Guest Post for Heather Huhman: 5 things Recent Grads Need to Know About Entering the Workforce!

Note: Written as a guest post for Heather Huhman as seen on her blog   5/24/10.

College graduates faced a tough job market in 2009, but will 2010 graduates face similar challenges? Although layoffs have slowed down, unemployment is at a 26-year high. The National Association of College Employers (NACE) 2009 Student Survey shows that just 19.7 percent of 2009 graduates who applied for a job actually have one. And, according to NACE’s Job Outlook 2010 Fall Preview, employers expect to hire 7 percent fewer graduates from the college Class of 2010 than they hired from the Class of 2009.

Competition is fierce. If you are lucky enough to land a job right of college, what should you do to improve your chances of easing the transition and keeping employment? For starters, understand a few things first:

You’re not the best thing sliced bread! It’s ok to express new ideas, to request new challenges, and to want to gain a promotion; however, respect the politics, culture and communication practices of your organization. Understand opportunities may present themselves – but you won’t be the CEO overnight.

If you have needs, communicate them. Don’t get frustrated if your organization doesn’t do everything the way you think is most beneficial to success. Don’t assume those around you are mind readers. Much like in a college lecture hall when you raised your hand to ask a question, speak up and communicate your concerns as well as ideas for positive changes. Ask questions to help better understand your roles and responsibilities and organizational culture, and do so in a manner appropriate to your organization.

You can’t do it all alone. The use of technology and drive for quick success can often impede the capacity to forge relationships. Some people from other generations may place more value on face-to-face communication as a way to build lasting relationships over time. Some day you will have your bosses’ job; however, not yet. Instead of focusing on what you will do when you get their job, focus on building relationships with them now. You’ll need support and mentoring as you progress in your career.

Pay attention to the culture. You’ll never find an organization that offers everything on your “work-life balance” list. Decide what’s most important to you. Two of the biggest complaints employers have of recent graduates is that they demand too much too fast, and they often leave the company within just a few years. If you understand the organizational culture, you can determine if it matches your needs; it then becomes much easier to avoid these types of obstacles.

Learn when to shut up. Open communication is a valued trait; however, that doesn’t mean say everything that is on your mind. This doesn’t mean don’t be yourself. However, sometimes it’s best to keep certain religious, political and social views out of the workplace. Be cautious to not over criticize those you work with, particularly in public. When utilizing forms of social media, be careful what you say about your organization and those who work there. Don’t just utilize social media to complain, if you like where you work share that with your friends; you may even get a referral bonus if they join your organization.

So what is the moral of the story? Recent graduates are still a fast-growing group within the workforce. Transitioning from college to “reality” can be a tough adjustment. As you make the transition, try and keep an open mind and maintain a level of understanding and communication with those at your new workplace. Remember, your boss isn’t your college professor; you can’t negotiate for your paycheck the way you may have been able to negotiate for you grades. For additional advice, read #ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle.

As seen on the Ellen DeGeneres Show May 21, 2010, “Laugh, Dance, Graduate” and then be prepared for what lies ahead!

Guest Post for Selena Rezvani: 5 things Gen Y Needs to Know but no one is Telling Them

Guest blog written for Selena Rezvani as seen on her blog nextgenwomen

You’re not the best thing sliced bread!: It’s ok to express new ideas, to request new challenges, and to want to gain a promotion; however, respect the politics, culture and communication practices of your organization. Understand opportunities may present themselves - but you won’t be the CEO overnight.

If you have needs, communicate them: Don’t get frustrated if your organization doesn’t do everything the way you think is most beneficial to success. Don’t assume those around you are mind readers. Speak up and communicate your ideas for positive changes, and do so in a manner appropriate for your organization.

You can’t do it all alone: Gen Y’s attachment to technology and drive for quick success often impedes the capacity to forge relationships with other generations. Some people from other generations may place more value on face to face communication as a way to build lasting relationships over time. Some day you will have your bosses’ job; however, not yet. Instead of focusing on what you will do when you get their job, focus on building relationships with them now. You’ll need support and mentoring as you progress in your career.

Pay attention to the culture: You’ll never find an organization that offers everything on your “work life balance” list. Decide what’s most important to you. Two of the biggest complaints employers have of Gen Y is that they demand too much too fast, and they often leave the company within a few years. If you understand the organizational culture, you can determine if it matches your needs; it then becomes much easier to avoid these and other obstacles.

