A great article came out on Fast Company this past Tuesday, November 8, 2011, focused on what strategies you should incorporate while making hiring decisions. For some who read this blog you will think that it doesn’t pertain to you. Don’t be foolish. It does pertain to you if you are a leader is any size business or non-profit organization. Take a moment and read it.
Here is a section of the article.
Because people represent the potential of the business, high-growth companies need high-growth employees. Employee development is the key ingredient in breaking through to the next level of growth. Employees have to develop new skills that allow them to perform at higher levels so that they can quickly deliver on the potential of the strategy and the company itself.
While it’s certainly possible to hire for new capabilities, there are tremendous benefits of promoting from within. Just a few benefits include: retaining technical knowledge; honoring the informal, social fabric of the organization; and fostering the culture of the company.
Employee development needs to be included in both strategy creation and execution. There are two main ways to assess people and their development: skills and spirit.
Skills are things that can be trained. A leader can be coached on how to become more influential and engage their team to achieve great results. An employee can be trained technical skills such as engineering, accounting, and marketing that they need to do their jobs really, really well.
Spirit refers to the “soft” skills that can’t be trained effectively. You have to hire for them. These are hard to find but are necessary for a company to function smoothly.
One of these skills is teamwork–the ability to put the needs of the group ahead of personal desires. Another is heart, as in “put your heart into it.” This describes true commitment and passionate engagement. Employees with heart take ownership of their jobs and go the extra mile.
….Too often, companies hire for skills without enough consideration for spirit. When that happens, you end up with a bunch of wonks who can’t work together. There needs to be a balance between skills and spirit across the entire company………….Integrating strategy and people accelerates the potential growth of any organization and is critical for high-growth companies.
