A recent study by the annual manpower employment survey shows that 52 per cent of U.S. employers are having trouble filling skilled and critical positions.

This statistic may seem confusing, since the U.S. unemployment rate is at 9.1 per cent.

In an article posted on Profiles International’s blog by Christina Krenek, she looks into this issue from the view of a small business.

As Krenek notes, small businesses must compete with larger organizations to not only hire skilled employees, but employees who also have the right attitude, so it’s essential for employers to find people with innovative leadership skills that go beyond the basic job description.

The Baylor Business Review lists these innovative leadership skills as:

• Ability to communicate effectively
• Resourcefulness
• Initiative
• Creativity
• Integrity

So, how does a small business owner find and select these employees?

By using pre-hire assessments and skills tests, which are based on evaluating a person’s skills, attitudes and behaviours. These tests are used to ensure that you hire the right person for the job.

To read Christina Krenek’s full article, click here.

If you want to be the best boss, you should also be the best coach.

Here’s why:

“The ability of one’s workforce to change and grow is increasingly relevant today, given that the pace of change is faster in almost every industry and the complexity of work is greater. That’s why it’s important for talent leaders to not only achieve the necessary results, but also develop and grow the capability of their people.”

– Talent Management, “Tips to Embed Coaching in Your Job Description”

The article points out that a key success factor in coaching people is to take a real interest in their development: you must be willing to help others achieve new skills and reach higher levels of performance.

The article lists four steps that you can follow to help your employees be all that they can be, but before you even begin, you must be willing and dedicated toward helping each employee achieve his or her goal, for a half-hearted attempt will only result in a half-achieved goal.

Step 1: Identify goals together.
Review your employees’ goals with them. Ask how they plan to get to the next level (also known as objectives or action steps). It’s important to come to a joint agreement on a few well-defined goals and objectives to build commitment and shared understanding.

Step 2: Create a written plan.
When an employee creates a written plan, it offers both of you something to which you can refer later. Make sure the employee describes the goals in detail and includes specific objectives to accomplish them. This will help you focus on each goal and create benchmarks along the way.

Step 3: Capitalize on development opportunities.
Help employees achieve their plans by finding opportunities at work where they can work on and achieve their goals and objectives. The best scenario is a complete integration of work and goals.

Step 4: Maintain dialogue.
Ensure that you have regular progress meetings, held separately from day-to-day meetings and regular work. Talk about how the employee is progressing, congratulate success, and discuss ways to minimize problems if and when they come up.

To read this article in full, please click here.

Eighty-nine per cent of U.S. companies plan on using social media to recruit this year, according to Jobvite, a recruiting platform on the social web.

The survey found that social media and online referrals are the top areas for increased recruiting investment. Other findings:

• Sixty-four per cent of companies have hired through social networks in 2011 compared to 58 per cent in 2010.
• Fifty-five per cent of companies will increase their budgets for social-media recruiting and 30 per cent will increase their budgets for referrals, while 16 per cent will spend more on job boards.
• Companies rank referrals as the best source of candidate quality.

“Jobvite’s new data confirms our research that social recruiting has become an essential element of today’s corporate recruiting strategy,” said Josh Bersin, President and CEO of Bersin & Associates.

“The data also points out that referral-based recruiting is a new secret weapon for talent acquisition. Companies that focus heavily on referral strategies, enabled by social networks, are delivering the highest quality of hire at the lowest overall cost.”

Jobvite’s index, which collects social recruiting data from its customers, shows that from January to June 2011:

• Seventy-three per cent of all social hires came from LinkedIn.
• Forty-three per cent of employee social-referral hires came from Facebook, but the majority were made in LinkedIn.

To see the full Jobvite Index report, click here.

Click here to view Jobvite’s full blog article: “Social Recruting on the Rise.”

Michelle Painchaud lead chair for The Assiniboia Chamber of Commerce selection committee

PPG is representing on the Assiniboia Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.

The Chamber held its 81^st Annual General Meeting on June 3 at the Glendale Golf & Country Club – a spectacular event that included its first-ever Business Excellence Awards and the appointment of its new Board of Directors.

Among the board’s new members: PPG’s president, Michelle Painchaud.

The complete list of board members:

• Andrew Earle (Chapel Lawn Funeral Home)
• Ken Loxton (Ken Loxton Productions)
• Jay V. W. Pasemko (Winnipeg Airports Authority)
• Jack McLaughlin (PAL Distribution Group)
• Raunora Westcott (National Leasing)
• Tim Feduniw (Economic Development Winnipeg)
• Michelle Painchaud (PPG-Painchaud Performance Group)
• Julie Guevarra (MIG Insurance Group Ltd)
• Warren Thompson (Prairie Edge Management Inc.)
• Marcel Tetrault (RBC Royal Bank-Portage & Collegiate).

