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Attracting and Retaining Talent through Rapid Growth and Competition
Challenges
In the extremely competitive industry of high technology, innovative products and a winning go-to-market strategy are essential to success. It’s a tricky science, balancing speed and quality in innovation. Shaving just a few days from the product development cycle can create competitive advantage.
A few years ago, one Silicon Valley hardware company came under new management and began to experience rapid growth. This manufacturer specialized in state-of-the-art Wide Area Network equipment.
New executives came from strong “start-up” cultures and knew that emphasizing people development would give their company the edge they needed. However, they were faced with faced with significant challenges in attracting and retaining talent. The free agent mentality of the dot.com period had emerged and unless the company could find a way to improve retention and recruitment, it would have a difficult time maintaining its innovative edge.
Executives wanted to create a culture where people were highly valued and developed. This would build loyalty to the organization and establish the company as a “best-in-class employer.” The specific goals were to:
- Reduce voluntary turnover to less than 15 percent.
- Reduce the number of weeks required to fill positions.
When the company created a department focused solely on people and process training, the new mandates were met with widespread resistance. Employees had settled into individual work styles and, fragmented as the processes were were, workers hesitated to abandon their independence. They were unsure what working on a team might look like.
Despite resistance, management called for no excuses and quick results. Typically, a company-wide shift to team culture could take five years, but this fast-moving company decided they would do it in two. The selected The TRACOM Group for a single, consistent and proven method for building team effectiveness.
Solutions
Working with the company, TRACOM helped design a corporate university with a broad-based curriculum for all levels of employees. The curriculum ranged from individual training programs to a series of high potential courses.
Executives selected “Producing Results With Others” as a foundational course. It covers TRACOM’s world-famous Social Style Model™ as a method for understanding behavioral differences. Employees also learn about Versatility, or the ability to work well with others regardless of behavioral style. Versatility helps to create more productive relationships, and is a documented success factor for managers at all levels.
Team leaders would complete “Orchestrating Team Performance,” where they would learn effective team development processes, tools and strategies based on TRACOM’s award-winning Tri-Dimensional Model of Team Development™. The course teaches leaders how to pull the right people together, think outside the box, create well-designed processes and finish projects on time.
Senior leadership committed to participate with every class at launch as well as during selected courses. In some cases, senior leaders served as facilitators.
“(TRACOM’s) team concepts are clean and classic,” said one company executive. “The training is elegant and fundamental.”
Results
During the first three years, over 1600 people were enrolled in corporate university courses. The company’s workforce began stabilizing in the fourth quarter of the first year and by the middle of year two, voluntary turnover was approaching the desired percentage.
The client was also able to meet its recruitment goals the first year after launch. This was partially credited to the engagement of senior leaders in developing their people. Their involvement established a practice that few competitors could easily replicate, helping to build loyalty to the organization on the part of existing talent and providing an attractive example of valuing employees when recruiting new talent.
“In terms of team training at (our company), TRACOM is it,” said one company executive. “It provides the foundation on which other layers can be built.”
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