Full Sail Partners Blog | HR (4)

Compensation can directly impact the engagement and productivity of your talent. Without engaged talent, project-based firms will have a difficult time delivering successful projects. Retaining quality talent is a necessity to firm success so a well-planned compensation strategy is crucial. Let’s look at some components of an effective compensation strategy.

Budgeting

Salaries usually make up the largest part of the overall budget for project-based firms. Using Deltek Talent Compensation, budgets can be set up for each part of the compensation review cycle. They can be further broken down by level so reviewing managers will know how much money is available for compensation. There should, however, be some flexibility for outstanding efforts.

Rules and Guidelines

Rules and guidelines help employees to understand compensation plans. Having specific pay grades clarifies salary differentials. Employees can see what the expectations are for each level such as required certifications, education or professional experiences. With the guidelines in place, managers can make compensation recommendations using approval workflows.

Salary Audits

Staying in-tune to the market value of positions with your firm is important. Market data can be uploaded into Deltek Talent Compensation to show details about the current status of an employee in relation to the market. This allows managers to see how competitive their firm salaries are compared to other similar firms.

Total Rewards Package

Employees need to see all parts of the compensation package. The base salary is just one aspect of the package. The health benefits component is significant in the rewards. Additionally, any short-term incentive pay like commissions or bonuses or long-term incentive pay such as stock options make a heartier, more desirable compensation package.

Be Visible

Deltek Talent Compensation provides insight into all aspects of the compensation plan. Employees want to see that they are being paid fairly and that reasonable expectations are established for their positions. Employers need to stay on budget yet stay competitive in the market. With a visible technology solution in place, all needs of the employee and employer are met.

Implement a Comprehensive Compensation Strategy Now

With unemployment being at a historic low, not having a visible strategic compensation plan will affect retention of top talent. While putting such a plan in place may seem overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. Once your firm has established the key components of your compensation strategy, communicate it to your employees. With top talent buy in, retention will no longer be an issue.

Deltek Talent Management is a powerful set of tools for firms to manage the complete employee lifecycle. It offers an extensive product line to handle acquisition, learning and development, performance and compensation. With such a robust HR system, there are many notable features - some of which are underused. Let’s check out these hidden features and see what benefits they provide.

Employee Recognition

Employees really enjoy being recognized for their accomplishments and want to feel as if they are contributing to the business. Deltek Talent Performance allows employees to submit recognition for other employees in their firm. Recognitions include specifics about each situation such as competencies that the employee has showed. Both the manager and employee can access these recognitions as part of the performance review. Such recognitions go a long way to create a positive culture within the organization.

360 Reviews

360 reviews expand the performance evaluation from just managers to others, both inside and outside of the organization, who have information about employees. Employees can recommend people that they would like to participate in the review, and managers can stay on top of the process. All completed 360s can be viewed by the employee and manager then stored in the employee’s appraisals section for future reference. Feedback from a variety of sources gives employees the chance to see how impactful their work has been.

Project-Based Appraisals

Deltek’s strong focus on projects means that project team members get project-based appraisals. Within Deltek Talent Development, project teams can be set up and team leads determined. Team leads launch the project-based appraisals which may include goals, achievements and competencies that can be later reviewed. Employees get relevant and timely feedback from project managers which can be applied to the next project. Doing project-based appraisals improves performance and drives employee engagement.                                                                                        

Job Seeker Certifications

Today, job seekers have many options, and leveraging technology is a necessity to acquire top talent. Deltek Talent Acquisition makes it easy to view job seeker professional certifications and licenses which can be uploaded during the application process. Candidates can be sorted through efficiently and those with the qualifications needed can be recruited faster. Additionally, with Deltek Talent Learning, those hired will have their certifications automatically added to their learning record which will streamline the onboarding process.

