Cultivating Success
Marianna Knight, HR Business Partner, SPHR

In anticipation of the upcoming 5th anniversary of the Apollo Awards, Helios HR checked in with some of the previous winners to see what they have been doing to continue to foster a culture of continuous learning and development. Stay tuned each month as we highlight different organizations and count down to the annual awards breakfast ceremony at the McLean Hilton on June 1st, where we recognize the finalists and winners for 2011.

"It is important to sustain our culture with every new hire and with every project and client that we take on." – Lynn Ann Casey, CEO, Arc Aspicio

At Arc Aspicio, there is an intentional focus on providing employees with mission-critical skills important to both organizational success and individual career development. Our culture today is innovative and entrepreneurial. Stewardship is a core value of the company. We make the employees responsible for the company's success and for moving the organization forward. Two years ago, we made an intentional investment in hiring a Director of Talent and Operations because we knew that bringing in the best talent and keeping it would be our biggest challenge. Creating a role of that sort is unusual for a company our size, but it proved to be a great investment. We're a 25-person company now, and we have two people focused exclusively on talent leadership. It is a big investment that has really paid off. We've grown revenue by 50 percent in 2010 without bringing on additional staff. We're more efficient and productive. That's due to the people we've hired and the resources we've invested in them.

Because we go for the best, it takes a bit more work on our part to find people that we want to be part of our organization for the long term. To find the people we want, we are using a social networking tool called Jobvite. Jobvite has been a huge part of our success. Everyone in the company participates in using that tool. We implemented it 18 months ago, and it helps us attract more people. It targets people who know the people that are already working for us. Since it is word-of-mouth and 100 percent employee referrals, it's generating a very strong candidate pool. Today, 80 percent of our employees have been referred by other employees. Plus we have 1,800 qualified candidates in the pipeline. We have to have the right people on board and in the pipeline because we want to grow organically - by having our current clients asking us to do more work. If we hire the right people, organic growth occurs easily because clients are happy and our business grows due to word of mouth.

What Do Your Employees Need to Achieve Their Goals?
Paige Sumner, Associate HR Business Partner

As we enter the last stretch of Q1 in 2011, your organization may be cementing performance goals and initiatives. However, setting the goals may seem much easier than achieving them.

Goal Alignment, cascading goals and the TOPS ideal (Tied to Organizational Priorities and Success) drives many companies to begin the goal setting process by announcing yearly goals and initiatives. Ideally, before goals can be aligned employees must be able to understand how their actions affect the organization's success. It is a common practice for goal setting to align with the performance management process. Reviewing progress made towards individual goals no less than quarterly, and often monthly is common.

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