Learn when to shut up: Open communication is a valued Gen Y trait; however, that doesn’t mean say everything that is on your mind. This doesn’t mean don’t be yourself. However, sometimes it’s best to keep certain religious, political and social views out of the workplace. Be cautious to not over criticize those you work with, particularly in public. When utilizing forms of social media, be careful what you say about your organization and those who work there.

So what is the moral of the story? Gen Y is a fast growing group within the workforce. They are an innovative, talented, and ambitious generation. Gen Y can be a positive asset if properly understood. Understanding comes from communication. Gen Y needs to take some responsibility for increasing cross generational communication and understanding, and a first step in doing this is to acknowledge that they too still have much to learn.

Guest Post: Organization Re-Alignment: A Chat with Scott Span of Tolero Solutions Organizational Development & Change Consulting

By Tony Deblauwe

Workbabble.com

Organization Re-Alignment: A Chat with Scott Span of Tolero Solutions Organizational Development & Change Consulting

An increasing amount of attention is being placed on how organizations perform business and deliver results. Though there are still plenty of uncertainties, as organizations transition from pure survival mode to competitive growth, many have begun evaluating their current state and how connected and engaged their people are to the organization. After some time, organizations have begun re-evaluating their business structures and strategies, and re-aligning their people to adapt to renewed growth in the economy.

As President of Tolero Solutions - Organizational Development & Change Consulting, Scott Span, MSOD has plenty of experience navigating leaders and organizations through change in turbulent times to a place of long term sustainability. The term “tolero” means to endure and sustain, and this philosophy lies at the heart of Tolero’s strategy. With all the change and buzz about the importance of employee engagement in the air, Span points to several areas where companies need to communicate what their doing to employees (and communicate it fast). Span offers three ways organizations can re-connect and re-engage their workforce:

Communicate & Align Strategic Direction: According to Span, companies’ have the wait-and-see mode of operation that has plagued many businesses over the last year, and it’s time to snap out of it. Specifically they have to become more competitive and prepared for new opportunities. The trick is – you can’t do that until you’ve defined your strategic direction and reconnected with your people. If your people have lost touch with what you’re trying to accomplish, you won’t go very far toward remaining competitive. Span suggests leaders and managers review what has happened, what’s changed and why, and connect their people to any new changes, new visions and tactics which arise as a result. This communication and involvement during any transition will help remind people what the core needs of the organization are and where they fit in, putting temporary setbacks in perspective.

Don’t Neglect Individuals: Tied directly into communicating, a renewed strategic direction is how leaders and managers reach out and drive a resurgence in team spirit and employee engagement. In particular, Span notes that if people have kept their heads down just to get by, they may have started to feel like a cog in the machine – not being noticed for say - doing the job of the three people who were let go or couldn’t be hired because budgets were tight. Public recognition for a job well done and non monetary benefits or spot financial bonuses as revenues increase are useful ways to show appreciation. Simple recognition is often a quick and easy way to increase engagement and retention.

Training and Development: Often in tough times training and education budgets are slashed. Span believes with increased engagement comes a need to reinvigorate training and development opportunities and up-level skills. Where possible, offering employees targeted and strategic decisions on training and education opportunities is vital to sustainability. Providing employees room to grow competencies either through classroom training or attending industry leading trend seminars is key to successful realignment.

Span also sees a heightened interest in organizational assessments. As many organizations are just beginning to reinvigorate and realign, organizational assessments are a fairly quick and easy way to provide data on current and future state. This is right in line with the concept of engagement and realigning priorities and people. Determine where you are before you decide where you want to be. Span also sees executive coaching increasing. Leaders and managers are realizing that they may need to change style and approach to attract, engage, and retain current and new talent. Span also sees an interesting shift occurring now, as workface demographics are changing, is an increased focus on generational diversity programs.

Companies realize that Gen Y employees have different needs than Baby Boomer employees, and Gen Y represents a key part of their recruitment strategy and future bench strength. Companies want to understand the view points and communication styles of the various generations so that employees can have a basis of understanding and flex to each other’s unique point of view and approach.

