Every work has its own risks and rewards. Risks outweigh the rewards in tough times. The ones that are pivotal. That’s when fear takes centre stage. What you fear the most decides how well you perform in tough situations. This defines the areas of work that you defend the most. You tend to believe that you should prepare a lot more better for this situation. This is where you insure the most or break fast. Do you know what you fear the most in your line of work?
Some of this is job-related. Common for most people in that line of work. Job-related-training and worker policies tend to take care of these in the best-way-possible. Like that for a cop, a soldier, a doctor, a lawyer. But most hurting ones are personal. They tend to be contextual. Something very pertinent to the company culture and your own view-of-the-self.
Fear of failure, Embarrassment, Underperformance, Rejection, Transfers, Confrontation, Loss-of-position and Isolation. These make it to the list of top fears for most of the tech-workers. Each one adopt their own defence mechanisms. Perception of consequences lead people to either hide-behind-something or perform-better-than-expected.
When you know what is your biggest fear, face it. Dancing-with-fear is more fun than hiding or running-away from it. Former leads to strength and better performance over time. Those who get this right, top the list of achievers. Watch and learn from those in your set-up. You will know what works and how to make it work in that context.
Companies face this with what-if-scenarios, plan-A-B-C structures, succession-plans and other insurance mechanisms. At an individual level, you have to device your own method. Coaches and courses help. Portfolio of skills and experiences are useful. Start with small experiments, with focus forward. But, practice well with the best.
Find what you fear the most in your line of work and prepare to dance-with-it. That’s the better-way-out than jumping-ship and living with its ghost.
We are at war. A talent war. Every technology company claims that they are in it. At least that’s what we read, hear and talk about. Not sure if they are fighting to win or to defend. Not even sure if they know what they are fighting for or against. Yet, no one is reporting loss of revenue or dip in margin due to loss of people on board. Then, is this a no-impact war fought in closed rooms of a corporate? Point to ponder.
From the data, it is clear that people are leaving the companies. They must be taking up something they love a bit more. Or some genius tribe with more than one-job are settling for one they love. Some experts blame it on remote-working-induced-hesitancy. A few more say it is due to jobs becoming hyper-local-by-design. A few more say this is a normal phenomenon of next-wave-of-working. But, it doesn’t seem like war.
It’s true that the pools of people technology companies want on their roles is more or less the same. Is that pool shrinking? Every employment data over last 10 yrs say that only 30% new engineers get jobs. So, there’s a large pool of people. The issue may be the talent. Ability to perform as required and when required!
We associate performance with skill and willingness, among other things. There are several initiatives to skill, up-skill, re-skill. Then, where’s the issue? Are these skilling programs not delivering as expected? One has to check the performance of these programs and people who went through them. The issue then may be experience.
Experience – the art of learning from use of the skill. Unless you practice, how can you gain this? There are on-the-job-training, internships and apprenticeship programs. So, are they not delivering? One has to check if they have any active leadership in these programs. The issue then may be with willingness.
Willingness is a key aspect of performance. The hidden core of talent. Being desperate to get a job may hide this. But not to continue in a job which they are living on for a while. People already working in the company have their own talent nurtured over a period of time. If the issue is retaining people who are leaving within six months of joining, be watchful. Manage the native talent of the company well to safe-guard loss of new ones.
Experts know that talent management should cover selection-performance-retention-retirement aspects. Every company has a lot of people talking about this. Hardly any company has a designated talent manager. One who owns, cares and nurture the talent required for the performance of the company. Find and fix this responsibility. Talent war then might get a different twist.
Companies hire only a fraction of their existing population and retire smaller fraction. Then talent management effort should focus on retention of native talent first. Hire little of lateral talent and nurture fresh talent a-lot-more-than-usual.
If your business is suffering due to attrition or inability to hire new talent, then you may have a deeper issue. Analyse your business, business model and ecosystem. Seek professional help. All else may be fear-of-falling-short or fear-of-losing-out. You can fix them with right talent.
It is important for all businesses to stay-afloat and grow-well. It is the only way to keep-up-the-promises you made to yourself, your people and the world around. That is the talent, worth fighting for!