Investing in Employees Part 1 – Short Term Transactions or Long Term Partners?

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In this two part blog series, I am going to examine different perspectives of employees. The continued (and often exclusive) emphasis on short term earnings and current quarter results often and easily spreads into decisions around employee management and investment. The short term view of employees is that they are temporary resources that we engage to deliver a certain defined service. When that service is no longer needed, the employee is expendable. Employees are viewed as short term transactions.

This construct may certainly be valid for a subset of employees, especially if a business has large swings and is “large temporary project based.” Employees may be needed to simply fulfill a large non-recurring contract. However, there is a real need to view a significant part of the employee base as long term partners.

Long time employees who have strong loyalty to the enterprise serve many important roles. Often they are the ones who have a deep understanding of the entire enterprise and how everything works together within the company, and grown into general management roles. Other employees develop a strong expertise of industry dynamics and fulfill strategic planning and market planning roles. Others develop a deep relationship with the client base and are the sales leaders. And some become experts and senior advisors and specialists within a certain function of the company. In Part 2 I will explore the generalist vs specialist dynamic a little deeper.

Very importantly, enterprise organizational and employee development tools and processes need to address long term employee partnership as well as short term transactional skills. There is frequently a gap here. When I meet with clients, many have robust programs for employees to develop skills in their current jobs. Annual development plan reviews often focus on skills to enhance or improve current job performance. But are employees also engaged on discussions of five or ten year career growth?

This is a typical short term skills building cycle, but a longer range career planning component needs to be added to employee development programs

Employee development processes need to have balance between the short term and long term and include a long range career growth component. That is what Total Engagement Consulting offers companies with our Career Road Mapping Services. We provide a construct and process for enterprises to offer employees long range career planning customized to their enterprise. This will increase employee engagement and productivity, retention and building long term employee loyalty and partnership.

Look for part 2 next week and also check out earlier blogs around career road mapping:
• Link: Introducing Career Road Mapping Services
• Link: The Business Case for Career Road Mapping / Skills Development

Also take my 11-question career road mapping / skills development quiz to see where your enterprise stands in the area.

Transgender in the Work Place – and announcing a great conference in August

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Transgender is an umbrella term for the spectrum of people whose gender identity or expression does not conform to society’s expectations of male and female. In some cases, gender expression takes the form of clothing, hair style, voice and body characteristics. In other cases, we are taking about gender identity, which is the way a person feels internally about who they really are. This means there are people who may have been born as physical males, but deep down inside they feel they are female. And there are people who may been born as physical females, but deep down inside believe they are truly male. This is an oversimplification since there are wide ranges of possibilities. The most current highly visible transgender person is Chaz Bono, formerly Chastity Bono, now the son of Sonny and Cher.

“Left Hander in London” is an excellent new book explaining many aspects of the transgender life. More information at end of blog.

So what does this mean for the workplace? With more visibility given to transgender people, more people desire to go through the gender transition process while remaining in their jobs. Instead of moving to a far away city and starting life all over again, many transgender people now want to continue in the community and company where they have their network of friends and have built professional expertise. And it makes sense that a company would want to support such employees and retain this important talent. As an employee transitions from male to female, or female to male, they still retain the those skills and company knowledge that make them a valuable employee.

A short blog does not provide the space to go through the policies and procedures that companies can execute to support gender transitioning employees. But there is a great opportunity later this summer for you, your company or enterprise to gain this valuable knowledge. The SouthEastern Transgender Health Summit (Tagline: Providing Access, Promoting Wellness) will be held in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina in Asheville August 23-25, 2012. Though the primary audience for this event is healthcare providers including physicians, nurses, psychologists and other mental health professionals, a special track has been designed for human resource professionals and business leaders, valuable for everyone including those not in the health field. The overarching goal of this conference is to increase the awareness of need, and to improve the quality and accessibility of culturally competent care for those who identify as transgender. Link here for more information and to register for this summit. I will be a presenter and panelist as well as having a display booth all weekend.

Additional Resources:
• Left-Hander in London: A Field Guide to Transgenders, Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals. This newly published book is written by JJ Gufredo, a successful transgender business owner and process consultant. Click here for more information and to order this informative and inspirational book.
• Link to an excellent article on transgender employees in the magazine “Insight into Diversity” (pages 22-24). Magazine