Keeping great people in the power industry

A famous sporting coach once said, “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”

Teamwork, and its impact on organizational success, is certainly nothing new in the business world, but with the increasing challenges of a global marketplace organizations have never depended on the impact of top-tier dynamic employees more than right now.

Great leaders may intuitively know that the success of their organization depends on the quality and the contributions of their personnel at the individual level, but how can they successfully accomplish the goal of employing the best of the best in a global marketplace where competition for limited resources seems to be ever increasing?

Despite the increasing complexity of the power industry in Asia and the rest of the world, fundamental principles hold valid more now than ever. The efforts of leading global organizations to find and keep personnel of the highest quality can depend on how they practice three simple and basic principles: identify, recruit, and retain.

Great leaders know that to move forward first you must look inward. A challenge for leaders today is to determine the specific skills and experience that will be crucial for the success of their organization’s unique strategic goals in the increasingly dynamic and competitive marketplace.

The challenge of correctly identifying the relevant skills and experiences is paramount to achieving the organizational strategic goals.

As a leader, once you clearly determine what you want to accomplish, it becomes unmistakable who the right people are that will help you achieve it.

The challenge created by a global demand for talented people also brings with it the inverse benefit of access to a larger pool of high talent individuals. This opportunity can be underutilized by organizations that refrain from expanding their internal recruitment resources to capitalize on this opportunity.

Still others may look to outside resources in an effort to offload this responsibility entirely. Regardless of the approach, act with certainty once you have identified the right people for your organization. The basic principal holds true today that good people are always in the highest of demand, even more so now in the global environment.

Retention of top talent is an area where organizations across industries have historically fallen short. Their attention can instead be focused on external issues to the organization or moving forward to upcoming challenges.

Often said and rarely done, regular and meaningful communication with your valued personnel can serve to reinforce in their minds strategic goals, reenergize their motivation, and confirm their importance to the organization.

As has always been the case, remember that valuable individuals will gravitate towards the organization that they are most engaged by most effectively.

So even in a highly dynamic, seemingly ever expanding, and increasingly competitive market the basic principles of business are more valid than ever. Know exactly where you want to go as an organization, find and hire the people that can help you get there, and don’t neglect to maintain the quality people you worked so hard to find in the first place.  

 Andrew T. Holden, P.E., PIC Asia Pacific Sdn. Bhd.

About PIC Asia Pacific Sdn. Bhd.
PIC Asia Pacific Sdn. Bhd. is a leader in supplying Professional Staffing Services to the global power industry. With offices in Kuala Lumpur and Manila, PIC Asia Pacific (a subsidiary of U.S. based PIC Group, Inc.) has supported Asia’s power generation business since 1994. For more information about PIC Asia Pacific, visit www.picworld.com.my.