development model for leadership and management is implemented at all levels, the more promising the results. After all, developing leaders systematically takes time and is an ongoing process.
Leadership Development with Structure, Empathy and 360° View
How can a manager be developed in a goal-oriented manner? When implementing the development model, it is important to look at the individual framework conditions, corporate culture and goals and link them to the internal guidelines for managers. For this purpose, we develop an agile development model. First, the initial situation is analysed and relevant competencies as well as strengths and weaknesses of the executives are identified. On this basis, development areas and goals are defined, and an individual leadership development model is elaborated. The development model is tailored to the individual starting situation of the executive in order to ensure optimal learning and successful transfer to practice. It will initially be launched as a pilot project and, after the test phase, will be successively implemented as a professional infrastructure in the form of coaching, training, and learning-on-the-job elements. Managers can thus achieve their individual development goals in a targeted and efficient manner. The training effects are permanently evaluated and assessed to ensure the best possible development results.
THE MAK`ED TEAM sees leadership development as an essential part of successful business development. We develop agile leadership development models that are easy to implement and focused. Executives benefit from our high level of expertise in corporate business and our interdisciplinary, experienced team.
More about HR Development.
*Source: Personio study “The Great Value Shift”, 2022
It’s the combination that makes the difference! Different skills, practical experience and solid expertise are the basis for our business. As diverse as our team is, our common basis is our affinity for medium-sized businesses and for the people who shape them.
Our Consultant Bianca Selzer
Every problem is a possibility in disguise. – John Adams