Do Even More with Deltek Talent Management

These hidden features of Deltek Talent Management provide the means to engage quality employees and ensure top project performance. Recognition for valuable work, positive feedback from many different sources, specific project appraisals and assurance of certifications all promote a productive work environment leading to well-run projects. Are you ready to experience what Deltek Talent Management has to offer?

With the shift to an employee-centric marketplace, it has never been more important to focus on talent acquisition and retention. With Deltek Talent Management, you can manage the entire employee lifecycle in one built-in platform. You can efficiently handle acquisition, performance, learning development and compensation. By managing talent, you can retain the best workers, drive employee engagement and ultimately deliver more successful projects. Let’s see how Deltek Talent Management will help your firm be a winning player in the war for talent.

Acquire Top Talent

Deltek Talent allows you to build high performance teams while reducing the time to hire and to reach productivity. There is total visibility into talent acquisition with trends to see what positions are open and how quickly they are hired and onboarded. Using this talent management solution, you can also make sure you offer the most competitive compensation packages to candidates guaranteeing that top talent will join your firm.

Retain Talent

With thoughtful performance management that matches the way project teams work, Deltek Talent offers an effective way to keep the top talent you worked so hard to acquire. Included in the solution is a comprehensive incentive system aligned with performance. This ensures employee compensation transparency and consistency. Deltek Talent additionally comes with the option to build and store unlimited staff learning and training opportunities to keep employees engaged.

Optimize Your Workforce

Deltek Talent Management helps your firm strategically analyze the workforce and predict future needs. This solution allows managers and employees to work together to develop career paths and long-term development plans. Using Deltek Talent, your firm can even create succession plans which work for each unique business.

Manage Talent More Efficiently

Deltek Talent Management provides firms with a unified HR system. This solution is both mobile and flexible and will meet the needs of any firm no matter the size. Acquiring and retaining top talent ensures superior projects are delivered. Are you ready to prevail in this competition for the best employees? Get Deltek Talent Management today.

Firms complain that there aren’t enough candidates when a job opening needs to be filled yet many firms aren’t taking the necessary steps to ensure they have candidates in the hopper when a position opens. Do projects just fall out of the sky? Ok, maybe on a rare occasion, but most of the time you must nurture relationships in order to be considered for a project pursuit. Recruiting should be looked at in the same way. A great way to find the best fit for your firm is to identify potential candidates before a position opens and develop these relationships.

Finding Potential Candidates

Recruiting should involve more than just your HR department and executives. Just like marketing and business development, recruiting should be something all staff members do. Some firms have found that having a referral process can be a great way to encourage employees to share the news, but even more important is letting your employees know to keep their eyes out for anyone that might fit the firm’s corporate culture and have skills needed within the company. The best recruiters leverage their staff within the company to help them do their jobs. Here are places employees can find potential new recruits: 

• Social and informal connections happen all the time and staff can use these interactions as informal recruiting sessions. Potential recruits can come from current projects, partners, vendors, neighbors, and social events. Asking the right questions can provide you with a plethora of information regarding whether any of the people you deal with would be good matches for your firm.
• Conferences and networking events are also convenient places to meet potential candidates. Conferences and association networking events are specifically geared for your industry. Sometimes individuals you meet might be great teaming partners or they might be just what you are looking for if a position comes available. Collect those business cards and ask some deeper questions about their jobs and you have a talent pool without having to officially recruit.
• Social media is another easy way to recruit for candidates. Whether you tweet or connect with others via LinkedIn, there are a variety of ways to find qualified people that fit with your company culture. Just keep in mind what skills you are looking for on a consistent basis, and you will have plenty of options in the world of social media.
• Job fairs, of course, are also appropriate places to find potential candidates. Even without an open position available at your firm, people at job fairs are looking to find where they fit in so when something does come up with your firm you have options. Simply gather names and resumes and you will get an immediate talent pool, or better yet, send them to your website to upload their information into your Talent system. 

