Charting A Career Course in 2012?
Have you developed your Individual Development Plan (IDP) for 2012?
In this month’s issue of the Helios Newsletter “The Chariot” Senior Human Resources Business Partner Beth Singh provides tips to get started:
Charting a Career Course in 2012 — Developing an Individual Development Plan (IDP)
Beth Singh, Sr. HRBP
It’s that time of year again, the time when individuals and organizations are most likely to think about what lies ahead and what they plan to do about it. Of course, an argument could be made that in the context of future-focused development planning, that time should really be continuous, but that’s a discussion for another day. Let’s talk instead about the opportunity you have in front of you right now, as a leader of others, to help your employees chart their course this year.
Many of us who have been in management for a while can easily underestimate the power of what’s before us when we enter development planning discussions. After all, it’s possible that many of us charted our own course or frankly, that we happened upon what we learned a little more organically than employees do now. Today, the landscape is different. Not only is there an opportunity to initiate planning discussions with employees. There’s a responsibility, to the people and to the business. After all, if you aren’t talking to your employees about their development, someone else is or will be soon.
So what does that look like in the days of a multi-generational workforce, with limited time and likely, even more limited dollars available? You might be surprised to learn that getting started doesn’t have to be terribly complicated at all and in fact, it doesn’t have to cost much either.
Here are some Individual Development Planning (IDP) tips:
- Invest the time — IDP’s are a great engagement and retention tool when done well and in the spirit of continuous growth. Initiate the dialogue and offer your honest, constructive assessment of performance and potential, based on the individual’s skills and the organization’s priorities.
- Give adequate, if not slightly more, weight to reinforcing strengths than to developing weaknesses. Sure, we all have to develop the areas that challenge us and a strong IDP likely does push us out of our comfort zone just a bit, but companies and individuals gain much more when they can identify and grow natural talents.
“One cannot build on weaknesses. To achieve results, one has to use all the available strengths…These strengths are the true opportunities” (Drucker, 1967) - Encourage employees to develop a plan that is interesting, achievable, practical and realistic — for both the employee and the organization (HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector). Your job is to initiate the discussion and to approve the final plan. Employees play a critical and lead role in the plan’s development and its continued momentum.
- Remember that there are many options available to develop employees. Think creatively about on-the-job training, committee work, leadership opportunities, job rotation, job shadowing, “stretch” assignments (with appropriate support), webinars, offsite training and conferences. The direct costs of most of these are nominal.
The bottom line is, start somewhere and set the standard. If your organization isn’t there yet, you can still engage your team in these development-oriented discussions. I assure you that they will see the value and will likely demonstrate it in their engagement in the job and commitment to the organization. As with most things after all, it’s the sincerity of the gesture, the welcoming of the dialogue and the commitment to mutual success that have the most profound impact on the courses we chart in life.
To sign up to receive “The Chariot” click: http://www.helioshr.com/resources/chariot-newsletter
Congratulations, CARE Award Winners!
The 19th Annual CARE Awards Breakfast took place on Thursday, November 17, 2011 at the Fairview Park Marriott in Falls Church, VA. The CARE Award, which recognizes companies that integrate family-friendly work policies, is a hallmark of the finest employer community in a competitive job market. The CARE program has helped change the business climate in Northern Virginia by exposing business leaders to new ideas and has given them specific, workable steps to follow for making important workplace changes. Because of the CARE program, many business leaders have begun to think seriously about ways family-friendly policies can impact the day-to-day operation of their businesses and how they can be implemented in companies of any size and configuration.
Companies covet the CARE Award because it gives them the opportunity to showcase to their colleagues the good things they have done to support their workers. Additionally, many business leaders believe that the recognition gives them an edge in hiring skilled and motivated workers. Many companies have discovered that the self-assessment, combined with the outside evaluation by the CARE team of experts, gives them valuable information about the strengths and weaknesses of their policies.
Helios HR congratulates the following CARE Awards winners for their family-friendly workplace policies and innovative employee-focused solutions:
- AMERICAN SYSTEMS
- Buccaneer, A Vangent Company
- Compusearch Software Systems, Inc.
- Consumer Electronics Association
- CustomInk.com
- Dimension Data
- Federal Management Partners, Inc.
- High Performance Technologies, Inc.
- InCadence Strategic Solutions
- InTec, LLC
- Kearney & Company
- National Rural Electric Cooperative Association
- National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation
- Navy Federal Credit Union
- SRA International, Inc.
- L-3 STRATIS
- Technomics, Inc.
For more information about the CARE Awards program, please visit their site here.
1099 or W2?
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
Use the Federal 20 Factor Test and Common Law to determine independent contractor or employee status in Virginia:
- Is the worker required to comply with instructions about when, where and how the work is done?
- Is the worker provided training that would enable him/her to perform a job in a particular method or manner?
- Are the services provided by the worker an integral part of the business’ operations?
- Must the services be rendered personally?
- Does the business hire, supervise, or pay assistants to help the worker on the job?
- Is there a continuing relationship between the worker and the person for whom the services are performed?
- Does the recipient of the services set the work schedule?
- Is the worker required to devote his/her full time to the person he/she performs services for?
- Is the work performed at the place of business of the company or at specific places set by the company?
- Does the recipient of the services direct the sequence in which the work must be done?
- Are regular oral or written reports required to be submitted by the worker?
- Is the method of payment hourly, weekly, monthly?
