Top talent at full throttle
When you are recruiting top talent do you consider whether candidates have any passion for their work? Anthony Landale reports on an issue that is rising up the recruitment and retention agenda.
I read an interesting statement the other day. Apparently most people thought that they were capable of improving their performance at work by at least 30 percent - and many felt confident that, in the right circumstances, they could even double their productivity. But despite knowing this about themselves people were holding back, keeping all this discretionary effort in reserve. Why?
…when people are engaged they deliver better results
First of all it seems that there is a theme emerging here. A spate of surveys by organisations such as Gallup, Towers Perrin, Blessing White and the Corporate Leadership Council have highlighted the issue of employee engagement as a key business concern. According to this research high levels of employee engagement correlates keenly to individual, group and corporate performance. In other words when people are engaged they deliver better results and vice versa.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this. We have all spent time around disaffected employees to experience how little motivation such people have. At best they go along with new initiatives at a snail’s pace. At worst they are obstructive. No we shouldn’t be in any way surprised by what disaffected people do. But we should be alarmed by how many of such people there are. Apparently only 19% of us feel engaged at work (Gallup). That leaves a huge number of our colleagues feeling demoralised or disenchanted at work.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a key to unlock people’s energy and that key has everything to do with passion. Let me explain.
…only 19% of us feel engaged at work
Most people want to make a contribution through their work. Whether it’s in retail or education, the health service or the justice system, top candidates are typically drawn to employers not only by their desire for greater rewards or more challenge but by their ambition to make a difference.
Unfortunately for many people what initial enthusiasm they have often gets blunted by their experience of work. Just the other day a woman I was coaching in a major retail outlet said that she felt like she was in a factory farm. She still believed in her vision to do meaningful work but the reality of her day to day life was that it had become drudgery. Relentless pressure to consistently increase her output, one change after another, no appreciation for her efforts and no sense that anyone cared. No wonder she was looking for another job.
…when work has meaning it
inspires us to deliver extraordinary results
So how do the 19% do it? Are they just the lucky ones?
One management writer who has done much to get people at work to think about what matters is Stephen Covey. Famous for his book ‘The seven habits of highly effective people’ Covey suggests that when work has meaning it inspires us to deliver extraordinary results. In other words our engagement in what we do can, in itself, bring energy and velocity to our actions.
In parallel with this, a new development programme in the UK called PassionWorks!™ suggests that passion is a quality that can provide organisations with a real edge in their recruitment and retention strategies. In essence the thinking goes that top talent will not only be attracted by organisations that promote the benefits of passion at work but key staff will stay in companies which go out of their way to help people apply such passion in their work.
This is win/win thinking. People get more meaning from their working life and organisations get better results as a consequence. And both aspects are important for passion to be relevant. Meaning on its own may provide the foundation for a dream but without action or progress there is no fulfillment.
No wonder organisations are becoming interested in using passion as the key to get people engaged. As we know it costs companies small fortunes to recruit and retain their top talent. Many are therefore beginning to experiment with passion as a key to unlocking people’s long term drive and motivation.
“People with passion will leave a job that doesn’t allow them to make the kind of contribution that they know they want to make”
As Clive Lewis, MD of Illumine and the main provider of the PassionWorks!™ programme in the UK explained: “People with passion will leave a job that doesn’t allow them to make the kind of contribution that they know they want to make. So as well as making the effort to recruit top talent, companies have to establish the kind of challenging and creative environment that enables such individuals to thrive.
“Passionate and talented people want to make a difference, they want to make an impact on things that matter to them, their ability to work in a purposeful manner is at the core of their self-identity.”
The proposition makes sense. There may be some cynics who find the idea of passion uncomfortable but for those who are interested in performance this seems a no-brainer. In short, passionate people bring more vitality and enthusiasm to their work and more than this their energy is contagious. This means that they generally have a positive impact on their colleagues and their culture. And people who live in creative and productive cultures have far less reason to leave their employment than those who feel stifled or who feel that they have a sense of purpose that can only be achieved elsewhere.
“Passionate and talented people want to make a difference”
So if you, as someone with responsibilities for recruitment, are interested in finding out whether your next candidate has any passion for work what should you do? The first step is to find out what they care about. People don’t have to be charismatic or an extrovert to be passionate; they simply need to be invested in what they are doing. So ask the candidate what matters to them and get them talking about their vision. And if you want to go further talk to them about how they would feel about working for an organisation that wanted to develop more passion in its staff.
The real issue here, of course, is how you, representing the recruiting organisation, can forge a powerful, long-term relationship with the right candidate. Getting people to consider that you are offering the opportunity for work to be meaningful in addition to it being stimulating and well remunerated is a potent proposition to make.
Case study by Clive Lewis
“It’s not uncommon for people to hesitate when asked what’s meaningful for them in their work. One senior manager told us that he just didn’t know. However this same manager was also thinking about turning down a promotion because he didn’t know whether it was the right move or not. It took a number of conversations but finally he realised that he got motivated when taking dysfunctional teams and turning them into high- performers. On assessing the promotion within this context, he realised the team he’d be taking over in the new job was completely dysfunctional. It was the perfect fit and so he quickly said yes. “This manager then went on to use the skills and techniques from the PassionWorks!™ programme to help his team. Instilling motivation and commitment in the team not only helped individuals develop a sense of purpose which flowed through into positive results - it further underlined for the manager the sense that he was making a meaningful difference.”
PassionWorks!™ is a programme delivered under licence by Illumine Training.
Find out “Why Passion Works” here…
Tags: Corporate performance, Creative environment, PassionWorks! (Training)