Develop your people
It’s not uncommon for Fulton to spend 10 or 15 hours in a week working on talent management, which involves looking at both the results as well as the behaviors of his managers. It may seem like a lot of time, but another thing Fulton has learned over the years is that you have to constantly be looking to develop your people.
“If you really believe that retention is a real priority in your business, then you have to put together some type of talent management process within your organization,” he says.
One of the easiest ways to see who’s performing well is by looking at results, but often you have to look beyond those and at behaviors, as well. For example, do people follow that person because they have to or because they want to? Does the manager have good development plans in place for the people? What are people like with their employees? What are they like as speakers? What are they like with customers?
“It’s a variety of probing on what kind of development these people need,” Fulton says.
He says it’s also important to look at their bench strength — the managers behind the managers and other key employees under them. Sometimes one of the biggest talent development areas is helping managers simply develop the people on their bench.
It’s also important that as you evaluate your people, that you’re looking at where people can move.
“We’re looking at who’s ready now, who’s going to be ready in a year or two, who’s going to be ready in three to five years,” Fulton says. “We actually identify names there, and then we want to make sure that those people have special attention and development there.”
In order to know who’s ready, it comes down to having relationships with your managers.
“You have to get to know that person,” he says. “You have to rely on your managers to know that person. We see the results, and we can measure their results monthly in terms of how they’re performing.”
When it comes to programs for development, sometimes it simply requires internal training, but in other situations, Fulton will bring in someone with more expertise to work with that manager. Regardless of how you provide additional training, be sure to follow up. On an annual basis, Comerica reviews managers to see how they’ve progressed, and then most meet on a quarterly basis just to talk about how they’re improving. By having a process like this, it ensures that you have people slowly stepping up when they’re ready, which will help your business grow in a healthy way.
“I think if you’re steady, you’ll develop people, you’ll retain those people, and you’ll have a good plan you can stick to,” Fulton says. “We’re trying around here to hit singles and doubles rather than hitting home runs and then two strikeouts.”
By retaining your people, it also ensures you’ll make customers for life.
“One of the ways we retain customers is by having good employees that aren’t leaving every other year,” he says. “So our customers know our people when they call. They don’t have to start all over again with the explanation of what they do and how they do it. We’re already familiar with it, so retaining customers goes hand-in-hand with retaining our employees.”
How to reach: Comerica Inc., (408) 556-5000 or www.comerica.com