- Are business and/or traveling expenses reimbursed?
- Does the company furnish tools and materials used by the worker?
- Has the worker failed to invest in equipment or facilities used to provide the services?
- Does the arrangement put the person in a position or realizing either a profit or loss on the work?
- Does the worker perform services exclusively for the company rather than working for a number of companies at the same time?
- Does the worker in fact make his/her services regularly available to the general public?
- Is the worker subject to dismissal for reasons other than non-performance of the contract specifications?
- Can the worker terminate his/her relationship without incurring a liability for failure to complete the job?
In honor of our Veterans
- The American Freedom Foundation Festival and job fair is this Saturday, November 12, at the Patriot Center in Fairfax! Please stop by the Chamber booth to pick up our available positions from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m! We look forward to seeing you there.
- Helios is also partnering with Easter Seals Veterans Employment Program to provide Interviewing Skills, Resume Writing workshops and Employer Panel discussions to discuss current openings. The first workshop will be in Silver Spring, MD on December 15th. Please check back for more information soon.
- A united Senate emphatically approved legislation Thursday intended to help unemployed veterans and companies doing business with the government, endorsing a measure that includes the first small slice of President Barack Obama’s jobs plan that is likely to become law. Read more from BenefitsPro.
Helios Recruiting Blog
Welcome! This blog will provide you with the best practices and needed advice on resume writing, interviewing, tips for researching potential employers, techniques on finding the right people and finding the right opportunity for your growth. Our mission is to share best practices with those involved in talent management and provide current tips and trends to our readers.
In the coming days and weeks, we will cover many topics, but I wanted to start with trends that will shape tomorrow’s talent searches for firms. The same practices can be used by job seekers to see where they should be posting resumes and the best places to connect and network with Talent Managers. The first action that any recruiting team needs to tackle is to create a competitive advantage in their space.
How can this be done? Our recruitment practice subscribes to the philosophy that the quality of an organization’s talent will have a direct correlation to its success. We will share some of the ways we have become the “go-to team” for our clients. Having a team of consultants, each with their own niche or specialty, is an added resource to your internal HR team, and will help you build and establish a workforce environment that creates a competitive advantage.
Use your resources wisely
Using Social Networks is new, needed, and effective. However, when used incorrectly it is a tricky policy. In order to be effective, firms not only need to have a presence, but a policy that is well suited to their needs and that works for them. If you encourage employees as individuals to connect with others and share their own information, they will expand their following, but not drive people to your firm.
It is important when using social media to make sure the branding of your firm is consistent and that you do not have multiple employees using the same media, in the firm’s name. An effective way to transform or shape this is to encourage senior management and recruiting staff to have a work account. Using a professional account on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and The Ladders allows your team to have their own following. Candidates of various job skills and locations can follow your firm or your firm’s representative. You also encourage better communication between your own internal recruiting team and senior management.
At Helios, we typically incorporate social media in our searches and particularly LinkedIn. Job boards may have revolutionized recruiting, but many of the larger services, although useful, have become weighted down with resumes of unqualified candidates. Sometimes it is more time consuming to run a complex search on a larger board or really find candidates in the top talent pool our clients are interested in. While job boards are still an avenue of candidate sourcing, they now take a back seat to more strategic and innovative ways to build a superior candidate pipeline.
Generate buzz!
It is important to create targeted social and traditional media buzz designed to attract top talent. We no longer rely on just being known or doing only traditional passive/active recruiting strategies. To be successful requires the ability to use several strategies and build a consistent presence. By using the tools in social media, like event notification and scheduling, immediate updates, and location check-ins, you not only invite but include your followers in your company’s news, events, and successes, and really form an identity that people will relate to.
As we still rely on the old faithful niche websites, industry associations and event networking, we also look to search “aggregators” {which are search engines} such as Indeed, Simply Hired and JobSniper.
Other sites that can offer recruiters, firms, and prospective employees potential employment profiles are jobfox, Itzbig and My Perfect Gig, which are popular because candidates and employers remain anonymous until there is a firm, mutual interest between the two parties. This creates a venue for the passive candidate to entertain opportunities without having to commit or risk being identified by their current employer as a candidate. For firms, it gives you the means to interact without having to know a specific opening. You can locate and interact with people with specific skill sets, locations, levels of experience, and really see what they are looking for and how it is a match to your firm.
A Look Ahead
At Helios, we are expanding our Candidate stream to LinkedIn, our recruiting team, corporate blog and Twitter. The ability to connect and network through these avenues seems endless. This is the main factor to LinkedIn’s job listing service having tripled in revenue in one year. With industry blogging, we are now able to set up email alerts through RSS feeds which can lead to new and more defined qualified candidate pools.
Social media is ever-changing and it is critical to understand leading trends to stay ahead of the curve. We are hoping that each member of our team could add “Social Media Development Manager” to their title very soon! We will continue to use these methods and others (hence the consultant rears their head for the fee 
to create a searchable and customized database of qualified candidates for our clients. The bottom line is each team knows their industry and corporate needs. Marrying this information to the tools in social media and fostering a team whose main goal is to improve will allow you to form best practices. Being committed to the highest quality in human capital will allow you to unleash the potential of your workforce and gain that competitive edge.
Welcome to the new era of candidate sourcing!
So, what is it that you would like to know? Please let me know what questions you have (general or specific is fine) with regards to getting hired in today’s economy…. and stay tuned for regular updates!