As an HR professional you want the best for your organisation and your employees. What you do must be affordable, scientifically sound, productive, sustainable, positive and supported by all users.
Suppose that: a new colleague is coming on board. Expectations are high, but you know the proverb: you can’t judge a book by its cover.
After 8 months or so it turns out that your new colleague is cutting corners. That communication is difficult. That your boss is unable to deal with it. That your team members are despairing. The result: a parting of ways. Expectations hit rock bottom. Hope is destroyed.
Frustration on all sides: so much time and energy lost! Not to mention the money: the finder’s fee or advertising and job application costs, weeks of training without a return on investment, hours spent by colleagues orienting the newcomer such that they were able to do less of their own work, recruitment costs, severance pay …
And now a new search that will cost so much time and money! Yet you had such a good feeling during the job interviews: it ‘clicked’. Moreover, you did everything by the book: you asked for the 3 strengths and weaknesses, you checked references, you had an assessment performed ...
In short: you did just about everything a responsible HR professional should do.
The problem is often in the match between ‘person’ and ‘organisation’. Competences are an important part of the story - but not everything - and can be learned. Past behaviour is a piece of the puzzle, but only says what that person did in that situation, not now, let alone later - in a different environment with other people.
The missing puzzle pieces lie in a nuanced and thorough insight into the nature of the beast, combined with his or her intrinsic motivation and ability to perform (= potential and talents). The ‘why’ and ‘how’ of someone’s behaviour always depends on both the person and his or her environment.
The CoreTalents Analysis gives you, as a company, a clear view of everything your employees are capable of, including that which is presently dormant. You can then offer them those jobs and roles that make them grow as individuals, that expand their competences and increase their responsibility, based on what they are capable of.
Character, talents and motivation are elements that are firmly anchored. While people change throughout their life, some things remain extremely stable. Did you know that 80% of your talents are already fixed at birth? Prof. Dr. Dick Swaab, head of brain research at the AMC in Amsterdam, has demonstrated this.
Recruiting people and sustainable employment also means: taking responsibility for their well-being. Avoiding situations that make them sick, or even better: ensuring that they work on tasks that make them happy. This is a powerful and especially preventive (!) approach to combat all sorts of health problems, stress and burnout & boreout.
You now know that a CoreTalents Analysis empowers people to leverage their values and strengths, and gives them the incentive to put themselves (back) on the right track.
You now also know that a CoreTalents Analysis gives you perfect insight into what gives people energy and will continue to give energy in the future, and what costs them energy. And what excites them now and will do so later, or what not.
How to match all this knowledge with the necessary competences in your organisations?
Experienced analysts familiar with this matter translate the requested (core) competences to CoreTalents and vice versa.
You can redefine a job, remove aspects from the job and redistribute tasks, or engage in job crafting. But you cannot do any of this with the personality of an employee!
It is therefore wise to have a complete and detailed picture of your employee. So you can use him or her where he or she grows and prospers, where he/she wants to grow and prosper. That is to his/her benefit and that of your organisation.
Never forget that you can’t make a pear out of an apple, no matter how many courses and coaching sessions you throw at it - but of course you already knew that.
Did you also know that coaching on strong CoreTalents quickly pays off?
And did you know that training takes root when it is grafted onto strong CoreTalents?
Then you realise immediately the enormous amounts of money you can save by sending the right people to the right courses and ... how you contribute in concrete terms to happy and (intellectually) healthy employees.
PS: The fact that absenteeism decreases, staff turnover is reduced, succession planning is better, the overall atmosphere improves, much fewer burnouts and boreouts occur, and productivity increases are more than just pleasant side effects.
Testimonials
These analysts are happy to talk about what the use of CoreTalents Analysis in organisations means for them.
Monique Loo is an independent entrepreneur who uses her experience in multicoloured roles as company doctor, coach, trainer, CoreTalents Analyst, supervisor and intervision counsellor.
“I do this for the benefit of my clients who come to me because they (often) are looking for how they can feel ‘better’ about themselves and more intelligently combine what they need and have to offer with what the (work) environment needs and has to offer. Ultimately, it’s about the life-long development of people in and with their environment, of all ages at all stages of life, as far as I’m concerned, unhindered by formal pensions etc.
As a result, my role is no longer that of the standard doctor in the consulting room. I haven’t been active in the consulting room as a doctor monitoring absenteeism since 2000. On the contrary, I prefer ‘open consultation hours’ and it always involves ‘positive employability’, not the elimination of absenteeism.”