Span sees slowed continued growth for the months to come. He believes that organizations that realign and refocus on people now will remain competitive and sustainable; and be able to survive the inevitable bumps in the road that will continue to occur until relative long term stability returns.

Guest Post: 4 Strategies for Retaining Gen Y Women by Selena Rezvani

One of Tolero Solutions philosophies is that of collaboration. With that philosophy in mind, we are honored to share with you our newest guest post from our colleague and expert on women in the workplace, Selena Rezvani. Selena's goal is to propel more women into the top echelons of businesses — an objective she achieves through her writing, coaching, and speaking engagements. Selena wrote her debut book, The Next Generation of Women Leaders: What You Need to Lead but Won’t Learn in Business School (Praeger, 2009) while pursuing her MBA at Johns Hopkins University, where she graduated first in her class. Selena also has an MSW from New York University. For more on Selena, visit: www.nextgenwomen.com.

In this post, Selena shares the four strategies for retaining Gen Y, an ever growing part of the current workforce. Valuable and informative advice!

4 Strategies for Retaining Gen Y Women! 

Gen Y women present one of the most viable pipelines of talent, and yet many companies are missing the boat in engaging this group.  Gen Y women are better educated than any cohort that have come before them, are graduating with the majority of advanced and bachelors degrees, and according to a Families and Work Institute survey, have a hunger for jobs with responsibility.   

If being well-credentialed and ambitious aren’t enough, companies have another reason to care about this group.  They are likely to have children when they hit the age range of 25-30 years old, off-ramping from the work world and taking their institutional knowledge with them. 

A well known fact, work flexibility is more important to Gen Y than any other generation.  And for new mothers, a little flexibility on the part of the employer can engender loyalty and translate to less turnover.  Consider Aetna’s story.  When the company increased the length of its maternity leave, retention of new mothers increased from 77% to 91%, according to a report by The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).

Not everyone’s listening though.  An example of a field that’s doing a poor job of engaging young women is law.  Here’s a world where face time and billable hours are valued more than results, a concept that Gen Yers find ridiculous.  Career paths in law are extremely limited, and there is only one brass ring to aspire to: partner.  What’s more, according to a Rutgers study, the number one reason that women lawyers surveyed left firms was an “unsupportive work environment.”  Many firms that do extend work/life offerings to employees haven’t managed to make it part of the culture, so people still feel a stigma attached to using such benefits.  The data says it all: according to Catalyst, while 1 in 8 women lawyers work part-time, only 1 in 50 men lawyers do.

What can companies do to ward against losing young female talent? 

Implement Rotational Leadership Programs

Numerous employers of choice have long promoted leadership programs that involve intensive rotation.  Many look for high-potential employees who can fill leadership roles in the future.  Implementing a rotational program gives young women exposure to the company, its different functions, and most important, a broad array of people.  Given that most girls and young women don’t learn about leadership topics, the exposure to so many functional areas can only serve to strengthen a young woman's career.  Companies that offer diverse experiences not only guard against employee boredom, they show a commitment and investment to their new employees right off the bat.

Value Results, not Hours

Within many companies, you can’t have a challenging role that also allows you to have a personal life.  A critical imperative for companies who want to hold on to Gen Y is to deliver engaging work while allowing a woman to have boundaries.  Since Gen Y believes strongly in an anytime/anywhere work model (as long as I meet my targets), many companies can take a page from Best Buy’s book.  The electronics leader has implemented a Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) where output is measured rather than hours and facetime.  This is particularly important for working mothers, who simply cannot compete with the amount of facetime men can put in on the job.

Teach Them to Say No
Many of us forget that we can say no to projects.  Encourage Gen Y women to look for value-adding activities and say no to others.  Value-adding activities allow them to be visible across the organization, have a strong tie to the organization’s strategy or bottom line, and allow young women to partner with those in other departments.  Encouraging a culture where you’re allowed to have preferences, and act on those preferences, goes a long way with Gen Y women.   

Mix Up Work Formats
The current corporate business model sends the message that “you need to conform to us, we won’t conform to you.”  And yet, a major motivator for Gen Y is to have cafeteria-style choices in terms of work format and benefits.  Rather than thinking only in black and white, consider the gray area.  When offering mothers maternity leave, allow for fade-in reentry programs that allow women to slowly build back up to their original hours. When offering healthcare benefits, encourage Gen Yers to choose where their dollars are spent.  This generation has grown up with incredible levels of customization and naturally expects choice at work. 

