My company is plagued with high turnover. This used to be something that mainly affected the entry level jobs. However, in the past few years it has started to affect management level jobs. When the company looked into this they felt that their policy to hire almost exclusively from outside the company for management may be one of the core reasons for this turnover. The company believed that if they started promoting from within the company the new management individuals would already have a sense of pride and an understanding of the company’s culture and core values.
With this in mind they have decided to start a management training program from within the facility. The idea was to make our trainers the next up and coming supervisors. They posted all new training jobs with the intention of also training those trainers to become supervisors. This plan was supposed to fix the two fold problem of turnover the company was having. These new trainers would be inspired to perform at a higher level with their trainees and the company was getting individuals that understood the company and that the company understood as their future leaders.
This program uses elements and ideas from both the skills theory and path-goal theory of leadership. First under the skills theory, the organization has taken the new stance that the aspects of leadership that an associate needs to work for our organization can be taught (PSU WC, L4, p. 8). The future leaders are taught different skills all while performing their daily activities that correlate with being a leader over their trainees. They are therefore able to put their lessons at effective leadership skills to work on the future producers for the company.
The second theory is the path-goal theory. These management trainees work with a mentor in the management team to set goals to guide their learning in the leadership arena (PSU WC, L6, p.16). For example a friend of mine is a participant in this new program. His current goal is to understand the aspects of good interviewing. Under this goal he shadows HR representatives and supervisors along with reading some articles and journals on effective interviewing and the “do’s and don’ts” from a legal standpoint. Once he is further along he will begin to interview individuals himself and once he has mastered this he will move on to the next goal. Using this theory there is a clear and transparent road map over how and what to do to become a member of the management team for the company.
The company will solve a lot of negative feedback from its employees with this new plan as well. Every year under a third party survey company’s review of our organization a top gripe is not being able to move up in the organization. This new policy will help individuals who have the ambition and motivation to become a member of management to do so with the company they hopefully love working for.
Resources:
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2013). PSYCH 485 Lesson 4: Skills Approach. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa13/psych485/002/content/04_lesson/08_page.html
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2013). PSYCH 485 Lesson 6: Contingency and Path Theories. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa13/psych485/002/content/06_lesson/04_topic/16_page.html