Premier Greg Selinger presenting WAA CEO Barry Rempel with the Assiniboia Chamber Large Business Excellence Award

The complete list of Business Excellence Awards:

1. Large Business Excellence Award: Barry Rempel, CEO, Winnipeg Airports Authority Inc.
2. Medium Business Excellence Award: Julie Guevarra, CFO, MIG Insurance Group Ltd.
3. Small Business Excellence Award: Gord Pedersen and Dan Gagnon, co-owners, Auto Gallery of Winnipeg
4. New Business Excellence Award: Bahia Taylor, owner, Envy Paint and Design Store
5. Not-for-Profit Business Excellence Award: Elaine Kehler, Westwood Vocational Centre
6. Manitoba Lotteries Community Service Excellence Award: Larry McIntosh, President & CEO of Peak of the Market

Congratulations to all the nominees and winners.

Here’s wishing all the best to the Chamber and its members in 2011/2012.

As a coach how do you handle your emotions and the emotions of the people you coach?

Doreen Petty, a Leadership Coach and HR Consultant, recently wrote a two-part article to answer that question, entitled “The Emotional Consequences of Behavior Change.”

In part two, Petty focuses on answering the question: “How do you, as an HR Partner, allow a person’s emotions to enter into the coaching process in a positive way?”

The answer will be of interest to coaches and coachees alike.

According to Petty:

1. An effective coaching relationship is based on mutual trust and respect. This means that the coachee and trainer are in a safe environment and can be open and able to discuss personal issues.
2. There should be an expectation that the process will end at some point, so coachees can see a light at the end of the tunnel.
3. Coach with a positive psychological perspective, which means focusing on how things can go right, rather than wrong. It’s the strengths and virtues that enable an individual to thrive.
4. Explore how coachees’ self-perception may be different, and affect, the people around them. Exploring this area will make coachees aware of their actions and change them into something positive.
5. After you’ve explored coachees’ behavior and actions, you can create a vision and goals for them and begin the behavioral change process and progress measurement.
6. Use the coaching model GROW, which helps you look at what is true now, what emotions are driving behaviors, what has to change, and what evidence the coachees have that they are moving toward their goals.

You can find out more information about the GROW model in Sir John Whitmore’s book “Coaching for Performance.”

To read Doreen Petty’s full article, click here.

Leaders who bring charisma, humane and team orientation, and participative approaches that enable them to adapt to the employees’ different orientations will be better able to motivate and retain employees.

Noel Tichy says that leaders whose calendars commit to investing 20% of their time with people are more effective. Scheduling time to talk with people helps both leaders and followers learn what they might not have guessed, adapt the conversation to be mission focused or career focused, and revisit processes and systems that need to be refreshed or revised. When we don’t do that, an “air sandwich” develops between the strategy and those who implement it.

Dr. Noel M. Tichy is a Professor of Management & Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

A study conducted and published by Mark Wickliffe of Birkman International discusses the coming talent drought. Although, it’s hard to believe that there will be a talent shortage with the impact of the global recession, Wickliffe says:

“The recession that displaced so many and left many underemployed is mending slowly. The pace of this recovery may be masking the coming talent wars. The demographic factors driving a talent shortage have not gone away. Demographic trends like age are huge and unavoidable. They are larger and longer lasting than economic cycles, which rise and fall on a much shorter wavelength.”

The study demographics for this survey report include:

• 85% of respondents were involved with recruiting, hiring, or retaining talent within their organization.
• Over 40% described their position as executive or above, with the remainder being manager or director level.
• Respondents were primarily from the United States (91%) with the remaining from Canada.
• A wide range of industries was represented: the largest being health care (13%), finance, insurance and real estate (13%), manufacturing (11%), and business/professional services (10%).
• The majority of respondents 55% were from organizations with less than 2,500 employees; 23% were organizations with 20,000 or more employees; 11% were organizations with 2,500-4,999; 6% from organizations with 10,000-19,999; and 5% from organizations with 5,000-9,999.
• 35% of respondents said their organization earned less than $50 million; 21% reported $50 million to less than $500 million; 22% earned $500 million to less than $5 billion; 7% earned $5 billion to less than $10 billion; 14% earned $10 billion or more.

Some key factors in the report:

• 75% perceive a talent gap between Baby Boomers and the younger generation.
• More than 60% view the retention of productive employees as a challenge for 2011.
• Fewer than 8% are fully prepared for retaining top talent.
• 75% believe there is a shortage of talent now or will be a shortage of talent in the near future.
• Fewer than 1% are fully prepared for a talent shortage.
• Over 40% lack a standardized process for identifying leadership talent.
• The top three leadership competencies in demand are: results focus, vision/strategy and integrity/ethics.
• Leadership development, finding talent, employee development, and employee retention rank highest in terms of the people-related needs of organizations.

