11/4/08   Tamara Erickson

Creating Extraordinary Employee Engagement
Attracting, exciting, and keeping the best employees--and why you must do that now

Companies with extraordinary employee-employer relationships don't try to be all things to all people: they understand their current and future employees as clearly as most companies understand their customers, and vividly demonstrate that understanding with actual practices, not slogans. They leverage six key kinds of differences among employees through "signature experiences" that acknowledge and reinforce the values that make each type of employee unique.

As a result, those world-class companies build relationships that capture both hearts and minds, and they earn higher retention levels, more engagement, higher customer satisfaction, and greater productivity.

Tamara Erickson, head of The Concours Group's Human Capital practice that works with senior executives of more than 300 of the Global 1000 companies, says this approach is not just effective, it's necessary, because very shortly - by the end of this decade - we'll be at a tipping point where there simply will not be enough people with needed skills to go around.

She'll get your attention with that dramatic context, and keep it as she shows how you can emulate what the best companies do to attract, excite, and hold on to the best employees.

From this session, you will learn, among other things, how to:

• Recognize the six psychodemographic segments that define individuals' relationships to work.
• Customize your employees' experience and create vibrant, appropriate signature experiences.
• Take other actions now to attract and retain great talent, including creating bell-shaped curve career paths, instituting cyclic work, and retiring retirement.
• Win in the impending scramble for top talent.

Tamara Erickson brings over twenty years' consulting experience to her current position as Executive Officer of The Concours Group, a worldwide consulting firm. She contributes a regular column to Harvard Business Online and she's the author of the award-winning book, Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent. Her recentHarvard Business Review articles include "What It Means To Work Here," "It's Time To Retire Retirement," and "Managing Middlescence."