You can't scale up your business if you don't have the right people at the right time.

Every year hiring cycles are getting longer, and there's an acute talent shortage.

Change your approach to recruitment from re-active to pro-active.

Aligning headcount with business goals

You need to plan your headcount needs to align with your business objectives. Be cognizant to think about your greatest areas of exposure and how these may impact your staffing needs.

Headcount planning is critical given that when making senior and specialist hires, it is likely to take upwards of 3 months to source people and hire people, and a further 3 months to ramp up to them being 100% effective, that's a 6+ months cycle.

Making progressive changes

As you look to further develop your business, there'll be time when you need to create new job types, and very possibly new functions - you'll need to think ahead as to what these are, and ideally hire in advance. And last but not least, making those difficult decisions - they'll be times when you need to replace people, to replace individuals who are holding you back.

Planning and pipelining

Identify and note your roles and those you expect to hire in the next 12, 24 and 36 months. Categorise them into three types leadership, senior specialists and core jobs.

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Consider your leadership team first, you need a robust leadership team, without which you'll struggle or fail to scale up.

• What if any additional leadership roles do you need to create?

• What positions may require replacements or to put it another way, who do you need to replace?

• Which if any leaders do you think you may lose?

Next, think about the next level down, senior specialist high-impact roles. Again note growth hires (additional ones) and replacement ones.

It's not just about the big title jobs...

When contemplating your most critical hiring needs it's not just about your big title job types, there are likely to be other, senior specialist roles of a high impact nature, that may massively impact your business success or failure, and which maybe particularly difficult ones to source into!

You may wish to map these out with a schedule based on current headcount and needs, and what you'll require in the future, next 12 months, 24 and 36 months. And place reminders in your calendar, to prompt you to act in advance for your most important hiring needs.

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If it takes 3-6 months to source people for your most senior roles and 3-6 months to ramp up, then consider...

• Consider your most important activity types, initiatives and areas of greatest gain, or exposure?

• What are your highest impact job types and most critical hiring needs?

• What positions will be the most difficult positions to recruit into?

• When do you need to start finding people?

• How can you go about pipelining talent?

By the way, if we're relevant to one another, pipelining is something we can help you with.

You cannot scale up a business without clarity of purpose and focus.

When I meet with CEOs and CXOs, what I find is that the best ones are those who create environments in which there is clarity of purpose, a clear mission and goals, and that the teams they manage understand what's most important, and that this instils a sense of confidence and belief, laying the foundation for high performing teams.

Robert Tearle

Clarity of purpose

Mission

A typical mission statement would state your core business objective and may include what your company stands for. Ideally, a company mission statement will be between one and three sentences (or a short paragraph).

Vision

You'll probably choose to state where you're going, what you want your mission to ultimately achieve, for you, for your customers and society.

Goals

Tangible ways you'll carry out your mission and progress towards your vision. These would be specific goals, SMART goals, meaning being:

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound.

For our clients and businesses in scale up mode typically:

• Key financial metrics, Revenue goals, P&L, growth rates, Market share, market/product position

• Customer retention, customer satisfaction stats and so on.

• And be time bound with short, mid and long term goals.

Principles and values

These being what you stand for, principles and values through which you create and carry out your goals. When people know what your core objectives, principles and values are, they can then buy into them, and you can create an environment for high performance.

From the psychological point of view, people like to work in a mission led business, so principles and values can be really powerful, engaging and create a stickiness in your business i.e. people like being there and want to stay around.

With clear principles and values you can create a strong identity and team cohesion and everyone uniting behind a shared sense of purpose and common goal, an environment in which teams, and everyone is pulling together.

Establish clear departmental goals

Creating departmental goals foster teamwork and create an environment for high-performance.

• Align departmental objectives with core company objectives

• Involve Team Members in Goal Setting

  • Determine and lock in SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound).

  • Communicate goals and results clearly to the entire department.

  • Establish Team Norms and Values

• Set auto-reminders in your diary to look for opportunities that create teamwork, for example brainstorming sessions relating to problem solving or innovation.

• Promote Interdepartmental Collaboration, good Communication and Transparency

• Schedule regular formal weekly/monthly meetings

Set up a vault

To scale-up your business, you need to cultivate a positive scale-able working environment, with winning teams and a modus operandi, this requires a platform, think of it as being like a "vault".

You and your team/s need to create shared accessible resources—forms, checklists, how-to documents—for company-wide and departmental use. This should include a flexible people management framework, including job specs, interview templates, and learning materials.