Regardless of generation, we know that a one size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Retention and engagement aren’t about requiring that people fit a mold, they’re about meeting people where they are.

The People Side of Change in Technology Implementations

The Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) market is now worth upwards of $21 billion. Going into 2008, Cambridge, Mass.-based market researcher Forrester predicted a compound annual growth rate of 4.2 percent for ERP solution packages, and that number has continued to climb. The use of technology in the workplace is expanding at an astounding rate. While there are no exact 2010 year to date numbers for ERP market share or growth, industry executives say it's clearly a burgeoning market. In an effort to make operations more streamlined and effective, more organizations are implementing ERPs to assist them do business. Despite this increased growth many organizations aren't achieving their desired return on investment with their new ERP because they don't account for the people side of this change.

According to Wikipedia, an ERP is an integrated computer-based system used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. It is a software architecture whose purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. Built on a centralized database and normally utilizing a common computing platform, ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment.

As noted in a study conducted by Deloitte and Gallup Leadership Institute, streamlining and consolidating is great from a technology operations point of view; however, what is the impact to the people side of the business? The end users and current employees, who will have to use the ERP in their daily work, are often overlooked in the implementation process and this can lead to a bumpy and sometimes unsuccessful implementation. To ensure productivity remains high (although a slight dip is normal) and to facilitate a smooth transition with minimal resistance, change management is a critical component to success.

Most of the way work gets done will change once the ERP is implemented. Employees who are accustomed to completing tasks in a certain way will have to learn new skills and new ways of doing things. Roles and responsibilities may change, functions may be consolidated or eliminated, and interactions with customers and stakeholders may be redefined. For successful implementations, sponsorship and governance are imperative. Organizational impacts such as structural and cultural changes often occur, and policies and procedures are sometimes rewritten. Change management around technology can sometimes be a daunting task. A skilled ERP change management resource should have experience designing and implementing solutions in all these areas as well as a fundamental understanding of the technology.

A qualified ERP organizational change resource should be a people focused change management professional. They should also have the following skills to best assist your organization during an ERP implementation:

• Experience: They should have experience working in change management, organizational culture, strategy and strategic communications. They should also have a comfort level with technology and experience with process and requirements definition, defining roles and responsibilities, and designing organizational culture and structure.

• Basic understanding of ERP systems: Most ERPs are designed in modules, and can be implemented in pieces or all at one time. A trained resource not only knows what an ERP is designed to do, but also understands the basic functionality of each module and how the various modules integrate with one another. They should also have experience with project planning inclusive of planning and managing the implementation and impacts of multiple modules simultaneously.

• Understanding of ERP terminology and technical language: Often the ERP change management resource serves as a liaison between the functional (eg. HR, finance, policy) and technical people on the project. Therefore, they must have the ability to facilitate discussions and clearly communicate across teams of various skill sets. This involves being able to understand and speak in both technical and functional terms and have the ability the ‘translate’ needs and requirements in simple language. They should also have an understanding of specific ERP related terms and acronyms (Eg. SIT, CIT, User Interface etc.)

• Collaborative approach: ERPs cross multiple parts of the organization, and even reach outside the organization to customers and stakeholders. The ERP change management resource should be responsible for establishing a sponsorship and governance structure inclusive of individuals at various levels and across all affected areas. It is imperative that the change management resource have a collaborative style, one that helps to engage key people from all impacted areas. Assertiveness is also important, as often information and details are required on very specific and tight deadlines and obtaining this information may require a high degree of persistence.

• Skilled in strategic communications: Many ERP efforts run into roadblocks because communication planning is either not executed in parallel with change management or is not executed early enough. Experience with communications planning and execution with multiple audience groups, cross functional communications, and the ability to communicate with the various audiences simultaneously is a necessary skill for an ERP change management resource. Most change management professionals do have some level of experience in communications; however, for an ERP implementation, a higher degree of experience in this area is recommended.

To ensure the money spent on an ERP offers the streamlined operations and return on investment expected, people and change issues can not go unaddressed. It is critical to have an experienced ERP change management professional guide this process from day one. After all, a piece of technology is only as effective as the people who choose to use it.