Wow.  It’s Wednesday.  And I’m writing my Wednesday Blog.  I think this is one of the seven signs.  Eek.

A quick note:  I appreciate all the comments to my blog from last Monday.  As you know, I still struggle with changes that I have little, if any control over.  And I guess that puts me in line with a ton of other folks based on the emails I received from people that know me, and from people that don’t.  Thank you.

Anyways…

Sometimes My Blogs Write Themselves

From a local online job posting.

Director of Nursing:  …“Demonstrates excellence in safety and customer service for patient, family, and employee satisfaction. Develops and monitors performance improvement (PI) issues and provides quality and competent staff to meet the needs of the patient population in the pediatric emergency room setting. We are a world-class pediatric hospital that often ranks in the nation’s top 1-2% in patient satisfaction (Press Ganey). Thanks to exemplary medical expertise, advanced technology and exclusive pediatric programs, it has earned the distinction of being the leading children’s hospital in our area.”

And another.

RN Director of Nursing:  …” Join our growing team with 96% employee satisfaction according to our 2008 employee satisfaction survey! We are the proud to have won our state’s Top Quality Award given by The Center for Performance Excellence!”

A focus on employees that contributes to the highest customer satisfaction in the country.  Plus, they save lives.  EXCELLENT.

Never As Bad As It Looks

A recently released survey by Adecco shows that Human Resource managers are most concerned with three major issues: (1) Attracting the best talent, (2) Facing a potential shortage of this top talent in the future despite the recession, and (3) Retaining staff.

Ah.  Music to my ears.

HOWEVER…  Let’s be honest with each other.  By a show of hands, how many companies really have it as a company mission to Hire The Best Talent?  Half the companies I know show little more than a desire to get a “butt in the seat”.

SECOND, “facing a potential shortage of this top talent”?  Aw, c’mon.  There is always a shortage of top talent.  That’s why it is called top talent.  If top talent wasn’t in short supply, we would all have these “great” workers, and then none of them would be “top” anymore.

I love circular reasoning.

THIRD, “retaining staff“.   I believe this one, cause their next comment was a doozie:  52% of HR professionals that have downsized expect to start rehiring workers by the second quarter of 2010

A Sense of Appreciation

I like working with my clients.  It’s a pleasure for me to help them in attracting, rewarding and retaining their workers.  They “get it”, and know the importance of acting on the discoveries made during the research and analysis we conduct on their selection and engagement practices.  And as we talk about the results, implications and next steps, it provides me a real sense of achievement that what I so strongly believe gets passed onto others who can make a tangible difference in the lives of employees.  It sounds kinda preachy, but it is how I truly feel.

For the last couple years I’ve been sending books out to friends, family, and colleagues.  A couple of them are mine (go figure!), and the two non-Drizin books that are being sent most often these days are Matthew Kelly’s The Dream Manager and The Rhythm of Life.  I’ll be writing more about the concepts of both books over the next couple of weeks and months, but that isn’t the reason I mentioned it.

I have one particular client that I have worked on and off with for nearly a decade, although neither of us likes to admit it has been that long.   I recently completed another workforce engagement assessment for her organization, and as expected, the results were very positive.  They are a leader in their industry, and their employee satisfaction and engagement scores show why.

Yes.  An opening paragraph and two non-sequiturs.   And yea, remember that I am a six year latin student.   I can toss out the phrases when I need them.  But here comes the tie between the three disparate stories.

I gave my client The Dream Manager book, a business book that relates more to human resources than other parts of an organization; it’s the third book I have given her over the last couple of years.  Imagine my surprise when I received a hand-written note from her in the mail yesterday,  thanking me for my work with her company and the books I had sent.

And like I tell my clients, nothing beats a hand-written note that gives the recipient a sense of appreciation… one of the strongest drivers of engagement, even between a “vendor” and a “client”.