Hire to Achieve 2025’s plan

Between tradeshows, industry meetings, and marketing group meetings, along with everyday business, distributors, manufacturers, and reps try to do some 2025 planning. Aside from identifying goals and conceiving strategies, resource plans need to be considered.

Yes, one of those considerations nowadays is technology. Another, and perhaps more important, is your human capital plan. People.

There is the upcoming end of year evaluation. Your people deserve feedback, and your company may have a culture of end of year bonuses … either performance-based or discretionary.

Other elements of the human capital plan is considering upcoming retirements, promotions, removals (if we’re being honest), demotions (sometimes people need to be put into “the right role” so that they can succeed), moving to new roles (for development or company growth needs), and filling new roles based upon need or growth.

Recently I was asked by John Salvadore at GRN Coastal, a leading recruitment firm serving electrical, hvac, plumbing, and industrial supply trades to share an article about people resourcing.

Hire to Achieve 2025’s plan

It’s October. You’ve either been working on the first couple of drafts of the budget or getting ready. The Election is coming, and everyone wants to know the forecast. Lots of “what if” scenario planning is going on.

The bottom line, however, is that growth is not an option. It’s a mandate. The question is “how much” and “what resources are needed to achieve it.”

Some companies will budget zero additional personnel headcount to support growth.

This does not mean that there is no hiring but could mean personnel change and hence the informal review process gets started … who will be changed.

For other companies it is time to consider “what”, “where”, “how many”, and “how much.”

While you have 2025’s “number”, now you need the “how you are going to achieve it.”

You need to

• Define your vision and strategy. This can be at the company, division, department, branch or business segment level.
• Identify your personnel gaps
• Define the roles needed while also evaluating how the roles are currently being performed. You may even need to review / develop the “right” metrics.
  • If you are just trying to “do more of the same”, and it has worked, then you already have the template.
  • If you are expanding operations, launching new initiatives, seeking change, then placing someone with the “been there done that” mentality or “we do it this way” will not work. Consider expanding your horizons and putting someone in place who can productively challenge the status quo. In other words, “a thinker who can also do.”
• Create job specifications
• Begin your search … start internally, expand externally, think of “new talent”
• Make the selection
  • And if you are hiring a leader / manager, let them hire their team and you take the role of guide / coach to ensure cultural fit. The key is to empower your people.
• Determine training / company assimilation strategy

The traditional distributor mode is:

• Dip toes in water to see if an idea can gain traction in their market
• Try selling to a few customers.
• Generate some success.
• Want to scale, as of yesterday.
• Can not find “the right person” fast enough and hence lose opportunities and momentum.

Perhaps, the first step needs to be some market research?

And then, presuming the research tests out, staff appropriately and develop a scalable model, inclusive of a training path.

With distributors getting larger, there are opportunities to make longer-term investments and to “give a seed time to germinate.”

Remember the story of the turtle and the hare? Why does the turtle win when time is not a barrier?

If you develop the plan, and work the plan, you’ll get the planned growth. For investments to pay off, it is important to resource the right personnel, not “any” or “sufficient” personnel (for most roles).

Use the fall to ensure you have a plan to “have the right talent in place to execute your 2025 strategy”.

Take Aways

I’ve always believed that the role of “HR” should really be “People Performance Management” and be a strategic element within a company. Resourcing for this is dependent upon company size as “the basics” of an HR department (the administrative elements, benefits, “transactional hiring / recruitment” for warehouse and drivers, etc) also needs to be handled, but there needs to be Human Capital Leadership somewhere within the organization as culture, and hence corporate differentiation and your value proposition, comes from people.

I had a client who had a phrase “need the right people on the bus.” The question becomes, do you have the right people and how do you get more of them? And yes, you can mentor people to help them grow.

The key to growth in 2025 will be retention, intentionality, focus, targeting … all supported by research and the right people.

Speaking of “the right people”, John, and GRN Coastal Recruiters, come from the industry. For those who don’t know John, he was in the electrical industry for many years. I’ve known him from All-Phase (now CED), AD, SourceAlliance.com, Horizon Solutions and Vanguard National Alliance (VNA, which was acquired by AD). He, and the company, know the industry and have helped many electrical manufacturers and distributors with salespeople, sales management, specialists, technology, and management personnel.