Live from the Halogen User Conference: Maximizing the Return Your Talent September 14th, 2009

Heather McCulligh

Today is the first day of our fourth annual user conference which includes a keynote from Richard Hadden, co-author of the Contented Cows series of leadership books. We talk a lot about leadership on this blog, so a lot of what Hadden shared in the session was extremely relevant.

Hadden kicked off the session by sharing his view that creating a great place to work is the BEST thing you can do for your bottom line, and that employee engagement is truly a business issue. If you aren’t familiar with the Content Cows series, Hadden and Bill Catlette, they have done years of research with leading employers (and those with less than stellar reputations) and make the connection between people and profits. Using real companies and real numbers, Contented Cows “makes the case in terms business people understand” and establishes a “clear linkage between organization’s employee relations practices and its bottom line.”

From their research, they found that companies in the group with strong employee engagement performed better, with a 6:1 margin. They also created a “mythical mutual fund” of 20 companies known for their talent management practices and tracked them for a year. The fund outperformed all major funds including the well-known Fidelity Magellan and even the Dow.

Hadden put the link between corporate and employee performance in simple terms “today’s morale, is tomorrow’s customer experience and next month’s earnings.” Well put, and a great way to explain the need for further investment in building talent management within any organization. To help session attendees meet the challenge of improving employee engagement, Hadden gave HR pros in the room 20 assignments to do. A few of the assignments to note:

1. Stop Being Ordinary: These are extraordinary times, and they call for extraordinary leadership.
2. Don’t let fear cause people to disengage.
3. Make effective leadership skills and behavior a condition of employment. Don’t let bad managers hide behind good numbers.

Great ideas, many of which we all know in theory, but we may struggle with to put into practice. I challenge you to start thinking about how you can use even one of these ideas for your organization and see how you can start making a noticeable difference on employee engagement.

Tags: employee engagement, HR, performance management, talent management