Feedback can occur in one of four ways, depending on the situation:

1. Good feedback: Give positive reinforcing feedback to the individual.

2. Bad feedback, but employee has potential: The firm manager must assist the individual who has potential to get back on track. This may entail weekly meetings to help mentor the individual.

3. Repeated bad feedback: After repeated attempts to help the person or after concluding the person is not capable, make the employee take responsibility by putting him or her on a performance improvement plan where he or she is accountable to achieve some short-term objectives in a short time (e.g., 45 days) or risk being terminated.

4. Bad feedback and employee has failed his or her performance improvement plan: It is the firms responsibility to terminate the employee or move him or her into a position that requires fewer skills.

The 10 Percent Attrition Model

The 10 percent attrition model is focused on improving the average performance of the firm professionals by creating attrition in the poorest performing 10 percent of staff every year. In this model, the firm releases the bottom 10 percent of the workforce annually. This process ensures that the firm is constantly upgrading the team. It also helps the workers falling in the bottom 10 percent. This model is applicable to mid-size and large professional services firms. After a few cycles, the firm professionals will be a stable, high-quality group, and the attrition model may no longer apply; however, we have found this situation to be the exception. Although there are costs to any type of employee turnover, the costs of an ineffective, poorly performing team far outweigh the impact of turning out the poor performers.

To accomplish this attrition, during each review cycle, the firm management team should rank professional staff according to their relative performance. One method is to adopt the A, B, C, D model, which equates A to the top 10 percent of performers, B to the middle 60 percent, C to the next 20 percent, and D to the bottom 10 percent. Adhering to a 10 percent attrition model, particularly for the struggling firm, is effective because the cost of D staffers is significant.

The obvious costs include compensating employees who are not producing value for the organization. However, this is only a small portion of the cost to the department. D players traditionally command a disproportionate amount of management attention because of either personal issues or performance problems. The management attention could be used for driving projects forward and otherwise ensuring the firms success.

Further, management or teammates have to cover for the nonperformance of the D-ranked staff members. Finally, and most corrosive, D performers

tend to drive away the A and B players, who ask, Why am I getting paid the same amount for producing twice as much work? Management attention should be spent on caring for and developing A and B players and on reducing their attrition to zero. The forced attrition model and an employee swap analysis are powerful tools for managing a world-class professional services firm.

Training Programs for Professional Development

Training programs for professional staff can be a powerful tool for improving both staff performance and for staff satisfaction.

The hallmarks of a good training program are:

Relevance: The training should provide skills directly useful to the professional in the execution of the major portion of their responsibilities, for example, legal research training for entry-level attorneys or project management training for managers.

Timeliness: The best training is timely as well, and is delivered to staff at the point in their career where they have enough experience for the training to be relevant but early enough that they can reap the benefits of it.

Linkage to promotion objectives: Training often takes a back seat to bill-ability objectives, client work, and other unavoidable business emergencies. However, because training is an effective and important way of improving staff performance, the firm must find ways to promote and enforce objectives. One way to ensure that this happens is by tying standard training classes to promotion objectives.

Professional staff value training because they enjoy the challenge of learning new skills, and they recognize that keeping skills current (particularly for professionals in areas with rapidly changing skills required, such as technology) ensures interesting future assignments and helps guarantee job security.

To facilitate the delivery of this benefit, each position identified for the organization (as outlined previously in this chapter) should have a specific training regimen. This regimen should include both recommended and required training for each level. Promotion should be made contingent, in part, on completing the required training. Firm management can work to establish a training program and can help with conducting training, tracking completion and certification, as well as identifying outside providers for delivery of the training. This should be done in conjunction with the professional staff, who can be helpful in identifying the training that would be both interesting and useful for their role.

Because training, particularly training conducted by outside providers, invariably involves significant time and expense for the company, firm management may want to consider asking employees to make a reciprocal commitment to the organization. In exchange for the training, staff may sign a training certificate. This certificate outlines the training program and the cost for each piece. Employees should sign an agreement stating that they will reimburse the company for training costs if they leave the company voluntarily within 12 months after they complete the course. This acknowledgment accomplishes two things. First, it demonstrates to employees the actual dollar amounts invested by the department in their training. Second, it reduces the risk of investing in employees who depart the company as soon as they receive the training, lowering attrition in the firm.

As employees receive training, their market value increases, and they will likely graduate from one job to the next. To keep the staff interested and engaged, they must be provided opportunities to move ahead, use the new skills they have learned, and continue to learn new professional skills. If the company does not provide its team with these opportunities, the best employees will find an employer who will. Providing training, development, and a chance to use new skills generates a tremendous amount of loyalty and goodwill.

In some cases, the team member may be trained out of the company. After employees complete a training regimen and improve their skills, their value increases. At some point, the organization may not be able to provide them with the on-the-job responsibility that they would command in the open market and they may elect to move on. This is a natural outcome of having qualified employees and, while employee retention is critical, should not be cause for alarm.

We have heard good managers characterize it thus: The department should be more like a college than a prison. We miss our best team members when they elect to move on, but if we cannot provide them opportunities to grow, then they must seek them on the open market. Allowing employees to leave on good terms also means that they may return eventually.

Providing rigorous training and development opportunities will entail some short-term expense for the firm, but it will be a crucial factor in the departments ability to retain the A players. Firms that fail to train, develop, and challenge their staff will retain only those who cannot find employment elsewhere.

For smaller firms with limited training budgets, creative approaches may be required to achieve professional development goals. Self-study, training provided by outside firms, or teaming with other small firms are some ways that this can be accomplished.

For firms of all types, voluntary training can be helpful, particularly for skills that are useful but fall outside the normal on-the-job experiences of the professional staff. One technology services company, seeking to improve the decision-making capabilities of its management employees, embarked on a