Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find the very best talent development posts. This week, you’ll find pointers to pieces about mentoring in the networked workplace, employee recognition, training versus hiring, and moving a manager back to the ranks.
From Talent Management: Mentoring in the Networked Workplace
“What holds true for traditional one-on-one mentoring remains true for emerging models conducted from a distance: Virtual relationships require tangible trust.”
Wally’s Comment: This piece is by Randy Emelo who is president and CEO of Triple Creek, a provider of enterprise mentoring systems. He would love you have you buy one of his systems to handle mentoring over the net. That’s what makes this piece slanted, but it also makes the piece helpful.
From Grant Beckett: Employee Recognition: The 21st Century Performance Master
“A Wall Street Journal article has been getting a lot of attention this week. The article, “My Colleague, My Paymaster,†describes a new phenomenon whereby employees’ bonuses are determined by their co-workers. At Coffee & Power, each worker got a set amount of stock options that they could distribute to whomever they wanted (except themselves, of course). Over the two-day period, employees could not speak to each other about it, thereby minimizing collusion.”
Wally’s Comment: Recognition and rewards are part of the whole talent development process. In this post, Grant Beckett of Globoforce speculates on how various systems that have people evaluating their peers and determining how bonuses are paid will affect the workplace and provide usable feedback about who workers think is making the most important contributions. Hat tip to Derek Irvine for pointing me to this post.
From Sharlyn Lauby: It’s Cheaper to Train Than Recruit
“I learned a long time ago that in business it’s cheaper to keep the customers you have than to continuously attract new ones. That’s not to say companies shouldn’t always try to get new customers. But there needs to be a focus on keeping the customers you have for two reasons: first, you already spent the cost to acquire them and second, because you’ve already won them over to your brand.”
Wally’s Comment: Sharlyn Lauby considers the relative costs of training people you have versus hiring new ones by comparing them to what we know about the value of current customers and the cost of acquiring new ones.
From Dan McCarthy: Is it Ever OK to Demote a Manager Back to Their Former Position?
“Is it ever OK to demote a manager back to their former position? Your first, intuitive answer might be ‘hell, no!’ Some companies or managers won’t even allow it, under any circumstances. But why not? It happens all the time in baseball. Major league players are “sent back to the minors†for further development, and sent back up to the majors if and when they are ready.”
Wally’s Comment: The word “demote” in the title is key, because it highlights a systemic flaw in the way we handle talent development. In most companies, a move into management is considered a promotion. Taking away a promotion, even for cause, is not good for morale. But what if we considered management as a different, but not necessarily higher, kind of work?
Carnivals and Such
The latest Carnival of HR hosted by Jon Ingham at Strategic HCM
Wally –
Thanks for including my post in your TTDP list for the week!