It seems like nearly every company I’ve worked with is struggling to attract and retain strong technical resources, whether their organization competes in the technology space or not. We can chalk up the demand to the advancement of science and technology’s role in nearly every industry, service, and product out there—combined with a shortage of the necessary STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) talent to support those needs. And while there’s a lot of literature available on how to meet the needs and expectations of this audience, it seems worth adding a few words on this tricky employee group, specifically in regards to performance strategies.
Let’s start with the employee’s point of view. While acknowledging that no two people will ever want or care about the exact same things, some macro themes come up again and again that resonate with STEM-oriented personalities. First, this group cares a great deal about their skills, knowledge, and experiences. They want to be current in their field, work with the latest and greatest in technology or science, and rub elbows with the best and brightest. Second, they like to be recognized for that mastery. This recognition can come in many forms, such as awards and certifications, patents, published works, or speaking at conferences—or simply being recognized by their peers as a ‘rock star’ in their space. They also care deeply about having the freedom to invent, build, design, explore, and play in their field. After all, how can you ever be a master if you don’t have the time and space to practice your craft?
Now let’s look at what the organization needs from this group. Clearly, the aforementioned mastery skills are important to organizations. Yet many companies struggle to give STEM talent the tools, training, and experiences needed to stay on the cutting edge of their field of practice. The more the performance solution you build for them can focus on identifying and aligning your best technical talent to the ‘coolest’ work, the better.
Another common tension organizations face is wanting all that STEM brain power aimed at the right work, rather than being distracted by other things. While we definitely want to put more focus on directing that talent to the best work, we also need to balance that with this groups’ desire for time and space to do their own thing. I get it: when you’re short on critical technical talent, it’s hard not to fully dedicate the talent you do have to your priority agenda items. However, you need to be a little more flexible to keep this very agile group happy. Google and other forward-thinking companies have proven that letting your people use some percentage of their time on their own pet projects pays big dividends down the line.
So how should the desires and interests of both employee and employer influence your performance design? I recommend focusing on what both care about – in other words, the win/win. Here are some ideas on how to do that:
1. Keep your approach simple
Why? This group tends to hate formality and bureaucracy, so do you really want to irritate them with the process? Also, this is a valuable resource, so optimizing their time is essential.
2. Push as much authority and ownership as you can down the ranks
STEM folks don’t like hierarchy any more than they like bureaucracy. The flatter your structure, the better. Create more opportunities that allow them to work in networked teams with control over their own resources. This also means more employee-driven and peer-based approaches. Let them be the rock star in their crowd.
3. Invest in building clear technical career paths
Invest in building clear technical career paths and in creating the content necessary for enabling and communicating those paths. Share information on how they can build their mastery within your organization, and provide them with resources outside the walls as well.
4. Build a model where you can assess the technical skills, knowledge, and capabilities that are housed within your organization
A strong technical competency/capability model will do this. It will also help to have the technical career path agenda mentioned above.
5. Ensure that your talent review processes prioritize mobility
In other words, keep your STEM talent moving across the org to increase collaboration, the sharing of knowledge, and to enhance their growth, experiences, and learnings.
6. Celebrate their brilliance (often)
Find ways to highlight progress, solutions, invention, things of beauty, and innovation. This may be at a team level as much as it is at the individual level. Recognition can be as simple as a toast at the Friday happy hour or as formal and highly visible as company-wide recognition like displaying patents or other awards prominently in the office halls, or granting annual innovation awards internally.
And remember, always connect your investments and their rewards to the things they care about: building their mastery, recognition of that mastery, and the time and freedom to play.
If you want to learn more about performance management, join me at Achievers Customer Experience (ACE) where I will be speaking on How Performance Management Is Killing Performance – And What to Do About It.
