Strengthen your skilled talent

5.1.1 Align talent management and business strategy

Regardless of the size of your business, talent management should be integrated into business, sales and growth strategy. If your goal is to take a new product to market in six months, think about what kind of sales support or brand management needs to be done, as well as the need for technical expertise and other skillsets.

5.1.2 Establish processes to counter uncertainty

It takes both skill and diplomacy to keep disparate interests in line when managing long-term employees, consultants, remote workers and international business partners. Implement processes to help guide work flows, communicate information effectively and empower people to make decisions in their individual roles.

PwC’s 2017 M&A Integration Survey report suggests “clarifying authority and assigning accountability” go a long way to “mitigating the crippling effects of uncertainty.”³⁰

5.1.3 Match employee and customer brand

Just as you define your company’s unique product or service offering for clients, you need to determine what you will offer as an employer that is unique. Here are some ideas:

Culture – Define your corporate culture and the desired behaviours within your company. Identify people within the company who will role model cultural best practices.

Treat employees like your best customers - Provide incentives for those who promote and exemplify your company culture and strive for excellence.

Monitor and implement employee ideas – The best companies listen to their employees and have systems in place to check in frequently to see how established processes are working at the operational level.

Employees as ambassadors – Just as your sales people must go out and market products or services of your company, you want employees to be touting your firm as a great place to work. Done right, all employees are willing recruiters for your firm. Executives will enthusiastically recruit people from their networks to join the company ranks.³¹

5.1.4 Hire for potential, not experience

Too often, organizations focus on meaningless functions of a job when creating a job description. This is particularly moot as jobs become more cross-functional and changeable and the future of work unpredictable. Determine what skills are essential to a position and what can be acquired. Half of today’s jobs don’t require the high-level of specialization that are assigned to them in job postings.

According to Adam Robinson, founder of Chicago-based software firm, Hireology, it’s quite possible the next person you hire won’t have experience in your industry. Instead, he advises, look for four characteristics:

• A good attitude
• Accountability
• Past job success
• Cultural fit³²

Focus on the top transferable skills – communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.

5.1.5 Offer opportunities for progression, beyond promotion

In its 2017 survey of Canadian employees, recruitment firm Hays Canada found there was a mismatch between employer offerings and the desires of employees.

Employers make a mistake when they equate career progression with promotion or a salary increase, says Rowan O’Grady, President of Hays Canada. “Career progression for most is the chance to feel they are moving forward or developing in their careers,” says O’Grady.

For many, this means learning new things or working on new projects or being empowered to make decisions within their role. Good talent management requires mapping of individual employee development to determine how they can achieve their professional goals to progress within your company.

For small firms, there are opportunities for development that don’t require spending a lot of money:

Have employees mentor or train each other.

When employees return from a conference or course, ask them to hold a lunch ‘n’ learn to teach others on the team. Or perhaps an employee has an interest they’ve been pursuing outside of work, like “using social media for business.” Can that employee design a short session to share with others?

Allow employees lateral movement.

Sometimes people stagnate in their current roles because there is no challenge. Depending on the structure and size of your company, consider allowing people on your team to swap roles. A job rotation opens up the possibility of learning new things. And it benefits your company. People who are presented with new challenges tend to be more innovative. Those with cross-functional experience are more likely to be future leaders.

5.1.6 Partner with local education and research institutions.

Companies that make a point of offering co-operative education programs and internships for students position themselves well to handpick individuals from the future talent pool. But there are many other ways you can get involved in academia to help shape and influence the skillsets of your future workers:

• Get involved with your industry associations and find out what they’re doing to partner with academic institutions and to ensure students are learning the skills you need for your business.
• Join a college or university advisory committee for the programs that are graduating workers in your field. These advisory committees welcome input from the business community and often ask for feedback and advice when updating and improving the curriculum.
• Consider offering a scholarship or award for students best demonstrating the skills or potential that your industry needs.
• Contact your local college or university and ask if you can create a comprehensive “real-life” assignment for the students in your desired program. While supporting the set curriculum, make sure the assignment is multi-faceted and covers a number of aspects of the discipline. Help mark and judge the assignments (ask your industry association to help) and perhaps offer a trophy or monetary award to the best-in-class.

5.1.7 Get creative around incentives

One of the biggest advantages of the digital economy is that it offers employers and employees flexibility around how and where work is done. The old work-life balance cliché has given way to a new way of working for many people, where work and personal lives are intertwined. As a result, competing for top talent doesn’t always have to be about salaries. Here are a few non-monetary incentives offered by top employers, driven by the demands of a younger, nimble workforce:

• Flex-time and work-from-home options
• Employee recognition events
• Friendly internal competitions or team social events
• Opportunities to represent the company at associations or conferences

5.1.8 Make the case for diversity

The demand for talent is so immense that efforts should be made to diversity your workforce. Diverse employees make your company more innovative, as a greater range of backgrounds and talents can lead to a greater exchange of ideas. A diverse workforce is also more likely to more accurately reflect the needs of your customers and clients, particularly if you’re selling internationally.

