In the College Student Career Confidence Survey, 61% of college students said they expected to be with their first employer for less than 3 years. 16% expect to change jobs as quickly throughout their career, 34% will switch every 4 years, while 50% expect to change jobs every 5 years or longer.

In a different survey conducted by Citrix, 61% of workers would like to be able to web commute on a frequent basis. In fact, workers preferred this benefit over stock options and on-site childcare.

What’s this mean? It means organizational leaders need to begin connecting their people more intimately with the values that drive their companies, and learn to connect with the values of their employees.

The Citrix survey underscores how the workforce has changed over the years, reflecting a society that is more mobile, versatile and focused on personal freedom than at any other time in American labor history. Never before have we been more connected. But, connected to what?

Unless leaders connect their people to something bigger than themselves (or bigger than a paycheck), they can expect to see turnover rates, and the subsequent costs of recruiting and training, continue to rise. Based on the survey, every 3-4 years 50% of their workforce will have turned-over.

Organizational storytelling – capturing the stories that drive the values of the organization and connect people to a vision or a noble cause – can go a long way toward reducing turnover. More to the point, connecting people to a larger vision propels the entire organization forward at an exponentially faster rate…allowing everyone in the organization to experience the benefits of accomplishing company goals much more quickly.

So, where do you find these stories? And, how do you make them believable? Here are five tips on establishing effective organizational stories.

1. Look around, be aware. Andrew Grove, former Intel CEO, espouses "management by walking around". There are a number of benefits to this. You remain connected to your business from the floor-up. You connect with your people. It’s also a great way to collect stories. As you engage your people, ask them about challenges they’ve encountered and how they overcame barriers. Collect these stories. Connect them to the values of the organization.

2. Structure the story for the listener. If you use stories, then you are a storyteller. This means focusing on the need of the listener. In walking around you’ll have discovered the personal values that drive your people. Infuse your stories with these themes and you’ll capture their attention.

3. Be real. Many people have a disdain and mistrust for those in authority. To overcome this barrier you need to be authentic and real. If you tell a personal story, do include situations in which you failed…and what you learned from that experience. Be able to laugh about it. Also tell stories about how you succeeded before you were a leader. In each case you’re meeting your people where they’re at.

4. Be consistent. If you undertake the storytelling strategy, you need to stay with it. Over time people will connect with you through the stories. They’ll come to expect them. If your stories are effective, they’ll look forward to your stories.

5. Be strategic. Use your intuition. Know when to deliver a story and when not to. Telling a good story can become addictive…so use your stories at strategic moments and don’t over-do it.

6. Get help. Storytelling is intrinsic to the human experience. We all learn through stories. However, because of education, training and life experience, not everyone is comfortable scripting, structuring and telling an effective story. If you’re in this group, don’t be afraid to get help. Remember, organizational stories are strategic. They’re meant to deliver a specific result. To ensure the best results possible you should strongly consider seeking a little extra help.

So, in the Age of the Hopper (people hopping from job to job), leaders must focus on internal branding as much as they focus on outward branding efforts. Stories accomplish this internal branding. You’ll be infusing the values of the organization you’re your stories. You’ll support the mission. You’ll give the vision flesh and blood. So, in a time when people are truly seeking connection, organizational narrative can be a powerful tool in accomplishing the goal of keeping the hoppers at home.

(c) 2008 James Phelps Creative

Coach, consultant and copywriter, James Phelps, is the creator of "Practical Creativity: The Complete System for Powering-Up Your Creativity for Unrecognizable Results". To learn more about this step-by-step program, and to sign up for his FREE how-to articles and other resources, visit http://refer.debrawhite.co.uk/0K

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_V_Phelps

One of the most important jobs of company leaders is to retain their workforce. It is a well researched fact that people stay because of the relationships they value at work. The most important relationship in the workplace is with your boss.

I am currently consulting with the executive team of a company. Retention is a major focus of the new strategic plan. A number of valuable employees have left the company because of the bad behavior of several top leaders. The leaders are working on improving their emotional intelligence and most importantly empathy.

Are you building solid relationships at work? Do people believe you care about them?

Even in a slower economy which is in a recession, attracting and keeping top talent is a serious concern for corporations. The problem is exacerbated by a growing propensity for people to change jobs frequently.

The problem is one of getting qualified and talented people into the right jobs and keeping them there. HR professionals, managers and CEOs are all searching for what they can do to keep their good, talented employees.

Some organizations are turning to retention bonuses to attract and retain talented people. There are also reports of an amazing array of perks and benefits offered to make the lives of employees more comfortable. Some organizations offer dry-cleaning services, car-detailing, concierge services to run errands, child-care, pet-sitting, gym programs, and chair massages.

But you cannot buy love. Throwing money or gifts at people is not enough to keep them. If they do not like the company, the people they work with, the boss or the way that they are treated, they will still leave.

Finding solutions to employee retention means more profitable companies, happier, more productive employees, more satisfied customers, and ultimately greater stock value.

Losing employees is very expensive. Studies have found that the cost of replacing lost talent is 70 to 200 percent of the annual salary of that person. Expenses include recruiting, orientation and training, lost productivity during that period, and lost customer satisfaction because of the change. Finding and training the best employees is a major investment.

