Stay relevant in five steps

Change is the on­ly con­stant. How a com­pa­ny can most ef­fec­tive­ly han­dle the trends of to­mor­row in its cur­rent day-to-day work and win over the most tal­ent­ed em­ploy­ees.

Last week we re­port­ed on how im­por­tant it is to cor­rect­ly in­ter­pret the sign of the times and to see change as an op­por­tu­ni­ty. Not every com­pa­ny is a small, ag­ile agency. In larg­er busi­ness­es such ad­just­ments take more time and ef­fort, but change is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble in them too.

1. In­volve your em­ploy­ees in the process in­stead of im­pos­ing new de­vel­op­ments on them
   You can set up fo­cus groups for this con­sist­ing of em­ploy­ees from all age groups and hi­er­ar­chi­cal lev­els. Ask ques­tions – what do your em­ploy­ees need to feel good in the work­place? Of­fer sup­port, for ex­am­ple with em­ploy­ee am­bas­sadors who act as in­ter­me­di­aries for sen­si­tive is­sues.

2. Train man­agers to have a good rap­port with the team
   Team spir­it is no emp­ty phrase but the so­cial glue that holds a com­pa­ny to­geth­er. And it is sup­pos­ed­ly the first vic­tim of a flex­i­ble work­ing hours mod­el. What can you do to counter this? For ex­am­ple, you can en­sure that there forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­trol oth­er than con­stant pres­ence, i.e. joint tele­phone con­fer­ences if you have an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion or a reg­u­lar meet­ing where dis­tances are small­er or a shared team lunch.

3. As­sess per­for­mance to­geth­er with soft fac­tors
   Up to now good em­ploy­ees have been seen and heard. They have worked hard and shown it and with luck been re­ward­ed with a pro­mo­tion af­ter some time. In the fu­ture this will not be so easy, if not every­one is al­ways in the same place. Clear­ly de­fined in­stru­ments for mea­sur­ing per­for­mance are there­fore need­ed. Nev­er­the­less, in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ships re­main a key fac­tor – so­cial com­pe­ten­cies must not fall by the way­side. The mea­sur­ing in­stru­ments are there­fore huge­ly im­por­tant and they should take in­to ac­count dif­fer­ent pa­ra­me­ters. It is im­por­tant that you car­ry out tests and try dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es be­fore things get se­ri­ous.

4. Help your em­ploy­ees stay rel­e­vant
   In the brave new world of work there is no such thing as a straight­for­ward ca­reer path any­more. It is of­ten the case that tak­ing one or the oth­er de­tour is more re­ward­ing than stick­ing to the beat­en track. The world has be­come un­pre­dictable and with it so too has the tal­ent. Take this fact in­to ac­count and show your em­ploy­ees how and where they can use the skills they have ac­quired.

5. Clear­ly de­fined in­di­ca­tors for man­age­ment per­son­nel
   Most man­agers are not a part of the new gen­er­a­tion. They may have worked for the com­pa­ny for a very long time and have their own per­spec­tive of things, which is fine. How­ev­er, you should de­fine mea­sure­ment val­ues as ori­en­ta­tion points for the man­agers when it comes to the achieve­ment of new em­ploy­ee com­mit­ment tar­gets. This is im­por­tant. Tell them what you ex­pect from them and what they can ex­pect from you in re­turn. Give and take, com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly and show them what suc­cess in the fu­ture looks like.

There is no ready-made so­lu­tion which can be ap­plied every­where. Each com­pa­ny is dif­fer­ent. Cer­tain ar­eas can be loos­ened up with­out any prob­lem, oth­ers re­main rigid at best. It is im­por­tant that you un­der­stand where you want to go and how your com­pa­ny will find its place in the fu­ture along with all the tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als of to­mor­row.

This is an abridged and adapted Version on an aricle of Anita van de Velde that was published in Communication Director 4/2016