Nurture Those Potential Candidates

In the Deltek Clarity report, project-based firms stated that their top challenge was finding qualified talent. I would beg to differ since talent is always around you and most likely available if you nurture the relationships. I suspect your challenge is just not identifying the talent when you come across it. 

Once you find potential candidates, it’s important to capture their information so you can pull from a talent pool. Using the Deltek Talent Acquisition system, recruiters and managers can quickly add resumes to talent pools allowing you to access your potential candidates by categories when a position opens. These talent pools allow you to keep lists of candidates with specific requirements or needs. 

We know great Project Managers or Marketing Coordinators are hard to find so you could tag potential candidates as you come across them. Instead of waiting until the position needs to be filled to start your search, with talent pools you can quickly send a templated email asking candidates you have met in the past, that have been pre-qualified, to submit for an opening. Imagine how much easier and quicker recruiting can be by taking a more proactive versus reactive approach.

Improve Hiring Efficiency

For project centric businesses, people are your competitive advantage. Ensuring solid talent management best practices within the business means assuring you can find the talent quicker than your competition. See how Deltek Talent can improve your employee hiring process.

It used to be that people needed companies - employees were loyal, jobs were scarce, and everyone accepted the standard employment package offered. Today, things are very different. Companies need people – talent is hard to find, few make long term commitments, and many are demanding a lot more than before. Project-based companies are particularly impacted since without the right people in place, projects suffer, customers suffer and so does the bottom line. Therefore, having an applicant tracking system is a necessity to deal with the challenges of talent acquisition.

Expediting Talent Acquisition

These days, companies are the ones trying to convince talent to join the firm while the competition is courting them as well. It is crucial that the time it takes from sourcing candidates to interviewing to offering positions is greatly shortened. An applicant tracking system provides a clearer picture of the entire process. It shows right away if any of the steps are taking longer than necessary and allows firms to be more efficient in the hiring process. Project-based companies need the right people available at the right time to keep projects running smoothly.

Talent Pools

With people moving around as much as they do today, firms should always have a reserve of potential talent. An applicant tracking system helps with creating and maintaining these pools of talent. When resumes are entered, HR can flag those candidates who would be good fits for future opportunities. So, if a project manager leaves unexpectedly or a new project is won, a talent pool is immediately available to contact which reduces the delay in staffing. Nothing is worse for project-based firms than having to put off a project start date because of lack of appropriate personnel.

Candidate Experience

Another benefit of an applicant tracking system is that it ensures a positive candidate experience. The candidate’s experience moving through the hiring process has a huge impact on whether an offer will be taken. Firms must make candidates feel that they are valued. An applicant tracking system makes it easier to stay connected with candidates, so they feel informed and not forgotten. Project-based firms will not only have excited quality talent coming on board from this positive experience, but word of mouth will spread creating a talent pool for future projects.

Invest in an Applicant Tracking System

Project-based firms make money when projects are done on time and to customer satisfaction. Without the right personnel on the project, firms are destined for failure. An applicant tracking system expedites the hiring process by reducing inefficiencies and encouraging quality talent. Firms can easily overcome the challenges of talent acquisition by investing in one today. What is your firm waiting for?

Employee engagement is the extent to which individuals are personally involved in the success of a business. Interestingly enough, it does not mean employee satisfaction. Employees can be satisfied in their jobs, but still not be engaged. The fact is engaged employees are invested in their company, and they have an emotional commitment to the organization and its goals, so they will go the extra mile for their firm.

Benefits of Employee Engagement

Gallup firm research shows that 68.5% of U.S. employees are not engaged in their current roles. This lack of engagement costs U.S. companies between $450-550 billion in lost productivity a year. When employees are engaged by their work, however, there are higher levels of productivity, a boost in the company’s bottom line, better retention rates, an increased sense of health and well-being and happier customers.

It is important that businesses create the conditions to engage employees. Doing so provides valuable loyalty inspiring experiences which will in the end drive profits. The best business leaders realize that an engaged workforce can propel innovation, increase performance, and grow the organization.