I like to share these examples of insights of working people using the CoreTalents Method:
- You might love people very much and want to make them happy, yet run into problems when needing to care for them. (Becoming a nurse and performing care tasks is not the best job for you.)
- You can certainly want to be ‘dominant’ and go for profit and impact, and still accept loss as well. (The case where a team did not understand that a dominant boss could actually accept a loss, and that he was not simply pretending to do so.)
- You can certainly enjoy and become energised from actively working in a team, whether structured or otherwise, and still run away screaming from passive socialising and small talk. (In a team where some team members were never interested when it came to socialising, while they were always ready to go and radiant in a team context.)
- You can really want to know something about everything and at the same time feel the need to truly immerse yourself in just one subject. (A professional who thought something was wrong with him because he wanted both, but found - as did his environment - that he had to make a choice because the two were incompatible.)
These insights are difficult to combine with the standard tests (using the big 5 that employ the polarising types based on Jung). After all, they often put people on the wrong track and sometimes ‘therefore’ lead to workers having their strong CoreTalents excluded. Or them feeling ‘obliged’ to apply their small CoreTalents. Unconsciously, because they didn’t know their CoreTalents yet.
The aforementioned insights lead the clients involved to find a healthier way to grow and develop. They now understand the points on which previous guidance or work adaptation was not yet adequate (or was counterproductive) and can now make healthier choices themselves and in collaboration with the (working) environment, also for the future; work is enjoyable again.’
Joachim Willems is IT team coach and supports the HR policy at AMPLEXOR Belgium. AMPLEXOR is an implementer of complex websites, intranet applications and systems for automated document management.
HRM at AMPLEXOR Belgium uses the CoreTalents Method to draw up CoreTalents profiles of all employees. Joachim has been an analyst since May 2015 and uses the CoreTalents Method due to:
‘the strong emphasis on motivation - rather than competencies alone - to be able to support employees in the development of their careers over the long term.
The emphasis on motivation and potential ensures that important career choices are well-founded and that employees work in the right jobs with a lot of enthusiasm.’
And the fact that AMPLEXOR is able to attract new employees thanks to the positive and innovative CoreTalents approach is a nice extra in these times of ever-scarcer talent.
Kathleen D’Hoogh has been active in the HR world for 18 years. As HR (temporary employment) manager she discovered CoreTalents in 2008 and since then has been an Accredited Analyst.
“Since then, I have successfully used the method for recruitment, talent development and leadership trajectories in various organisations. As a team coach in cultural change trajectories and as an individual coach for business leaders and managers, I see that the CoreTalents Method offers amazingly strong insights and a wonderful basis to assist people in their further development, both professionally and personally.
By using CoreTalents for team coaching and individual coaching, I note that people become fully empowered. By making grateful use of my own strong CoreTalents, I am also in ‘full flow’ myself.”
Mireille Vandevorst is career counsellor, and seconds HR professionals in the SME sector. She discovered the CoreTalents Method through her work as a recruiter of hard-to-find engineering profiles.
Due to the accuracy of the various selections for the ‘right (wo)man at the right place’ that she encountered at engineer selection agency Alprocor - which uses the CoreTalents Method and of which CoreTalents is a spin-off - she decided to follow the training for Accredited Analyst.
She explains: ”During this training I discovered my own CoreTalents, which prompted me to set up my own company. As a child I always said that I wanted to become an entrepreneur, but my parents and husband gave me the ‘good advice’ for years to opt for security and a permanent contract. However, I threw all of the certainty associated with permanent employment overboard and stepped into entrepreneurship with a large dose of self-confidence and conviction. Each of my employees was recruited on the basis of their CoreTalents. My employees know each other’s strong CoreTalents and that is THE greatest benefit in our team and for the growth of my company Solut, which provides solutions with a Passion for HR.”
Ingrid Everaerts has been both individual and team coach for 18 years and since 2011 has been training coaches based on the principle that every coachee deserves a competent coach.
“I use the CoreTalents Method as a tool that gives me immediate insight into who my coachee is and what his or her preferences are. For me as coach, this saves me a lot of time in the coaching process: it makes it possible to quickly respond to his or her motivators and I also know how to adapt the ‘homework’ to the energy drivers.
For coachees it is a huge advantage that they quickly gain insight into themselves and in this way easily and thoroughly anchor the material learned.
For me, the CoreTalents Methodology differs from other techniques in that it goes deeper, is focused on the positive, plus it is pleasant for coachees to examine their childhood. It is non-threatening, which is not always the case with a traditional test.”