What does your company do, once you have found talented people and given them valuable training, to prevent them from walking out the back door and going to competitors?

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the BarOn EQi and CPI 260 can help you become a a more inspiring leader and retain top talent. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Dr. Maynard Brusman is a consulting psychologist, executive coach and trusted advisor to senior leadership teams.

We provide strategic talent management solutions to select and develop emotionally intelligent leaders and lawyers.

The Society for Advancement of Consulting (SAC) awarded two rare “Board Approved” designations for Dr. Maynard Brusman in the specialties of Executive/Leadership Coaching and Trusted Advisor to Attorneys and Law Firms.

Subscribe to Working Resources FREE electronic newsletter at http://www.workingresources.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maynard_Brusman

Living Networks – Chapter 4: Relationship Rules – Free Download and Commentary

Download Chapter 4 of Living Networks on Emerging Technologies

Every chapter of Living Networks is being released on this blog as a free download, together with commentary and updated perspectives since its original publication in 2002.

For the full Table of Contents and free chapter downloads see the Living Networks website or the Book Launch/ Preface to the Anniversary Edition.

Living Networks – Chapter 4: Relationship Rules
Building Trust and Attention in the Tangled Web

OVERVIEW: Connectivity allows companies to integrate their systems more deeply and form many more business ties, but these opportunities are often neglected. In an increasingly transparent world, trust is becoming more rather than less important, and organizations must take steps to develop trusting relationships with their partners. The one scarce resource today is attention, so you must earn it from your clients and partners in order to create and maintain profitable relationships.

Chapter 4 of Living Networks – Commentary and updated perspectives

I opened the introduction to my first book Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships with the words: “Knowledge and relationships are where almost all value resides in today’s economy.” For the last decade I have explored the apparent paradox that in an increasingly digital world, human relationships, particularly trusted relationships, are becoming ever more important. At the same time, as the amount of information available swells, attention is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity. It is commonplace to talk of the attention economy, where value is based primarily on attention.

The feedback loop of customer attention and personalization
(See below for description)

Since trust and attention are so fundamental to where business is going, this chapter is absolutely as relevant today as when it was written. Arguably the underlying principles will become even more important in coming years.

The first part of the chapter focuses on organizational relationships and trust. In an increasingly collaborative and interconnected economy, the ability to engage constructively with other organizations is a fundamental enabler.

I pointed out three vital shifts in the role of trust:
* Trustworthiness is swiftly becoming more transparent.
* The pace of trust development is being outstripped by technology.
* It has become a key competitive factor to be fast and effective at developing trust with partners.

One of the implications of these shifts is that reputation systems will be fundamental to how business is done. Effective third-party measures of companies’ trustworthiness will enable swift development of new value-creating relationships. In Chapter 4 I discussed collaborative rating systems, including the OpenRatings service, which provides ratings of suppliers’ performance. The company was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet in 2006. My belief in the value of reputation systems is reflected in the fact that I am currently working on the early development of a company that will launch in this space later this year.

However companies can do much to accelerate trust development. In my next book on how to profit from the global talent economy I will build on what I wrote in this chapter. Rapidly building trusted relationships with suppliers will be a key source of competitive advantage. One of my five key recommendations in Chapter 4 was to ‘create transparency’. It is absolutely a fundamental issue, though I have refined my thinking on this, notably on strategically defining where you do and don’t provide transparency.

Aligning technology between partners has become far, far easier over the last five years. I used the example of how two companies had integrated their SAP systems. Today open interfaces or at least the ability to export files in standard formats have been implemented across most enterprise software applications. The extremely costly integration efforts of yesteryear are being replaced by far quicker and easier ways to align and integrate information systems between business partners.

In the diagram at the top of this article, I illustrate the feedback loop of customer personalization. This space has developed rapidly over the last five years, resulting in often highly personalized content, advertising, and services for consumers. One of the key variables up to now, and moving forward, is the degree to which people are comfortable with detailed personal information being gathered and used. I have always contended that if sufficient value can be created for individuals with the information gathered about them, it will be accepted. The problem is that too many organizations seem to want to gather information for its own sake, with little or no focus on value for their customers.

In the last section of Chapter 4 I wrote about high-value personalization initiatives, using the example of financial services such as institutional trading and private banking. Having worked within the industry for a decade, and then for many large financial institutions as a consultant, I’ve closely followed how online technologies are transforming client relationships in financial services. I wrote:

Every firm providing high-value services must… implement far higher levels of personalization.This is at the heart of their future competitiveness. XML is an immensely powerful tool to achieve this, because it can be used to break documents into their components, and then reconstruct them in whatever way is most relevant and useful to a particular client.

This has since been implemented in RIXML (Research Information Exchange Markup Language), an initiative that brings together major fund managers and investment banks to improve how financial research is provided to clients. WorldStreet, which I also wrote about, was soon after acquired by Thomson, now Thomson Reuters.

Article Source: Ross Dawson | http://refer.debrawhite.co.uk/Qz