9 Key Areas of an Employee Engagement Strategy

1. Purpose – This is the thing that drives the firm forward. A sense of purpose is crucial to creating the emotional bond between employees and their work. With a specific mission and clear company values, employees will become engaged.
2. Communication – The emotional component of communication speaks to the basic human need to feel valued. When employees receive proper, frequent and constructive communication, they feel in the loop which establishes trust. It is critical to not rely too heavily on email in communication.
3. Health and wellness – A Gallup study found 62% of engaged employees felt work positively affected their physical health. Established health and wellness campaigns play a role in creating emotional connections. Again, these emotional connections engage employees.
4. Workspace and environment – How companies set up employee workspaces determines the feel of the environment. With functional and inspirational workspaces, a sense of pride is created along with a desire for employees to be there. Wanting to be at work increases performance.
5. Well-defined roles – Defining roles connects the company’s mission with its employees’ daily activities. Firms must show how each employee’s efforts contribute to the overall mission. This identifies how each individual employee is thus responsible for the ultimate success of the firm.
6. Relationship with colleagues – Numerous studies have shown that firms where friendships are common have more engaged employees and better business. Gallup research even found that people with a self-described best friend at work are seven times more likely to be fully engaged. Relationships create another emotional connection to the firm.
7. Recognition and incentives – The act of being recognized for individual efforts makes employees feel like valued team members and creates another emotional connection. Also, certain monetary incentives like profit sharing activate an emotional response with a vested interest in making a profit. Engaged employees will financially benefit from their hard work.
8. Buy-in from managers – According to SHRM, employees who trust their managers appear to have more pride in their firm. They are more likely to feel that they are applying their talents for both their own success and that of the organization. Management buy-in to encourage employee engagement is a necessity which goes hand in hand with frequent communication.
9. Personal growth and development – Personal growth and development is the final emotional component that will support employee engagement. Employees need to know that they can advance in their firm, and they want opportunities for education and training. Seeing how they can progress in their contribution to the firm’s mission will also help maintain engagement. 

Benchmarking Employee Engagement

Having engaged employees is essential to a successful business. Creating and implementing an effective employee engagement strategy is crucial as well. What’s left to consider is how to benchmark the employee engagement. Using an employee engagement survey, firms can determine the types of activities employees want to participate in as well as their thoughts on the state of the workplace. Listening to the voices of your employees and sharing what you have learned will continue to encourage employee engagement and let your firm reap its benefits.

Firms in the professional services industry often have a difficult time managing the large volumes of information that come with each project. Having access to all project information from emails to drawings to contracts is important and vital for effective project management. With information silos, disorganized yellow folders and different systems per team, there is a greater chance for a less than successful outcome on firm projects. Deltek Project Information Management, or PIM, changes the way professional services firms manage information.

PIM Challenges the Norm

Many professional services firms believe that using yellow folders to store project documentation is the best option. While they are certainly easy to create, these folder structures offer no options for controlling access to the most up to date project information. Critical project data can easily be missed, and uninformed decisions can be made without a central place to view all current documents like offered with PIM. 

Email Communication is Valuable Information

One of the biggest mistakes that project-based businesses make is not considering email communication valuable project information. Emails and their attachments have significant details that help keep track of the project progression. Issues crop up in email correspondence that are essential for project members to see. For the project to run smoothly, these emails must be stored appropriately as PIM provides. 

Benefits of Using Deltek PIM 

• Organized project files improve efficiency – Users can store, manage, retrieve and share documents in a central hub
• Better collaboration – Project communication is improved when all team members can see all the relevant information
• Quickly find critical data – All key project information is available to monitor project progress and make better decisions
• Protecting the firm – Risk can be reduced with greater visibility into project data
• Mobile connection – Enables on-the-go field work where photos can be taken, or drawings can be viewed on site
• Integration with Deltek ERP– Every critical piece of project information is in one location to manage budgets, schedules and resources for every project in Deltek 

Goodbye Yellow Folders, Hello Deltek PIM 

Deltek PIM offers a cohesive information management system which ensures that the correct knowledge is always available to all project team members. By implementing PIM, professional services firms can store, catalog and retrieve all essential project management documents from one place. If your firm is still managing project information using yellow folders or keeping information silos, the best decisions are not being made. PIM can help make better ones.