Consider three types of centrally stored folders:

• Company wide folder i.e. accessible to all

• Departmental folders

• Personal folders

Go further, faster with agility

Adopt an MVP (minimum viable product) approach. As you scale you'll want to develop best in class processes, points of reference and so on, for your core business functions and initiatives. This should include a flexible people management framework, including job specs, interview templates, and learning materials.

Avoid constructing a rigid, finalized framework; opt for a modular approach for ongoing adaptability.

This kind of approach will:

• Provide immediate value

• Minimise distraction

• Minimize development costs, and

• Gather data and feedback that can be applied to improve future iterations.

Connect to accelerate growth

If you want to create a high performance business, then you've got to create high performance teams.

And one of the keys to switching these on is to link recruitment, onboarding, performance management and development.

You've got to prioritise

• Hiring to get the best in a highly competitive talent short market

• Getting people up to 100% effectiveness as quickly as possible,

• Maximising their performance levels whilst they're with you

• Fully leveraging their abilities

• Retaining your best

Click here to access our job spec template.

How's it going?

There's one important thing for you to know about onboarding people...

Emotional support is the missing link.

You can create an onboarding check-list using ChatGPT however so long as you take an interest in your new hire, check in daily in the first few weeks and ask them how's it going, then they'll open up to you about areas of uncertainty and in doing so, you'll be best able to support them.

Developing Performance:

Seek to establish a strong connection between job specifications and performance management.

• You've got to be clear about what's required.

• There are the headline performance measurements that people work to.

• Underlying these are tasks and subsets that generate these outcomes.

• There's a need to define goals, associated objectives and behaviours.

• In this way, you can look for areas for improvement.

Start with the end goal: Begin by aligning job specifications with desired performance outcomes.

• Clarify performance expectations for your current team.

• Define applicable performance measurements for recruitment.

• Identify criteria for performance levels (very good, good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory).

• Highlight key behaviours and skills driving high performance.

• Outline characteristics needed for top-level performance.

• Specify essential skills for basic job performance.

Consider:

• Clear Job Descriptions. Set SMART Goals: Establish Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals for each employee based on their job specifications.

• Ensure that these goals directly contribute to the overall objectives of the position and the organization.

• Identify key performance indicators, that will result in those goals being met. Regular Communications.

• Use Performance Reviews to Assess Job Specifications, 360-Degree Feedback, Training and Development Opportunities .

• Adjust Job Specifications as Needed:

Creating an environment with workforce agility

Operating in a talent-short market introduces challenges such as headcount gaps that require effective coverage. Identifying individuals capable of stepping into various roles presents opportunities for skill development and new experiences. Offering scope to foster greater levels of engagement, open up career pathways and possibilities.

Coverage options include:

1. Secondment: Temporarily placing someone in a role on a full-time basis.

2. Part-time Coverage: Allocating specific days for role coverage, e.g., two days a week.

3. Task Delegation: Assigning specific job components to different individuals, with others providing coverage for the remaining tasks.

In talent-short markets, open positions are more prevalent due to reasons like vacations, maternity leave, illness, or sabbaticals.

Coverage requires individuals with the necessary competencies and a willingness to engage in the work. Recognizing who in your team can cover for whom and in what capacity is crucial. This understanding ensures efficient management of workforce dynamics, maximizing engagement, and fostering positive outcomes for both individuals and the organization.

A high employee attrition rate can have several negative implications for an organization, impacting its overall performance and effectiveness. Key implications include: Direct Employment Costs, Productivity Loss, Knowledge Drain, Morale and Engagement, Customer Impact/Loss, Reputation Damage, Recruitment Challenges, Training Investment Impact, Team Dynamics...

Optimizing Headcount Productivity and Performance

A hallmark of exceptional leadership is a fundamental grasp of this concept. Let's begin by highlighting the critical importance of employee lifecycle performance and then explore strategies to enhance retention. Have you ever reflected on the duration of employee stays, their contributions to your business, and overall employee lifecycle performance?

Statistics underscore the reality that 40% of employees serve less than 18 months (see Sources 1 at the end of this email).

The intersection of tenure and performance poses intriguing questions.

This prompts five critical questions:

1. Is it possible to recruit better people and do so more quickly, and if so, how?

2. How can you ramp people up to 100% effectiveness more quickly?

3. What can you do to keep your best people in position longer?

4. How can you develop teams full of "A" players?

5. Can you spot people who are switching off?

Navigating the increasingly complex world of work, especially in senior and specialist hires, poses challenges. Have you thought about the intricacies of a three-year tenure, factoring in potential vacancy, onboarding time, and disengagement periods?

Examining this employee lifecycle performance becomes crucial amidst changing work environments, talent shortages, and heightened complexity. You may wish to consider how this impacts your business and ways to maximize employee lifecycle performance.

