Selecting to make a difference
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A valued team member has decided to leave, and you have a vacancy to fill. Rather than see this as a chore, consider the range of opportunities this opens up for you to review and develop the talent in your existing team.
1. Does the vacancy need to be filled at all?
When did you last review the shape of the team and the roles within it? Chances are, not for a long time if all was working well – after all, why would you? But now you have the ideal opportunity to take a completely fresh view. So, if you were setting up the team again, in the light of current organisational and business requirements, what would you do?
2. Review the talent in your team
What are the range of talents and attributes amongst your team members? Are you deploying those talents to best effect? If not, think about how you might improve the range of opportunities you can now give your team members to use their talents to the full. You might suggest people change or swap roles, or perhaps you might shift certain responsibilities between them to better effect. Naturally, you’ll want to discuss this with them too – using our strengths that energise is always a winning conversation and helps people to develop successful careers.
3. What upskilling opportunities are there?
Perhaps the team member leaving had some skills or experience that no one else in the team shared and this has exposed a vulnerability you didn’t realise your team had. Now’s the time to look at how you structure a handover before they leave and ensure that more than one person picks up those skills, so you are not left vulnerable again. Equally, this may get you thinking about other vulnerabilities. Ensuring each team member’s role or key responsibilities can be covered by others will provide development opportunities and make your team stronger in the process.
4. Do you need to bring in new skills?
It may be that this reflection also taps into a nagging concern you’ve had that your team, whilst highly talented and able, are lacking skills in new technology or in the skills that new initiatives which would benefit the business, require. In this case, a vacancy offers you an ideal opportunity to address this issue without hurting anyone’s feelings unless those new skills could easily be acquired by an existing team member.
5. Could you merge other existing roles?
When one change occurs, it is often easier for people to accept other related changes too. So, what else might you also change at the same time? Perhaps new technology has eased some process or admin burden so that two team members have more time to undertake more value-added activities? Perhaps merging two roles into one and using that additional ‘vacancy’ can help you make even more innovative changes to really enhance the team’s performance and contribution?
6. Could you introduce new systems or processes?
Often when we have a talented, productive and happy team bringing in new systems that threaten the status quo can seem more trouble than its worth. Perhaps now though, this vacancy gives you an opportunity to explore this option especially if it will upskill existing team members.
7. Under pressure to cut your headcount?
Then the steps outlined above will all be useful in helping you to decide how you might restructure the team’s workload with less staff whilst still maintaining motivation and morale.
8. Finally, don’t forget to use this opportunity for some team building.
Taking some time out to discuss the options outlined above, engaging your team in this process and being open to their ideas and insights will prove invaluable as you’ll be more confident in finding a way forward that everyone can buy into, seeing the benefits for themselves, the team and the organisation.
TAKE AWAY
When a valued team member announces its time to move on, it’s easy to just move into automatic recruitment mode. Taking the time to consider the positive opportunities for change and the development of your existing talented team this vacancy provides, is a much better option. It takes more time, but the rewards are well worth it.