This is MY employee! These are OUR employees!

First article of the year, a first collaboration with us from by Eric Belair, thank you Eric!

I take advantage of this possibility to offer you our best wishes. May the next twelve months be filled with discoveries, encounters, smiles, and of course learnings;)

This is MY employee! These are OUR employees!

Needless to say that after a few years as a recruiter / head hunter, I have had the chance on several occasions to be accused of: “Soliciting OUR employees” or even better yet and my personal favorite “Stealing OUR employees” I’m quite fond of the later one since it would imply that I’m walking around with a mask and an unmarked vehicle to snag employees against their wills to bring them to better corporate worlds. If only it where true, my job would be much easier, and I could really be one of those recruitment ninja’s we hear so much about.

What strikes me in each of these scenarios is how most corporate structure still treat and see employees as possessions, much like a desk chair, our should I say stool since we are in the era of open office concepts.

Understanding the current state of talent shortage which is currently plaguing the corporate world I understand these knee jerk reactions up to a certain degree, but I can’t understand the lack of responsibility.

Your employee? You mean the same one who came to me on several occasions to manifest his dissatisfaction and willingness to seek another opportunity? This dissatisfaction stemming from the fact that you had blocked his career progression and remuneration potential? This same progression that the competition is offering him because they find him worthy of this progression?

Throughout my career I have come across two types of managers:

The first type would see their employees as being owned by the organization and a necessary tool to facilitate the attainment or their corporate objectives. Often, they would be quite comfortable in a corporate setting in favor of tightly knitted non-compete clause to restrict the career movements of their human assets and would in fact exert this clause with legal injunctions should they fail to obey.

The second type would be what I would qualify has human manager; they do not see their employees as possession but as a responsibility. A responsibility to enable and facilitate their professional growth ideally for their current company but should they have outgrown the internal capacity to external employers.

In each case the employee is not a possession but a human being with the power of choice, and in our current economy these choices abound. This focus on a more human type of management might be able to offer a possible solution for Talent Acquisition professionals. The creation of talent pipelines for non-competing industries that require the same skillsets but would have various type of opportunities to offer might prove to be one of these solutions.

With the profound respect that I hold for the work being done in employee engagement or loyalty initiatives, an important and fundamental piece of the puzzle, trying to lock in by any means necessary an employee that has outgrown his responsibilities and environment is it not more detrimental then facilitating their move to another employer? An exit being by no means an end, several companies have come to understand this and created Alumni programs to keep in touch with some great talents.

This is the example that was given to me by an excellent manager and a CEO who both told me one day: “Eric you will always be welcomed here don’t hesitate our door is open”. Thank you Joanne and Stephan, for your trust and maturity, and it’s with a share pleasure, together, that we are pursuing our growth.

Eric Belair