In today’s dynamic world of business, our workforce is far more diverse and specialized than ever before – this means creating a workplace where top-tier talent can thrive while fostering an environment focused on value adding and streamlining for efficiency is a challenge for any organization. But despite the challenges, Ultra consistently delivers value by having an effective Talent Management strategy, something you can learn through the detail described below and hopefully apply in your own workplace.
The Challenges of Achieving Success
Ultra Consultants prides itself on being a dynamic, value-oriented independent consulting firm that is truly one-of-a-kind. But maintaining this position while delivering client success and providing mentorship, experience, and skills development can be challenging – it requires cooperation, high expectations, and an unflappable desire to be the best amongst our employees, an exemplary, inspirational, and supportive leadership team, and a collaborative relationship between the two.
At Ultra, we engage all our employees, whether they’re in sales, consulting, finance, or marketing, in an ongoing Talent Management process to ensure open dialogue on skills development, lessons learned, opportunity creation, and overall job satisfaction. We have taken the best of what we know and have built a process that encourages self-examination, goal-setting, and applying lessons learned. As a measure of our organizational health and developmental success in this area, we pride ourselves in having a very low employee attrition rate in the industry coupled with high employee satisfaction.
How Talent Management Can Be Integrated Into Your Daily Work
If you’re familiar with the lifestyle of a consultant or a sales professional, you know that 80% – 100% travel time is the norm. Face-to-face, on-site interaction with the client is essential to ensure projects are moving forward successfully and that relationships are established to foster constructive dialogue that drives value-add in multiple areas of an engagement. With all the work that is required to deliver and exceed expectations, building a talent management process into the daily routine of the business is essential. The key is to make Talent Management part of what you do, not an additional task. In other words, recognizing the value of reflecting on recent experiences and lessons learned and taking the time to share those experiences with others to promote development and mentoring is key to fostering a healthy organization that is constantly learning and improving.
The Three Pillars of Investment
At Ultra, every employee knows it is important to invest in success, whether it be client success, Ultra success, or individual success. We call these areas the “three pillars of investment.” If any one of these pillars is diminished, the entire structure becomes out of balance. To ensure balance and to perpetuate the three pillars, Ultra hires top tier professionals who have a strong work ethic and a proven track record for delivering success.
Ultra’s also invests in success by ensuring our employees are contributing to the overall success of our company, meaning support for sales activities, marketing programs and consultants to deliver value to our clients. We are constantly improving how we do what we do through innovation of our proven methodology, expansion of our service offering for our clients, and maintaining our thought-leadership role in the industry.
Client Success and the Importance of Business Process Improvement
This brings us to the third pillar – investment in client success. Obviously, successful companies must consistently deliver value to the marketplace. Ultra has been in business for over 20 years leading companies in their transformation efforts through business process improvement, technology selection, and implementation management, constantly promoting our clients through their journey of ongoing continuous improvement initiatives.
Ultra’s Core Values
This three pillar model sits on top of a foundation of core values each employee is naturally responsible for exhibiting:
- Integrity
- Honesty
- Doing what it takes
- Being the best
- Adding value
These pillars and values are showcased in our Employee Handbook and discussed at each one of our company meetings. Employees are regularly recognized for exemplifying these qualities and the situation in which they do so. This time of storytelling not only rewards employees for hard work, but brings the core values to life through real, tangible events.
What Ultra Looks For in Future Talent
When looking to supplement the top tier talent amongst our current staff, we turn to the best future talent, reflected by the high quality of expertise and core values we look for amongst potential recruits. Throughout our recruiting process, we engage in several rounds of professional assessments to ensure our candidates hold the right values, behaviors, and cultural synergy with the Ultra team.
Continuous Improvement and Ongoing Education is Key
Ultra prides itself on being a company that embraces a culture of continuous improvement. We promote this culture through a highly collaborative environment, ongoing dialogue, peer-to-peer coaching, and learning activities as we serve and invest in our clients, our company, and ourselves. We are constantly educating ourselves individually and as a company which keeps us on top of our game and promotes a dynamic culture of success.
Ultra’s Talent Management initiative is one of many ways we exemplify these values and serve our clients. If you are interested in joining the Ultra Team, submit your application in the careers section of our website.