AC Growth Executive Interview with Richard Nantel
Richard Nantel, CEO, Brandon Hall Research Brandon Hall Research is an independent firm that provides, since 1992, objective research about workforce learning and development and talent management. Over the span of more than ten years, Richard has served the company as an analyst and technologist. He is the author of many research reports and has designed much of the software used by the firm, including Brandon Hall Research's KnowledgeBase; online applications to help customers select and compare technology products and services. Richard has more than 25 years experience working in the learning and development and talent management fields. His experience spans strategy, operations, management, marketing, Web and client/server-based application development, social media, programming/authoring, graphic interface design, and development of procedural and quality assurance methodologies. He's had the pleasure of working on many large projects for important clients including the Canadian Department of National Defence, SUN Microsystems, Cirque du Soleil and Pfizer, among others.
Richard Nantel also serves on the Advisory Board of McGill University's Centre for Continuing Education and on the Governing Board of Christmas Park School.
How has the economy affected the emphasis placed on Learning and Development and Talent Management Initiatives?
Whenever there is a slowdown in the economy, we see an impact. Companies believe learning and development and talent management are important but will still cut programs and staffing. There is a major disconnect between what companies want to do and what they actually do. In 2009, we have seen training cut by 20% in economic slowdowns. We are, however, starting to see a recovery.
Every time a recession occurs, companies find new ways to preserve their bottom line. Unfortunately, that's very often at the expense of their workers. Organizations implement layoffs, convert positions from salaried to contractor, convert full-time positions to part-time positions, etc.
The result is a low level of dedication/trust of workers with the organizations that employ them. Workers now know (1) you don’t have a job for life, (2) you may never find full-time work with one employer and (3) even a full-time job is really only a contractor job in disguise since you may be asked to take non-paid furloughs when times get tough. There is truly a state of crisis in confidence between workforce and employers in today’s businesses.
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What’s driving this disconnect between employers and employees?
The disconnect begins when the company’s values don’t align with the workforce. A company needs to be clear about what they value and people must be at the top of the list. Many employers still do not consider their workforce as their greatest asset. Companies often send a message that it is every man for themselves and you either perform or are cut. What they see is an individual who would be more cost effective as a contractor. For example, in today’s economy the astronomical cost of carrying healthcare and other employee benefits make employees very expensive. This mentality builds no sense of loyalty.
Companies overall have not made very big gains in building employee relationships over the past 20 years. If asked, many employees would communicate a sense of fear that permeates the workforce driven by the anxiety over the financial stability of companies and headcount reductions to save costs.
This overall lack of dedication and trust by organizations gives rise to great talent “jumping ship” and moving to hopefully another company that really does want to invest in its people.
This is a crisis, what do companies need to do to turn this trend around?
Organizations need to communicate that their star performers are in fact safe. Companies need to communicate that although employees are in charge of their own destiny, the company wants to partner in their growth and success. The way to do this is to create opportunities for personal growth. Old-time carrot-and-stick compensation models just aren't enough.
To foster an environment of personal growth, leaders and managers need to be part-time psychologists. They need to understand what motivates their people and create an environment where employees are engaged, happy, and productive. Most people have a low tolerance for routine. They need to be given new challenges that stretch their abilities. Organizations need to provide their workers with all the tools needed to learn the skills necessary to meet these challenges. This includes learning content, time to learn, etc. The role of leaders is to match up challenging assignments with the right individuals (The challenge can't be too hard or too easy). Leaders must be encouraging, supportive, and must understand the people that report to them on a personal level.
How does a manager begin this process?
You need to clue into the human factor – look at your employees as individuals with their own unique set of behaviors, norms, values and perceptions that may be the same or different than your own. Realize also that an individual’s psychological profile permeates team behavior as well and team behavior has an even higher degree of complexity and difficulty due to the individuals that make up the team. Finally, a company’s culture is a web of individual and team dynamics brought together under the stressful conditions of company performance. You need to understand all these factors to begin the process.
Leaders need to embrace their role in defining the culture of an organization. I believe wholeheartedly that old-school, Jack Welch-like leadership is dead or on its deathbed. There's no way at all the newest generation of workers will put up with punitive, hard-nose managers and leaders. If you have that leadership style currently in place, then you need to change it quickly.
You mentioned that you need to communicate with your star performers, what’s the right approach?
Keeping the very top talent happy and motivated is very very hard. These high performers have achieved a lot and quickly get bored and unhappy. Many will sabotage their careers as an opportunity to rebuild and achieve new successes. The solution for these individuals can often be to allow them the opportunity to meet new challenges outside of the firm. The Google approach of giving these top performers 20% of their time to work on their own projects is brilliant and indicates that Google understands the psychological needs of its workers.
