Promote From Within

By Les Gore

Reap big benefits by rewarding your best performers.

Now that the economy and job market have rebounded, you might have to work harder to retain your top employees. After all, if you don't reward your best performers with new roles in the company, you could be at risk for greater staff turnover.

During times of low unemployment, employees can view job hopping as a quicker, easier path to career advancement. Yet most catalogers value loyalty, and the best growth opportunities often are internal, particularly among those companies that recognize the morale and productivity benefits of promoting from within.

And make no mistake about it: Promoting from within could be one of your best employee-retention strategies — up there with better compensation and benefits, tuition reimbursement, and competitive vacation and holiday policies. For the hundreds of direct marketers I speak to every year, promoting from within is a hot-button topic.

Many catalogers benefit by using cross-training as a key promoting-from-within tool. It could give you more flexibility in managing your people to get the job done. And if done right, it's good for your employees, too. They learn new skills and are exposed to more of how your business works, making them more valuable. Moreover, it also could combat worker boredom.

Catalog company L.L. Bean is known for cross-training its top performers and promoting from within. For example, the company's former chief merchandising officer began his career on the retail store's sales floor. He then went on to become a buyer, assistant product manager, senior product manager, director of product development, vice president of creative, senior vice president and general manager of men's business, chief merchandising officer and member of the board of directors. This, after a nearly 30-year career with the company.

If this is the type of career path you'd like to tout in order to attract talented employees, here are some tactics to try.

Define Competencies for Success

Clearly defining your business goals and objectives is a straightforward proposition. But defining your required job competencies often can be more difficult. Many catalogers haven't taken the time to clearly define the competencies required for an employee to be successful in a given job. Not only does this make it tough to assess the individual holding a specific position, it makes it more difficult to find a replacement than if you knew exactly what you were looking for.

First, identify characteristics of your top performers, present and past. For example, you might jot down: high energy, enthusiastic, team player, does what it takes to get the job done, analytical and strategic. (If you don't have a professional human resources function, or need help in this area, seek the assistance of an experienced HR consultant, one with strong know-how in organizational and management resource development.)

Develop an Action Plan

Ideally, you want to implement evaluation tools for management. The process requires developing competencies; creating and administering the evaluation; analyzing the results; and setting an action plan to improve identified competencies. This process should be administered twice a year. An action plan, which includes a timetable, should spell out exactly what will be done with the individual(s) who either meet, exceed or fail to meet the established competencies. For example, will you promote them, offer additional training, cross-train, mentor or terminate employment?

Achieving a set of goals should be part of the management annual review, and significant reductions in bonus structures should result for those managers who don't reach their set goals. Please note that this initiative is destined to fail if the required accountability on the part of HR and your business managers to complete the cycle and develop and achieve an action plan is not successful.

The next time you (or a hiring manager) are thinking about promoting your top performer to management, or to a role with greater responsibility, follow these essential steps.

1. Define the job. Determine the day-by-day functional requirements of the position. This is beyond a simple job description. Rather, you need a thorough understanding of what the jobholder will need to achieve success in the position.

For example, to be successful as a mid-level marketing manager with a small to mid-sized catalog company, the candidate should demonstrate the ability to:

function well in a team-oriented environment;

manage cross-functional projects outside of his or her own department;

think and act like an entrepreneur;

lead and manage people; and

drive sales and profit improvements in a catalog and Web environment.

2. Determine what qualities are needed by an individual to perform effectively in this position. By completing this job analysis, you'll establish the qualities and attributes one must have to excel.

For example, for the mid-level marketing manager's position noted above, the ideal candidate would demonstrate the following characteristics:

good organizational and project-management skills;

excellent communication and presentation skills;

strong analytical ability;

attention to detail;

thorough knowledge of business intelligence or reporting software solutions;

ability to make recommendations based on analysis; and

at least a bachelor's degree in marketing, with three to five years of direct response experience, including at least three years of financial and catalog-performance analysis.

3. Look closely at the person being considered and determine if he or she has the qualities necessary for this job.

If you don't follow these steps, consider the incurred costs (e.g., employee attrition, severance packages, potential legal fees, productivity loss) that result from hiring the wrong person to fill a key slot. And remember a crucial reason why you're promoting from within in the first place: to save money. It's often more expensive in the long run to hire from the outside or promote from within if you aren't selective and specific about the hiring process.

Is Your Top Performer Ready For Prime Time?

You'll have a far better chance of hiring or promoting management-ready people from within if you openly engage job prospects in a two-way conversation about the move to greater responsibility. To help determine if your top performers are prepared to be managers, ask the following questions.

Is the candidate ready to:

act more like a coach than a player;

step out of the limelight and let his or her employees get the glory;

handle paperwork and details;

organize himself and his team;

motivate the team;

spend most of her time planning and analyzing rather than working with other people;

listen to complaints and resolve problems; and

handle personnel issues, including perhaps firing someone?

Five More Tips on Promoting From Within

1. Understand your advantage. If yours is a small or mid-sized company, you might be in a better position to know what people's abilities and interests are than if you had a larger company.

Why? In a small or mid-sized company, a hands-on owner or key executive is in a much better position to know employees well, simply because there are fewer of them. If you walk the floor and talk to your employees, you not only know better what's going on, you also know who the top performers are, as well as your

less-than-stellar employees.

2. Develop a nose for hidden talent. Find out what skills your staffers use when they're not at work. Then determine if those skills can be put to use in your business in a higher position.

For instance, say you have a copywriter whom you've recently learned also coaches the town's Little League baseball team, is an area coordinator and is active in local politics. Those skills may make her a good candidate for a creative director's position.

3. Create career paths for employees. Your people need opportunities to grow.

4. Consider the work that you outsource. Can that work be brought in house, creating an advancement opportunity for some of your employees in, say, your contact or distribution center?

5. If an employee needs outside training in order to be successful at a higher-level position within your company, pay for the training. In the end, those training costs will be less than if you had to recruit a new employee.

Les Gore is the managing partner of Executive Search International, a Newton, Mass.-based, firm providing best practice search and recruiting services to the direct marketing industry. To reach him, call (617) 527-8787, or e-mail info@execsearchintl.com.