Page 66 - Successful Onboarding

The State of the Art: Essentials of Strategic Onboarding • 55

investment, orientation for many management employees rarely went
beyond a brief, rigid, and highly generic encounter. High-quality, formal
development programs were often the exception.
Both of these kinds of programs, general employment benefits and career
tracks for managers, declined during the 1980s and early 1990s. Deregu-
lation, global trade, financial innovation, and reductions in shipping costs
made markets more competitive, squeezing corporate profits. Unions weak-
ened, while income tax rates fell. Shareholder activists derided companies
as cautious, bloated empires operated for the glory of the management.
In response to such environmental conditions, companies either
eliminated some of the most meaningful benefits and programs or, as in
switching from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions, greatly
weakened them. The federal government made these defined contribu-
tion plans tax deductible and even encouraged the decline of defined
benefit pensions by making it easier for plans to be portable (e.g., rollovers
into 401K retirement assets). The elimination of the guaranteed pension
and the portability provisions of the retirement fund ran parallel with the
growing propensity of employees to jump from company to company, with
little regard for loyalty.
Changes in business practices had also undermined the employer and
employee compact. Expanding markets, intensifying competition, and the
spread of management ideas (thanks to MBA programs) were making com-
panies more and more similar. Firm-specific knowledge mattered less than
it once did. Although management never attained anything like the trap-
pings of a true profession, companies were increasingly comfortable get-
ting needed talent from outside hires. Meanwhile, the same trends that
made business more competitive also made it less certain. Companies had
a harder time predicting their needs for managers, and with no small irony
they were reluctant to spend a great deal of money to develop talent that
might jump to competitors.
As companies resorted to hiring into management from the outside, it
became easier for employees at other firms to jump ship. This in turn
made companies even less concerned about keeping talented employees
for the long term, furthering the trend away from career development.
Employees were encouraged to manage their own careers, yet they weren’t
provided the information and tools required to do so.