In general, leaders need to understand the need for time away from work. Mobile technology has created an always-on work culture and too many organizations are exploiting their ability to ask workers to be available 24/7. Expecting workers to always be working is like expecting an athlete to succeed by training hard every day. Successful athletes have scheduled rest days to recover and get motivated. Lack of a work-life balance will not keep your people engaged, happy, and productive.
What about the rest of the team, how do you motivate and stimulate them?
I can share with you from personal experience how to make this happen. As a leader of a company, I realized early on that you cannot ride the backs of your star performers to truly be a sustainable and successful company. I spent a considerable amount of time with my lower level non-managerial staff to understand what motivates them and how they could have a greater impact on the success of the organization. What I found was they had unique insights and perspectives that were exciting and well thought out about how to grow our company. They were just waiting for an opportunity to prove their ideas were sound. In the end, I promoted a significant number of these individuals to management and gave them opportunities to put their ideas to work - it was one of the best moves I ever made in my career.
The key to really being successful is to identify projects and initiatives that align with people’s interests and the goals and objectives of the company. This is by no means an easy task and may lead to a little organizational restructuring to make it happen. However, it is not as hard as you think if you are willing to take the time to get to know your people. I have to say as a manager, it is one of the most rewarding things you can do. If you focus on people’s innate interest in personal learning and growth, you will always have a motivated and engaged workforce.
What role will technology continue to play in Learning and Development and Talent Management?
Technology will continue to play a critical role in learning and development and talent management. Some of these technologies will be disruptive, leading to entirely new opportunities. But, I believe many of the technologies with us today will not soon be obsolete.
For example, some people have predicted that the era of the learning management system is almost over. They suggest that learning in the future will overwhelmingly be informal. I just don't see that happening. For decades, deregulation was viewed as path to economic prosperity. In many industries, we're now seeing a reversal of that movement and instead experiencing an increase in government and industry regulation. Specific examples include:
More so than ever, there's a strong need for technology to manage certification, regulatory and compliance training. That will need to continue to increase. And, compliance isn’t restricted to governmental regulations. Some organizations are requiring compliance and certification to their own internal standards.
The use of technology for talent acquisition, retention, and management will increase significantly in the years to come. Lower employee loyalty will mean that people will be more likely to move from one job to another. Increased competition from developing countries will mean organizations will perpetually be in search of talent, and will be trying to keep talented individuals engaged and motivated.
What do you see are the future trends in Learning and Development as well as Talent Management? For learning and development, I predict a much greater use of technologies to enable virtual meetings and live sessions. Companies such as Cisco, that produce cutting-edge video telepresence technologies, are well-positioned to capitalize on the adoption of this type of technology. Some hotel chains have begun installing video telepresence rooms so people will soon become exposed to their benefits. This is a smart business move on the part of hotel chains. People will be able to travel to their nearest big chain hotel, meet with colleagues, customers, and prospective customers across the globe in a virtual environment that very closely mimics reality. I suspect that in a few years we'll look back at business travel and we’ll think we were insane. We'll remember the days when we used to spend two hours clearing security, then embarking on a six-hour flight across the continent, spending the night in a hotel, having a couple of meetings, and then repeating long trip to get back home. We’ll surely think this was a pretty inefficient (and environmentally irresponsible) way to do business. Yes, face-to-face meetings in the same geographic location will always exist. They remain the best way to forge strong relationships. But much of what occurs in day-to-day business life can easily be replaced through high quality video telepresence technology at a fraction of the cost. I do predict that learning and development and talent management applications will continue to become more social. We are, after all, social animals and providing ways for people to interact within these applications makes sense. There are three major drivers to the social trend:
Everyone I know in a senior role in business is making the same observations:
What this means is that enterprise applications to help manage all this will increasingly be required.
Tools such as Twitter, Google Docs, Slideshare, etc. often make the list of "Top Learning Applications." These free applications certainly have a place in the workplace. We need to remember, however, that these tools often rise to the top of vote-based popularity contests by virtue of being free and accessible to all. Are they really the best or the most cheaply accessible?
I honestly believe that what will be required for businesses to succeed in the years to come are powerful, increasingly intelligent, ever-evolving, SaaS enterprise applications such as ERPs, HRIS, talent management suites, learning management systems, lead management applications and others which can help organizations sort through the fire hose of information and make smart choices.
You have shared many important insights; where is all this heading?
I'd say that companies need to spend more time understanding their people and what motivates them. In order to do so, companies need to build a trusting relationship with their employees. Building trust will lead to employees being more comfortable about opening up to you and sharing personal information about them. Many of the motivators for employees lie well below the surface of day to day interactions at work. We all have internal compasses which point us in the direction we want to go. This compass is made up of a core set of beliefs and values that we use to run our everyday lives. A company will succeed in building a highly motivated workforce if they are willing to commit the time and effort necessary to build strong relationships with their people.
In summary, I think the answers to all the talent management, learning and leadership challenges in the workplace will be more easily found studying psychology than reading a stack of business books.
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