The survey also includes talent recommendations for 2011. To download the report, click here.

“On average, companies that did a better job of attracting, developing and retaining highly talented managers earned 22% higher return to shareholders.” – The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM).

This fact appears in an excellent article on HR.com, which discusses why capturing the quality of a hire is important to a business, which factors to consider when measuring the quality of a hire, and how and when to do it.

Among your considerations:

1. Measurement
2. Retention Rates
3. Manager Satisfaction
4. Candidate Satisfaction
5. Timing
6. Long-Term Measurement
7. And, your most important asset: “human capital.”

To read the article, click here.

By Suzanne Deutsch
Featured on farmcenter.com

Hiring the right people for the right tasks is one of the greater challenges farm operators face every year. It’s even more critical for producers with only a few employees since each one has a proportionately larger impact on their business. While a good employee is a valuable asset to an operation, a toxic employee can hurt your bottomline. They can run up your repair bills, throw off production schedules or sap workplace morale. Workplace performance consultant and motivational speaker Michelle Painchaud says employers can avoid a lot of these problems by not rushing the hiring process.

Farmers have to remember that people are on their best behaviour during a job interview Painchaud says. Some are tempted to embellish or color their accomplishments; others will outright lie to get the job.

Young people are very astute and a good number have excellent interview skills. “Students coming out of high school, college, and university have up to 40 hours of interview training,” Painchaud explains. “They come prepared and know how to answer tough questions.” These are good reasons to hire slowly and not just rely on just a 20 minute chat.

Michelle Painchaud works with her clients to make sure their employees are a good fit for their operation. (Seacliff Farms, Leamington, Ontario)

Since potential employees have been coached on how to impress employers during job interviews, Painchaud says producers need to work on their interview skills too. She offers a few basic tips to use as a starting point:

Spend time listening: Farmers are proud of their operation. They talk about their crops, equipment, and their business but sometimes forget to ask enough questions.

Ask open-ended questions: Behavior based questions will reveal the way somebody acted in the past and will predict how they will act in the future. So rather than asking if they can run a combine, Painchaud suggests having them give an example of what they did when something went wrong when they were operating one.

Asking who their favourite or least favourite boss was will tell you if they will be a good fit for your management style. Answers to questions about teamwork, such as talking in length about the get-togethers and informal baseball games, will reveal how much the person is expecting to socialize and how important family time is to them. Questions that target the culture of the company will give you an indication if that person will be able to handle changes and work towards the goals you’ve set out to accomplish.

Go on-location: Unless you want to fill an office job, Painchaud suggests taking people into the barn, the field, or the shop and continue the discussion in that atmosphere. You’ll able to gauge interest and skills by the questions they ask and you will be able to study their body language.

Spell it out: Once someone has been hired it’s a good idea to provide him or her with a written job description. Employees need to understand what their priorities will be. The most common reason that employees don’t meet performance standards is because the owner or the manager has not clearly told the employee what their expectations are.

Give feedback: Every human being wants to know how he or she is doing so it’s important to conduct performance reviews.

“This is also a time to verify if your employee is still happy,” says Painchaud. “According to the Human Resources Association of Canada, the number one reason people quit their jobs is their boss, the second is lack of appreciation. Salary ranked fifth. Employees that are complacent or bored might be looking for work somewhere else. If you can make their work a bit more challenging by adding another task or responsibility, you have a much better chance of keeping them.

Document problem behaviour: In many instances, all that is required to fix or adjust problem behaviour is a one-on-one meeting to discuss expectations and consequences if the problem isn’t rectified. Painchaud strongly suggests writing down the date, time, a brief description of what was discussed at the meeting and the worker’s reaction to it.

This information should be placed in the worker’s file for future reference. While farms have traditionally been exempt from provincial labour standards legislation this is slowly changing. And, employees that aren’t given a chance to correct their shortcomings before they are fired could file a wrongful dismissal suit.

“Firing is becoming more complicated”, Painchaud says. It’s becoming really important that producers make sure that their dismissal process follows the letter of the law.

Kevin Stewart interviews Michelle Painchaud, President and CEO of Painchaud Performance Group, about “Vision and Goal Setting,” and why an organization needs it.

Many organizations have created a vision and goals, but they never seemed to “take off” – internally or externally – mainly due to the lack of creating an action plan to implement them. As Painchaud says, “A vision without action is an hallucination.”

To learn why your organization may need a vision and goal setting plan, view the video.