There’s a great business case to push for diverse hiring practices as well. It’s long been known that companies with diverse leaders actually make more money. More than a decade ago, think-tank Catalyst conducted a study over five years and found that companies with three or more women directors “outperformed those with zero women directors by 84% on return on sales, 60% on return on investment capital and 46% on return on equity.”³³

In March 2018, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz made the economic case for getting more women, young people, Indigenous people and new Canadians and people with disabilities into the job market. Concerted efforts to do this, says Poloz, could expand the labour force by half a million people, and raise the country’s output by 1.5% or $30 billion annually.

5.1.9 Embrace technology and technology specialists

Technology adoption can streamline processes, and improve productivity and efficiency of individual workers. It’s worth thinking about the investment into technology and the skilled people you will need to implement it early on.  The smaller the company – and indeed, the tighter the margins – the more the catalyst exists to adopt new technologies to remain competitive.

IT is a core part of business operations that drive sales. IT is often relegated as a support arm to the organization. To be competitive, you need to have digital technologies front and centre in all functions of the organization. This means bringing IT specialists and leaders to the planning table.

5.1.11 Use government programs to make international recruitment part of your growth strategy.

The federal government has made it easier to hire international talent through the Global Talent Streams introduced in 2017. Companies in the ICT sector are already using it with great success. For companies outside the sector, be prepared with a list of selling points when trying to win candidates over. Just because a job’s available, it doesn’t mean a potential hire wants to move to Calgary or rural New Brunswick. Innovation clusters aside, Canada may not be as appealing for in-demand candidates as bustling innovation hubs like Silicon Valley, where there are more opportunities for candidates to move from company to company and create bigger networks.

“We have stranded risk in Canada,” says Morouney at the Lazaridis Institute. “To attract someone away from the valley, we need to consider what we have to offer besides money. Ultimately, we need to create a critical mass of companies.”

5.2.1 Identify and invest in young employees that demonstrate leadership potential

Diversity training, mentorship programs, participation in global projects and international assignments can help those in the C-Suite or on-track to management fortify their international business leadership skills.

5.2.2. Expand executive networks

Lazaridis Institute for the Management of Technology Enterprises has developed a scale-up program for technology companies. It selects 10 high-potential tech firms to participate in an international training and networking program each year that involves regular mentorship opportunities for start-up executives.

“Getting people in the same room for that knowledge transition is huge,” says Bryan Bogensberger, Associate Director and Executive Fellow, Lazaridis Institute. “We meet once per month in a different North American city, and bring in six to eight experts with international experience. It’s not just CEOs from the scale-up program that participate. Some companies will bring five executives for a weekend. It gets them out of the day-to-day running of the business to get some really valuable information from a peer-to-peer network.”

5.2.3. Look outside

If your leadership team is strong in certain areas, but lacking in others, it may be worth recruiting someone from outside the business who can round out your team.

“Don’t be afraid to search internationally if you can’t find the talent in Canada,” says Bogensberger. “Create an advisory board early on that have big networks, so you can fill the holes when you need to.”

People from other countries bring cultural awareness and best business practices from your target markets. They also bring their international business networks, which can help your entire executive team grow.

5.2.4. Engage an executive recruiter – sometimes one person makes all the difference.

As a founder of four start-ups, himself, and the current CEO of Quiver, Bogensberger recognizes it can be hard for some companies as they’re scaling up to consider putting up money for “the big hire.”

In Canada, it can be difficult to find expertise in international branding and marketing, he says.

“Engaging a recruiter to help fill that really key position makes a difference,” he says. “We’re averse to this in the start-up world – paying someone $60k to find you an executive. But as you scale up, you have to change your mindset.”

5.2.5. “Rent” an executive.

For smaller companies that require executive talent but don’t yet have the capacity to hire fulltime, a managers’ corporation may fill the gap. These businesses maintain a roster of seasoned executives and consultants from multiple professions, including business operations, growth strategy, intellectual property strategy, IT, finance, human resources and many others. Depending on your needs, you can hire on contract one or a team of professionals to advise you on a single project or for longer-term requirements.   

5.2.6. Encourage risk

“In my mind, most executives fear going international because they don’t know what’s involved,” says global business consultant Mel Sauvé at Global Growth Results. “It’s high risk and they’re not sure they can do it. When I’m working with execs the first thing I do is convince them that it’s not that hard to do.”

Sauvé says it’s often a lack of understanding about foreign markets, tariffs or international business practices that intimidate executives. Hiring a consultant can help you get started. Sauvé says companies may not realize there’s a lot of free information available through the Trade Commissioner Service or Export Development Canada. He helps his clients to build an international growth plan by arming them with information about the unknown.

“You can’t teach risk-taking,” says Sauvé. “You just have to get comfortable with it.”

5.2.7. Boost international experience.

To succeed in international markets, executives need to develop what global strategy consultant Amy Karam calls a “cultural IQ” in every country where they do business.

Karam, author of The China Factor, explains that many cultural and business nuances can’t be understood from afar; some countries, for example, have much longer sales life cycle than Canadians may be used to.

“That has to be understood and  incorporated into strategic expansion plans and at the micro level to set sales expectations,” she says.

And in Asian countries, like Japan, Korea and China, client and relationship-building takes a long time. “They really need to get to know you, trust you and like you before they’ll sign a purchase order. That may require a lot of trips to Japan to drink sake.”

To succeed internationally, the executives need to get out of the office. “The most successful executives spend time abroad, in market,” Karam advises.