Against the backdrop of an acute talent shortage, we think you'll need to re-prioritise hiring, development and retention.

So how can you create an environment in which you have a high proportion of people serving high-performance mid to long term tenures, say 3+ years versus short, perhaps unprofitable ones?

Employee retention is crucial for the stability and success of any organization. The key to fostering lasting commitment and loyalty among employees is to optimize retention strategies.

Five ways to maximize retention:

Promote a Clear Path for Career Advancement

Employees are more likely to stay with a company that offers a clear path for career growth.

People who are senior and or specialists leave companies for new challenges.

That's what we come across, so create possibilities for people:

• Establish transparent career development programs, provide opportunities for promotions or lateral moves, and communicate with employees about their long-term career prospects within the organization.

• New challenges don't have to be more senior jobs with bigger job titles they can be lateral moves.

• Remember, effective employee retention requires ongoing efforts and a commitment to understanding and addressing the unique needs and motivations of your workforce.

• Regularly solicit feedback, conduct stay interviews, and be responsive to the changing needs of your employees to create an environment where they want to stay and grow.

People stay when they're developing

And they leave when they feel they've stopped learning. Invest in your employees' growth by offering:

• Opportunity to participate in projects that broaden their experience and skill set.

• Training programs, workshops, and opportunities for skill development.

• Coaching

In many instances it'll cost you less spending money on training courses than those costs associated if they leave and you've got to replace someone.

Create an environment in which people are highly-engaged.

One of the main reasons for leaving that we come across is when people are no-longer engaged in their work. This relates to the work being done, and the environment of which they're part. Employees are more likely to stay in an environment where they feel supported, appreciated, and importantly part of a positive team culture. Encourage collaboration, team interactions, work-life balance and prioritize employee well-being.

Praise, praise, praise...

Acknowledge and reward employees for their hard work and achievements. The simplest and often most powerful way is to say "Thank you, well done etc" on a one to one basis and as appropriate in public. Other forms, including gifts, monetary rewards, or career advancement opportunities. Feeling appreciated and valued contributes significantly to job satisfaction and retention.

If you want the best people, pay them the best rate.

"A" players command "A" rated compensation, and the same principle applies to "B" and "C" player types. If you don't pay people what they're worth, then you're exposed to losing them, this applies if you've short changed them when they join i.e. you can be vulnerable to losing them early in the tenure, not just when they're established.

In the tech/SaaS/digital sectors employers have been finding that recruitment and retention has been a Top 3 issue. Problems hiring, have been translating into ever increasingly lengthily hiring cycles and this has been impacting businesses negatively, often making the difference between annual goals being achieved or missed out on.

Hiring problems are translating into an opportunity cost.

The answer is to commence hiring in advance.

The hiring dilemma!

Employers expectations of candidate criteria has increased, simultaneously there's an acute talent shortage. We're regularly observing clients taking into consideration twenty one perspectives.

Proactive measures are crucial for successfully competing for skilled professionals.

Given that your business goals are intricately tied to your workforce, the conventional approach involves recruiting individuals within the same year to meet short-term objectives. However, the reality is that hiring timelines have significantly extended, as illustrated below, carrying an associated opportunity cost.

Our observations...

Over the last 15 years, hiring timelines have not just increased but, for senior and specialist hires, they've doubled or even tripled—an aspect often overlooked but likely lingering in the recesses of your mind. The process of recruiting for senior roles is not only challenging and distracting but also extensively time-consuming, bordering on the painfully long. Moreover, these extended hiring cycles come with a significant direct or opportunity cost, potentially reaching six or seven figures.

These prolonged hiring cycles can be attributed to several factors:

1. An escalation in the number of interview stages, now ranging from 4 to 7, compared to the past's 2 to 4 stages.

2. An increase in the number of criteria used for conscious evaluation and subconscious consideration.

3. Heightened scrutiny and greater rigour is being applied throughout the hiring process.

4. On the candidate side, a growing discernment in choosing opportunities.

5. People are busier than ever before making scheduling more challenging.

Schedule plans and reminders into your calendar

If you want a high performing company, you need one that's full of high performing people i.e. both quantity and quality.

This means going to greater lengths to hire the best, and doing so in advance.

And when for key, hard to fill hires pipelining talent.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is so critical to success that it accounts for 58 per cent of performance in all types of jobs.

Unlike IQ (your intelligence quotient), EQ, your emotional quotient is something that can be developed.

Given that only 36% of people are emotionally intelligence, the scope to build high performance teams through developing peoples EQ is massive.