Change is inevitable but planning for change can certainly alleviate its impact. If you’re the owner or leader of a professional services firm, you know that senior level personnel are eventually going to retire or might simply move on to new challenges. With this in mind, your firm can be prepared by having a succession plan in place for when employees leave.

What is Succession Planning?

Stated simply, succession planning is the process whereby an organization ensures that all key roles can be replaced by competent new employees. As part of the succession plan, employees that are going to eventually fill these high-level vacancies will participate in a training and mentoring program to prepare them to become future firm leaders. The succession plan should also include replacing lower level employees as they move to higher positions within the firm.  

The succession plan should be presented to employees as a professional development and training opportunity. It should provide a map to employees on where the firm believes their individual skills will benefit the organization in the future. In an effort to plan for staff leaving, the process actually encourages retention of other high-quality employees.

Developing a Succession Plan

Creating a succession plan requires firm leaders to take a hard and honest look at their current financial situation and where they predict themselves to be in the future. Additionally, they will need to determine when certain employees will retire, and which employees are appropriate to develop as future replacements. Each role no matter where it is in the firm will require a different training program that includes a mix of activities to ensure the skills required to be successful are learned in advance of any departure.

Common Challenges of a Quality Succession Plan

Creating and maintaining a quality succession plan is challenging. Here are some common issues firms face with succession planning that must be considered:

• Smaller firms have fewer positions which makes it difficult for advancement
• Tapped succession employees may leave for better salaries at other firms
• Project-based firms can experience ups and downs to the number of contracts/jobs they manage and deliver which affects staffing
• Senior leaders may stay in their position rather than leave when planned
• Chosen succession employees may lack motivation to advance
• Plan falters due to poor communication or the lack of clear development and training taking place

Investing into the Future of Your Firm

A succession plan is an investment into the future of your firm. The time and effort required for a successful succession plan is costly, but the plan can also create future savings. Having a great succession plan in place will encourage retention since employees will feel valued, but it will also prevent the negative impact of change if someone unexpectedly leaves.

Annual review time is often seen by many employees as a stressor. For even the most productive employee, the question of what hasn’t been said until this one point in the year causes concern. From the manager’s perspective, how is it even possible to clearly remember a year’s worth of employee performance? It makes much more sense to offer feedback consistently throughout the year. Let’s take a closer look at the value of continuous employee feedback especially for project-based firms.

Employee Engagement

With continuous employee feedback, managers can initiate employee engagement which leads to further discussions. The more opinions and ideas that are gathered will ultimately improve the project and ensure that it is done efficiently and on budget. If issues crop up, as they often do, engaging employees frequently will allow for proactive problem resolution instead of reactive analysis down the road. 

Good Balance

Keeping a balance between positive and negative feedback is another benefit of continuous employee feedback. While an employee’s performance may have to be corrected over some issue during a project, other things that have been done well can be provided to offer encouragement. This way, employees are still motivated to do their best work and don’t react negatively to the one matter that needed improvement.

Actionable Feedback

Continuous feedback provides actionable items that are mutually beneficial to managers and employees. Freshly addressing the situation at hand allows managers to respond and employees to correct immediately rather than reacting to what has already transpired and cannot be changed. Employees can also be given proper training to improve their efficiency and the outcome of the project. 

Goal Setting

Talking regularly about performance allows employees to set goals for themselves. When employees see how they are contributing to a project and know they will be a part of the positive outcome, they are inspired to perform better than before. Goal setting benefits managers and employees alike. 

