Talent pays for itself

Think talent doesn’t matter? Think again.

Ever enter a fast food joint and see a skilled manager keeping the lines moving, food orders filled flawlessly, and employees hopping? When you see it in action, it’s a beautiful thing. The flipside of this is when you stop in and that manager’s gone home, or it’s their off day, beauty becomes a nightmare; like when you’re on the road and it’s late, and you stop for a quick bite, and you stand in line for 20 minutes and leave with someone else’s order, or bite into fries that have been sitting in the fry rack and they're cold and soggy (or eat that Subway sandwich, improperly put together and end up wearing it). If that’s never happened to you, you’ve not spent any length of time on the road.

The HR Capitalist has a great post on the kind of revenue a stellar manager at McDonald’s can bring in for a store—about 200K extra per year. Yet despite the company’s recognition that this position is a revenue generator, turnover continues to be a problem.

Read down to the end because the post has some interesting things to say about compensation, tied to value creation, and how it ties into retention.

Talent issues aren’t going away, even though they’re conveniently forgotten during these economic dark days. They’ll come back soon enough, when our new president’s stimulus package kicks in, shakes the doldrums from the economy, and we’re right back in the midst of shortages of people that bring value to our companies and organizations.