Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
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Dear Bev,
Our firm is 34 people, all of whom have been carefully selected based on the right skills, attitude and cultural fit. We enjoy very little turnover (two people in the last seven years, both of whom had children and stopped working altogether). Otherwise, no one leaves. It’s always a big deal to bring in someone new because we hesitate to change the dynamics of the existing team.
We take a long time and go through an arduous process to find the right person and align them to the right role. Right before COVID forced us all home, we made an additional hire for our operations team. They are a collaborative group but have been overworked. We had to finish the process remotely, which was a hardship because we like meeting with people and seeing them eye to eye. Our team chose one young man over the other six strong candidates. He is in his late 20s but is very mature and knowledgeable.
Our typical onboarding process was truncated because we could not do the same things virtually we did in person. He did not receive the inculcation most new team members have previously enjoyed. Now that he has been with us for four months, we are starting to question our decision. He is late to meetings, writes emails that are hard to decipher and struggles with the basics of what we do. My operations manager has spoken with him and her view is that he doesn’t listen or care.
I am brokenhearted. We have never had a situation where someone didn’t work out from a capabilities perspective or a cultural fit. I keep looking at the process and trying to figure out what we missed.
Can we turn something like this around in a virtual environment? In the past I might have sat down with someone and personally conveyed my concern and told them what they needed to do differently. Now my ops manager is completely overwhelmed. While she is giving him feedback, I don’t know that it is consistent enough to make an impact.
J.O.
Dear J.O.,
If you have had a good in-person onboarding process, it can be a challenge during these virtual times. It sounds like, as a firm, you put a lot of emphasis on the right person and your process supports this. I wonder whether you have put as much emphasis on the onboarding, training and feedback process and how that has shifted with the needs of the virtual environment.
For example, was this new hire clear about expectations? I realize something as basic as showing up for a meeting on time seems clear-cut. But have you or your operations manager laid out defined expectations and milestones so he knows what is expected of him and how he will be measured? While not ideal, are the meetings run somewhat loosely and maybe people are logging on over a few minutes. If not, there should be something in writing about the expectation of being there when the meeting starts.
The same with the email problem. Is he a poor writer? Is he unclear in what he is trying to convey? Does he misspell words? Confirm what “hard to decipher” means and how this is exhibited so you can give guidance about what you would like him to do differently. Many times employees don’t shift behavior because the feedback is too general. With emails, you could give him and your entire team guidance on how to be clearest in their approach. Being that everyone is stuck behind a computer reading all day, making sure the emails that are written are easy to understand is good business practice for everyone.
Lastly, is he well trained? I had a situation not so long ago with an advisor who had hired someone for his team. He was extremely frustrated by the lack of motivation and competency – as he perceived it – by his new hire (also a young man in his late 20s). When I spoke with the new hire, I learned he was doing as much as he could, but no one had taken the time to teach him everything he needed to know. He wanted to contribute more but he didn’t want to bother the other team members who were very busy and not as available. Once we figured out what he needed, my advisor client put a plan in place with some self-learning, shadowing and mentoring by the manager.
Don’t give up on this person yet. There are many complications in approaches that worked well in-person but not virtually. Identify what you might have missed, what he might need, and ask him to help you to help him. It’s possible he just isn’t a good fit, but take the steps to be certain before you decide to manage him out.
Dear Bev,
We had our best year ever last year. We have rolled full steam into this new 2021. We would have typically had an end-of-the-year party to celebrate our success, but doing one of those virtual events didn’t make sense to most of our team. We are online so much, no one wanted to come and have a virtual drink together.
What else could we do that would allow us to celebrate before the year is too far gone? How could we pat ourselves on the back and say “good job” before we get pulled completely into a new quarter and year?
B.Y.
Dear B.Y.,
Credit to you as firm leader or senior leader to not lose sight of this! It is so easy to move into the new year and forget all about the past when the holidays pass and the clock starts running for the first quarter of 2021.
One idea is a “secret giver” exchange where you allocate a dollar amount for each person (say up to $50), the firm funds it (you don’t say how many people you have so you might have to make this less or more) and each person is given a name of a fellow team member. They have to find something to buy and send it to their team member that is appropriate for that person.
I had done a similar thing with a client firm where they gave “virtual” gifts to one another. It was a lot of fun and doing this with something real each person would receive in the mail would be very nice.
The key would be to include a thank you note observing two or three things the colleague did this past year to directly contribute to the growth.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. Beverly is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
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