You spent two years on your tech startup journey. I have a meeting with a new client at 9am and am on a product development conference call at 10am. At 11am, I meet with a marketing expert to discuss outreach. By noon you are exhausted. I’m tired from working the last 7 days, but I feel too guilty to take a break because I need to keep the startup going.
With so many responsibilities involved in running an organization, it’s easy to get bogged down in routine tasks aimed at generating revenue. You are forced to think in terms of economics, putting everything else on the back burner. The conclusion comes first, right?
error. If you take a step back, you’ll find that you’ve put your talents on the back burner by focusing on finances.
When was the last time you had a one-on-one meeting with a non-manager at your company to discuss career goals? How long has it been since you’ve considered what’s articulated in your internal interactions? When was the last time you thought about your employees instead of your product?
The cost of secondary talent is higher than you think
Putting customers, services, or products first will drive employee turnover. Put yourself in your employees’ shoes: Employees won’t be interested in your business if they don’t feel connected to your vision and their needs aren’t considered. They are only interested in their wages.
According to Gallup’s 2023 global workplace situation, only 32% of employees are engaged in work. What about the remaining unengaged workers? According to some, they cost organizations between $450 billion and $550 billion annually. Research on workplace engagementThis financial loss is not just due to lack of productivity. In many cases, it is due to the complete loss of employees.
See the following example. Let’s say you have a great sales rep who hit a sales quota of $2 million in the first year. Suddenly they leave. I don’t understand why they left because they didn’t have a talent strategy in place to retain and develop this talent. They may not have been honest or told you at the exit interview.
The job of replacing this person may fall to an internal recruiter, or they may hire a number of recruitment agencies to find the next sales superstar. Either way, you’re spending time and resources replacing someone who by all accounts should still be on your team.
Hiring for sales positions is harder than ever. It takes an average of two months to get a job, and I’ve spoken to countless founders and executives. Add another nine months for a new hire to get up to speed, and the opportunity cost of him without a superstar salesperson in that seat is well over $2 million.
To determine total loss, consider training costs and irrecoverable draws paid to previous sales reps. But you’re not done yet. What about the hard-to-measure costs, such as the loss of morale that this person’s departure ripples through the team? Opportunity cost incurred while left unoccupied? It adds up, but not necessarily in a visible or easily calculated way.
Even if your organization happens to master the art and science of recruitment, this is bad enough. But if you’re part of 74% of organizations with suboptimal hiring approaches, you risk hiring someone who doesn’t have the right skills for the role.
what is the solution? You need to refocus your attention on your talents instead of just focusing on making money.
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Adopt a talent-first approach
Employee engagement begins with transforming a company from being customer-, product-, or service-centric to being people-centric. Of course, your products and customers are important, but your people must be your number one priority, no matter what.
where should i start?
Coordinate management.
To be a people-centric startup, your leadership team needs to be on the same page. Why would employees want to work with leaders who each want to achieve different things? (They don’t.)
Gather everyone together and ask a question. What is the company’s vision? What is the strategy for getting there? Which department contributes most to our company’s success? Hiring a consultant with the right knowledge and experience to ask questions like these will pave the way for honest answers and perfect alignment.
Review your hiring strategy.
Once the leader is getting each employee in the same direction, a hiring strategy can be created or modified. Being people-centric means finding the right people for your company. But who will find them? Who will hire them? Do you rely primarily on the “post and pray” strategy?
As a leader and founder, you should be involved in the hiring process. After all, who knows your company inside and out and its vision better than you? find and attract.
Give your employees opportunities to grow.
Hiring new employees doesn’t mean they’ll want to be with you for long. We need to pay attention to them, ask about their needs and invest in their growth. If not, someone else will.
Schedule one-on-one meetings with your employees to see how you can help them reach their individual goals. Your newly hired manager may dream of becoming an executive. Perhaps the lead developer wants to learn new AI skills. Paying extra attention to your employees makes for a better company.
Build a corporate culture of integrity.
When was the last time you heard from a lower-level employee? An honest employee is a dedicated employee. Needless to say, listening to them makes your company better.
The only way to cultivate this culture is for you to “become” it. It starts with you and your leadership team. Hold face-to-face all-hands meetings to let everyone know you’re dedicated to creating a culture of feedback. Anyone at any level can reach out to colleagues and leaders and listen without fear of repercussions.
It’s a time-consuming process, and if you build it over time, you’ll be able to keep up with issues you never knew existed. Ultimately, it is the key factor that determines whether an employee leaves or leaves the company.
Talent first, talent first, talent first!
Every day I work with business leaders who know things aren’t working as they should, but don’t know why. Some have bleeding talent, some struggle with demotivated teams, and some just don’t understand the issues and opinions of their employees.
It all boils down to one thing. It means taking a people-centric approach to business.