Putting the Right People in the Right Places…And Keeping Them. The Backbone of Operational and Organizational Health

Acquiring and retaining talent have long been the keys to business success, but finding and keeping that talent isn’t always easy, especially as the workforce continues to change. Fortunately, there are steps cannabis business operators can take, and questions they can ask, to learn how to find and use these critical keys.

What actions must I take?

Possible solutions to this problem are multiple and interactive in nature. Mounds of information exists that advise actions such as such as trust, empowerment, communication, honesty, giving credit, taking blame, team development, flexible work hours, work from home, etc. All of these can be important in a given situation. Their complex integrations, however, are mainly dependent on specific situations and cultures. Given this, the ongoing discussion of steps to be included in the solutions is presented more in the form of a checklist or roadmap than a specific prescription of a cure.

NCRPS, with its focus on occupational and organizational health, clearly details the beginning steps in this roadmap following:

Leader Self Awareness

Research has revealed the number one core competency that separates good leaders from the rest of the pack as self-awareness.

Leaders need to know their weaknesses to improve their own self-awareness before they can accurately address the issues involving their employees. Such weaknesses are difficult to identify individually because as the boss, one doesn’t regularly solicit or accept candid feedback from others. Such inaction causes weakness to perpetuate as our nature is to pursue issues in the areas where we are most comfortable.

Create an execution culture

As simple as it sounds, good people like performance and success. As Bossidy details in his classic “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done”, several key characteristics of an execution mentality include:

• Having the right people in the right places
• Creating single point accountability
• Promoting robust dialogue and emotional fortitude without fear of retribution

Driving the three execution mainstays into the action line of a company creates an atmosphere of expectation, evaluation and contribution. True talent is attracted to such work place environments as it allows them to immediately be themselves, to contribute to progress and to respectfully speak their minds and/ or participate in real work at an active level. Such a culture must permeate from the top and throughout the complete organization. When it does, employees become truly satisfied and are then less likely to seek alternatives independent of pay rate and other forms of monetary compensation.

Emphasize the behavioral side

The resume: the scripture of cognitive skills that defines the candidate. The one page of information that primarily —and sometimes solely —determines some candidates’ right-of-passage into the interview process.

Unfortunately, resumes typically only describe one’s cognitive skills. The true determinants of TAR, however, lie in a large part on the behavioral side. We are born with a specific behavioral pattern that drives our needs and determines what motivates us. Understanding these patterns and working these needs and motivators into a person’s area of job responsibility attack the true reasons why employees are attracted to or leave companies. This information is “the other side of the resume” and often contains the keys to a true and effective TAR process. A key step in the use of the behavioral side in recruitment and retention is the construction of a behavioral job description for the position being filled. Doing so assures a succinct marriage of the cognitive and non-cognitive expectations as determined by the adjoining members within an organization. Results of this exercise deliver the attainment of the “right people in the right places” execution driver. Accurate behavioral assessment also creates self-awareness defined earlier as a primary TAR component.

Difficulties will continue for businesses who don’t represent talent acquisition and retention as a top priority in their strategic plans.are in for a difficult decade to come. The available candidates/available jobs ratio has decreased by a factor of 15-20 times over the past 20 years. Additionally, the millennial generation now fills over 70%percent of the available jobs. Only companies whose TAR strategy aggressively addresses these factors will truly succeed

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