Learn from Feedback

Offering continuous feedback is a way for employees to learn, grow and develop. It is a much better strategy for project-based businesses than annual performance reviews. Consistent feedback encourages conversations, goal mastery and efficiently run projects which is a win for everyone in your firm.

According to the 39^th Annual Deltek A&E Clarity Industry Study, one of the top three firm initiatives to address financial challenges is managing growth. Firms are needing to quickly expand departments, hire and train new employees, and find ways to retain them to prevent turnover. Not only are project managers dealing with staff shortages, but inexperienced project managers ultimately lead to client dissatisfaction and poor perception of firms in the marketplace. Firm financials are being directly impacted by issues with human capital management.

Turnover and Talent Acquisition

The results of this year’s Deltek A&E Clarity study show that human resources (HR) professionals are seeing higher voluntary turnover, more open positions with longer average time to fill plus difficulties with talent acquisition. Turnover has increased by nearly two percent compared to last year, and the percentage of firms that take 31–60 days to fill an open position went up by four points. Regarding talent acquisition, many firms are not focused enough on improving the efficiency of the talent management process. The majority are still using outdated HR systems with 63% of small firms having not updated their HR systems within the past five years making it a challenge to track KPIs. Talent acquisition remains the most expensive business process facing HR.

Drop in Utilization Rates

Additionally, firms have seen utilization rates drop slightly for the second year in a row, declining to 59.4% from 60% last year. This may be due to firms having a harder time recruiting, onboarding, and retaining talent this year and leading to higher employee salaries to attract the best talent at lower billable utilization. This shift in utilization rates is also reflected in the small increase in overhead rates. Firms should develop a strategic onboarding process to reduce the time it takes to get new hires assigned to billable projects. Another issue affecting financials is that increased turnover means senior staff are pulled to train new employees pulling them from their current tasks.

HR Stuck in Recruiter Mode

This year’s Deltek A&E Clarity report also noted that with growth management, HR professionals tend to get stuck in recruiter mode leaving little time to focus on other essential tasks to help keep staff engaged. Firms need to first properly train their staff, so they are productive. They must then find out what professional development and learning opportunities their employees are looking for to ensure retention. According to the study, only 13% of firms said they have a learning management system (LMS). This is down two percentage points from last year, when 15% of firms reported having an LMS.

Succession Planning and Retention

Another key aspect to employee retention is succession planning. The Deltek A&E Clarity study showed that of all firms, only 43% have formal succession plans. Therefore, firms need to focus not just on identifying tomorrow’s leaders, but also on engaging high-potential employees in a way that keeps them at the firm and lets them know that the firm is invested in their success. For 68% of firms with a succession plan in place, it only applied to current leaders or those next in line. Only 7% had plans that applied to all employees. Regardless of size, without a succession plan, the future of the firm is especially at risk if something happens to its current leaders or key staff.

Future Human Capital Management Strategy

Of particular interest, the Deltek A&E Clarity study suggested that to develop an effective future human capital management strategy, firms must evaluate what different generations want and need. With baby boomers voluntarily retiring, firms must change their approach to new hires by offering tailored benefits such as tuition reimbursement and the ability to work from home. Overall, firms that offered these and the more traditional benefits, including stock ownership options, medical, 401(k) or retirement plans, performance bonuses, or paid overtime, do have higher total employee costs. However, firms that did so would have higher employee retention rates, thus reducing the financial burden of turnover.

Clarity Outlook for Human Capital Management

Firm financials are being impacted by challenges in human capital management. In the next year, firms should focus on updating outdated human resource systems, appealing to the new workforce generation, providing strategic onboarding, offering top professional development and learning opportunities, and creating succession plans for all employees. For the future, financial leaders must manage growth by tracking the costs of talent acquisition and investing in their employees to prevent turnover. To really understand the true cost savings of employee retention, HR must continue to work closely with financial professionals. Lastly, make sure to download your free copy of the 39^th Annual Deltek A&E Clarity Report now.