So what is emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is a broad description of the ability to understand and control one’s own emotions, together with the ability to manage relationships through the recognition and understanding of other people’s emotions.

Do you know what it is? To what extent are you familiar with it? How emotionally intelligent are you? And what about your team or teams?

• Self-awareness. The ability to understand your emotions as well as recognise their impact on relationships and performance. This relates to accurate self-assessment and self-confidence.

• Self-management. Controlling your emotions and using your awareness of them to stay flexible and act positively. A critical aspect of a business is the ability to keep any disruptive emotions under control in changing situations and overcoming difficulties. This relates to transparency (trustworthiness), adaptability, achievement orientation, initiative and optimism.

• Social awareness. Your ability to identify emotions in other people and to understand their perspective and take an interest in their concerns. This relates to empathy, organizational awareness and service orientation.

• Social skills/relationship management. Your ability to use your awareness of your own emotions together with your understanding of the emotions of others to manage interactions successfully. A critical aspect in business is the ability to take charge and inspire others while sending out clear, convincing and well-tuned messages. This relates to inspirational leadership, influence, developing others, change catalyst, conflict management, building bonds, teamwork and collaboration.

• Motivations. Notably our personal drive to improve and achieve, commitment to our goals, initiative, or readiness to act on opportunities, as well as optimism and resilience.

What next?

Unlike IQ your emotional intelligence (EQ) is something you can develop. Here are three ideas to help you:

A Book. A super fast, easy to read groundbreaking new book, Emotional Intelligence Habits by Dr. Travis Bradberry. The book starts with a foundation of EQ and then reinforces those skills through micro-habits that can easily be implemented. This enables you to immediately utilize proven strategies to achieve extraordinary outcomes—both personally and professionally.

An online test. Included with the above book, when you buy it new is a passcode to access an online Emotional Intelligence Appraisal® test you can buy the book on Amazon alternatively, you can buy a comprehensive set of offerings from TalentSmart.com .

What next? Emotional intelligence accounts for 58 per cent of performance in all types of jobs. You could use the book, and peoples results from the online tests to help you to build peoples skills individually, and as a point of reference, discussion for teams to discuss how they can best work together and drive performance to the highest levels.

What's your people management rating?

If you were to score your business's talent management capability on a scale of 1 to 5, what would your rating be?

How strong is your approach to people management? What do you think are your strong and weak points?

And what do your people think?

Taking a pragmatic reflection...

If you were to rate your leadership and people management efforts, approach to applying best practice and processes that work well, what would your rating be?

On a scale of 1-5, where 1 is non existent, 2 weak, 3 moderate, 4 good and 5 very good in what areas are you strong or weak.

What would your scorecard look like?

How can you elevate your talent capability?

Lorem ipsum, use ChatGPT to sort this intro out... h teams of 5 or 6 "A" player types however I've never met a manager of managers with an all "A" player team, in fact at best a leader of teams would say their overall team quality is "B+". The reality for most, is "B/B-/C". It stands to reason that you've got a commensurate output capacity.

One of your questions has got to be "How can I level up my teams?".

Immediate issues:

If you look across your teams and rate your overall team quality, what is it?

A+, A, B+, B, C+, C

I've met departmental managers with teams of 5 or 6 "A" player types however I've never met a manager of managers with an all "A" player team, in fact at best a leader of teams would say their overall team quality is "B+". The reality for most, is "B/B-/C".

It stands to reason that you've got a commensurate output capacity.

One of your questions has got to be "How can I level up my teams?".

What adjustments do you need to make?

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Future plans

Mapping out hiring needs

Building tomorrow today

encourage plans

hire in advance

Building people

Talk to us

Check out bright-future contents and competency table

The reality is that there are some basics that are overlooked, if you want to move people up to the next level, then you need to understand them. Their experiences, skills, underlying competencies and motivations.

Seven questions you need to know the answers to:

question of why

How do they like to learn

Ditto be managed

Levelling up How do you wish to develop your career Why L n d, s n w, competencies motivations The previous boss conversation

1) A more complex and competitive environment.

In every industry, in every occupational type, the complexity of the work being done increases every year. What's required becomes increasingly more specific and standards are elevated. If you want to a build high-performance team you'll need to increase the importance you apply to recruitment, people development and retention.

2) An acute talent shortage.

The employment rate is at an all-time high #1, i.e. there are very few people unemployed. A talent shortage already exists against a backdrop of increased retirees #2, i.e., a decreasing proportionate working population.

3) People are more demanding and less loyal.

Employee side, people are more demanding, independent and less engaged in their work #3. The amount of time people are staying with employers is reducing! More than one in five of your employees will leave every year #4.

