You’re worth PENNIES on the DOLLAR

 
It’s true! Research shows that $.75 on EVERY dollar that employers spend on employees is wasted.
 
Here’s why: when a person is hired to fill a position, they provide a set of solutions by performing certain tasks within an organization.
 
Few organizations that I have coached/consulted actually conduct an assessment of the individual’s core competencies, to expand the job description to include all of the skills that you possess and the things you do REALLY well (core competencies.)
 
If you are really strong in say 6-8 key areas, your job may only allow/require you to use 2-3 of those skills in your day to day roles and responsibilities. That’s 25% of your full talent potential.
 
According to a Global Workforce Study conducted by Towers Perrin in March, 2008, only 21% (1 in 5) of the employees surveyed are “engaged” in their work, and 38% admitted being partly to fully disengaged. Engagement was defined as employees willing to go the extra mile to help their company succeed.
 

 
The other things you do really well and maybe are most passionate about remains dormant…UNUSED in that organization that is paying you for your collective experience, training and skill sets.These wasted skills when applied to EVERY employee could be the difference maker in organizations remaining competitive, esp. in times like today when precious resources CANNOT be squandered.
 

 
In a 2008 study by Resources Global, 80% of global HR leaders believe the “war on talent” is a key & enduring business issue in the next ten years. How can this be reconciled against employer claims that there is a lack of qualified/skilled labor? It can’t!
 
What if organizations took a DIFFERENT approach to talent management…

What would happen if your company constantly assessed its people’s strengths, took active steps to expand their talents and skill sets through training, moved their employees into other jobs to make BETTER use of their untapped talents, and created opportunities for employees to experience the entire organization by conducting job rotations, work-sharing, and cross-functional team-based work flows?
 
Taken to the extreme, organizations could create entirely NEW roles for each employee, in order to take advantage of their many unused talents, skills, and passions?
 

 
It is relatively EASY to conduct a human capital audit for each of your employees.
 
You match the employee roles and responsibilities in their current job to their core competencies. Once yo identify their unused talents, you create a mini career development plan to determine the time frame their manager to incorporate those unused talents that the manager and employee agree to incorporate into their daily workflow. There are tools that you can rely on to help you manage this MATCHING process. I’ve developed a Human Capital Audit web application that helps organizations to do this.
 
“…at a time when companies are looking for every source of potential advantage, the workforce itself represents the largest reservoir of untapped potential.”
– Julie Gebauer, Towers Perrin Managing Director
 
By matching employee skills to their daily job requirements, organizations would develop a workforce filled with top-performing employees (the Jack Welsh model with only type A – Star employees.) You would create an entirely engaged, motivated, and passionate workforce.
 
That in turn would foster a higher level of employee loyalty, retention, and a wealth of new ideas creation flooding your organization with new products and services, more effective ways to find, keep, and up-sell clients, more efficient operations, reduced costs, better inventory management, quality control measures, etc.
 
Think of the commensurate benefits gained by organizations that embraced such talent management practices. You would have much higher employee attendance, greater productivity, stronger financial performances. you would have a world filled with world-class organizations like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Disney, SAS, Boston consulting Group, Hasbro, Wegmans, Cisco, etc.
 
* 88% of U.S. workers consider themselves creative BUT only 63% said their positions were creative.
 
* 75% of survey respondents thought their employers valued creativity.
 
* One in five said they would change jobs, even if it meant LESS money to be MORE creative.
 
(Survey conducted by IPSOS Research in 2007 to 564 adults commissioned by the Fairfax County, VA Economic Development Authority for the 2007 National Conference on the Creative Economy.)
 
Instead, many organizations remain content to achieve relatively low returns on their aggregate investment in their workforce. This is especially true when you factor in ALL of the costs associated with employees such as: recruiting costs, salaries, benefits, training and professional development, social security and other expenses mandated by law, equipment, utilities, rent/mortgage costs, insurance, and incidentals.
 
Only when organizations realize their employees are the GREATEST asset and work to cultivate that resource for competitive advantage will they unleash the full potential of their workers.