I am reviewing the nominations and candidates for Aquire’s employee awards.  This process always makes me so proud of our team. It also makes me reflect over the year’s achievements and the history of our awards.

We have the “Top Gun” award, which goes to the top salesperson.  The “Wingman” award which is a vote of the sales team for who has helped them the most in getting their deals done.

We have a number of innovation awards to recognize the continuous innovation within the company.   read more »

Right now a lot of organizations are experiencing pain caused by talent shortages – not the kind caused by a lack of skilled workers, but because there has been a lack of internal mobility. Companies just aren’t managing talent development across departments, which is what turns skilled specialists into well-rounded leaders who can see the forest and the trees. Then, they wonder why they’re left with workers who have the skills to perform narrow, specialized tasks, but not the talent to run projects, launch business initiatives or manage global growth.

CIO magazine ran a recent article citing the pain being felt in IT departments because their employees generally have narrow technical skill sets, but lack the broader business skills needed today. It’s a great read. And timely. I gave a presentation devoted to internal talent movement at the IHR Contract Workforce & Talent Exchange conference this week in San Francisco.

Here’s the gist of my presentation: read more »

Some of my friends and peers say you shouldn’t celebrate the longevity of an an employee, only their successes.  I disagree.  If you have the right people and culture you are already celebrating successes! So, I add to the celebration of each employees’ anniversary.  I do this with a hand written note to each employee on their Aquire anniversary, and when they have been with me for 10 years, we celebrate with a roast.  I don’t have slackers that shouldn’t be recognized for their longevity and tenure.

So, this week we had a roast.  We had a big roast.  Aquire celebrated 6 employees reaching their 10th year with the company.  It was awesome and hysterical.  Because we had a big group, we attached a happy hour at a great restaurant close to the office.  We lined up the people from development, marketing, operations, tech writing and sales.  The jokes were rolling. The stories were fun and heart felt.  The roastees felt loved and appreciated and the newer employees learned more about the legends of our company.

I believe that stories are critical to keep the torch of the culture burning bright while the business grows.  The sales guy, being roasted, stood up and told the story that he just had a conversation with a prospect that had challenged his presentation of caring employees and deep knowledge in the team.  The prospect had commented that one of our competitors was averaging a between 100 to 200% turnover in sales staff.  He asked my employee how long he had been with the company, and our rep proudly responded with “10 years.”  The prospect now has a purchase order in purchasing!

If you don’t think you should celebrate longevity, then you have missed the glorious feeling of coworkers being in the right job for themselves and for the company.  You are missing something that the Aquire employees relish.  Retention of great employees is beautiful!

Cheers,

Lois

P.S. For a more pics of our Roast, visit our Facebook Page www.facebook.com/aquire

Succession planning discussions aren’t limited to HR industry magazines and websites anymore – just Google search “Yankees succession plan” and you’ll get a host of hits from a wide range of sources. Clearly this is more than just buzz – it’s top of mind in the business community, as I believe it should be. A sound succession plan keeps organizations on the path to success.

So why do we hesitate to create that crucial blueprint? Confusion? Dread? Lack of resources and tools? Too many of us get bogged down in the concept of managing the process instead of focusing on the plan itself.

This is a subject that I’ve been tackling head on lately. So, I thought I’d put all of our recent succession planning resources here. I hope you enjoy! read more »

More workers quit their jobs than were laid off in March. Wow. I was a little surprised when I first heard this statistic. Then I thought about it and realized what this means for talent management and workforce planning – it’s no time to be on auto-pilot. We’d better be working on strategies to keep the talent we already have as companies begin to hire again giving employees more choices in employers.

Let’s admit it – there’s been a buyer’s market for talent the past two years (when there’s been any hiring at all) resulting in a class of “underemployed” – laid-off overqualified types who were willing to trade in a title or a bit of salary in exchange for benefits. Even tenured employees who have been denied promotions or raises during hiring freezes and layoffs can be counted as underemployed. I recently read more »