4) It's taking 3-6 months to hire

When making senior hires, it takes upwards of three to weeks to source candidates. You've then got three to six interview stages over two to six weeks, offer/accept/resign another week or more, then a notice period of perhaps four to twelve weeks.

5) It takes another 3-6 months to ramp up

They've got to get familiar with your systems and any product knowledge and integrate into teams. And for many roles in leadership, sales and project management - they need to develop an output, a workstream or in the case of sales roles, a pipeline. The more senior the role, the higher up the value chain... the longer it takes.

Sources of information:

#1 Current employment rate is 96.2%, i.e. just 3.8% of the working population is unemployed, and it's the lowest since 1971. A similar dynamic has applied in the USA since 1969. Sources UK & US Government published stats.

#2 Decrease in the percentage of working-age people by 7.5%. (Source: UK Census Survey)

#3 Just 20% of employees are engaged in their work (Source: Gallup)

#4 Cross-industry, cross-job type average employee turnover is 20%. (Source: Department of Labor Statistics, US). The average turnover rate in sales jobs is 31% (Source Xpert HR)

Your hiring expectations are in an upward spiral

Robert Tearle pictured states "When it comes to hiring people, the trend is towards assessing people against an increased set of criteria, and doing so with greater scrutiny."

As economic growth slowed in 2023 some SaaS vendors made headcount cutbacks but the tec sector continue to grow, c 5% growth in 2023, and projected growth of 8% in 2024 - stats according to Gartner.

However, every year expectations become more specific what we're observing is that for senior, specialist hires it's not unusual for employers to consider 21 or more characteristics:

1. Location

2. Working style i.e. hybrid, remote first or office

3. Seniority level, scope and dimensions

4. Functional area expertise (1)

5. Functional area expertise (2) sometimes an additional definition

6. Industry sector familiarity (1)

7. Industry sector familiarity (2) sometimes an additional definition

8. Employer size

9. Underlying competencies

10. Likeability

11. Track record

12. Emotional intelligence

13. Challenge-related qualities

14. Cultural match

15. Values

16. Motivations

17. Stability and agility

18. Growth potential

19. Salary parameters match

20. Availability to start within an acceptable timeframe

21. Does the candidate want to take up this job
    

• So there's an acute talent shortage and...

• At at the same time employers are more specific about the criteria required, applying a greater level of scrutiny, involved more interview stages/events

Consequently hiring is becoming more difficult, more time consuming and cycles longer every year.

When it comes to hiring into senior and specialist roles, current sourcing methods are inadequate.

Here's why:

• Conventional recruitment connects with just 30%.

• Sourced from ads, CV files and jobs boards. It works well for regular and non-time-sensitive hires.

• It's a mixed talent pool. Heavily populated with low to mid-performers.

• A high proportion has been let go for underperformance.

• Employers rarely let go of their best people.

Five to ten years ago, you'd have just about got by using conventional hiring approaches.

You'd probably have found some acceptable hires using them.

However not now there's an acute talent shortage.

Most employers find hiring is painfully long.

Carrying an unacceptable opportunity cost.

To make "A" player hires with very precise criteria, you need to tap into high-performance passive talent.

Access to this pool is via pipelining and headhunting. You need to re-prioritise senior level hires.

What's required today is pinpoint accuracy looking beyond the 30% active candidate pool.

You need to tap into 100% of the talent.

And win over, the best of the best!

Having a complete highly productive team will determine the difference between success and failure.

Success versus abject failure

Failure to operate your business with a full headcount of "A" and "B" player types, will translate into failure to meet your business goals for growth, profitability and shareholder value creation.

• A complete team of highly effective people, translates into success.

• Having gaps, translates into missing goals.

• Having gaps, and "C" player types, translates into abject failure.

Compromise on team quality, and quantity and you'll either fall short of meeting your plans or see your business meet with abject failure!

There's a relationship between realising your goals and your headcount capacity.

Failure to make the right hires on time, and to fully develop and retain your best people will delay your progress toward achieving your goals.

Workforce planning requires both a quantitative and qualitative approach.

There's a relationship between your team capacity and capability, and your overall business performance.

Failure to make the right hires on time, and to fully develop and retain your best people will delay your progress toward achieving your goals.

Workforce planning requires both a quantitative and qualitative approach.

Your realities are:

• What you do to build great teams this year will affect your ability to perform next year.

• There is a ripple effect.

• In year hiring has shortcomings

• High achievers who you want to keep, will leave.

• Low performers, will stay.

• Hiring will take longer than you anticipate.

• You'll make hiring mistakes.