When Top Performers Leave; Are You Compliant? New Health Care Reform Law Requirements.


	Past Newsletters / Subscribe May 2010 Vol. 5 No. 5

	IN THIS ISSUE: When Top Performers Leave. Exit Interview and Sample Questions. Are You Compliant? New Health Care Reform Law.

"It's Time To Move On." Not only the title of a love song, they're words we don't want to hear when a valued colleague or top performer decides to leave.

Revealed in a recent HR Magazine article, "Preserving Employee Know-How," by Deborah A. Peluso, there's nothing more important for your business than to protect and sustain the knowledge and expertise a top talent or special person has when he or she walks out the door.

"When faced with the loss of key talent, managers often stand by helplessly and lament the volume of wisdom leaving the building. Workers inevitably feel the pain a colleague's departure causes. That pain is immediate when others must take on the work of the exiting employee. But the true pain comes when no one retains the necessary expertise," Peluso writes.

As part of a planned exit interview process - which you can read about in my November 2006 newsletter - a technique called "cognitive task analysis," uses a semi-structured interview guide to elicit information and can help you uncover and keep the know-how, even though your best person decides to move on..

signature - Les

Les Gore

What To Do When Top Performers Leave.

If they go, try to keep the knowledge.

Retain and transfer the knowledge of departing top performers using cognitive task analysis

When making any attempt to transfer knowledge, our focus is often on documenting steps to perform discrete tasks. Except that organizational wisdom can't be boiled down to standard operating procedures. Employees build a repertoire of experiences that they rely on to perform well. If you can't keep the employee, try to keep the knowledge.

Harvesting Wisdom

Top performers usually aren't conscious of what makes them perform well. Researchers call this "tacit" knowledge. And it is hard to draw out unless you ask the right questions. Cognitive task analysis, in which practitioners use semi-structured interview guides to elicit information, can help uncover this expertise.

Using cognitive task analysis, you can interview your departing top performers on various dimensions of job know-how. For each dimension, you or their managers should ask for a story, example or insight that reveals thinking, judgment and problem-solving skills. Following is a list of sample questions:

Time orientation. Is there a time when you walked into the middle of a problem and knew exactly how things got there and where they were headed?

Systems thinking. Can you provide an example of when to pay attention to the whole picture? What are the major elements you have to know and track?

Paying attention. Have you had any experiences where you noticed things going on that others didn't catch or see?

Efficiency. Are there any tricks or tips you've learned over time to get this job done faster or more efficiently, or to get better results?

Innovating. Can you think of an example where you have improvised?

Self-awareness. Can you think of a time when you realized that you would need to change your method or adjust your style?

Atypical situations. Can you describe when you spotted deviation from the norm?

Misleading information. Have there been times when your information systems or equipment pointed to one course of action but your gut told you to do something else?

Everyone on your team should be in the interview. Team members can review their notes; rate the difficulty, frequency and importance of the tasks they need to learn; and help outline a transition plan.

Tapping the wisdom of your workforce should not be done in a crisis. If you and your managers plan and deploy this strategy, practice it and leverage employee wisdom routinely, you will never again find yourself standing by helplessly as wisdom walks out the door.

New Health Care Reform Law: Are You In Compliance?

All health insurance plans must comply with new disclosure requirements, subject to forthcoming regulations from federal agencies. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act set the following deadlines:

2011

Companies with more than 50 employees must report:

Whether they offer their full-time employee and their dependents the opportunity to enroll in minimum essential coverage under an eligible employer-sponsored plan.