Last week I had the honor of moderating a speaking engagement put on by Device Alliance in Irvine, CA. If you aren’t familiar with Device Alliance (DA) it’s a Medical Device industry association whose primary focus is providing a supportive platform for the continued knowledge development and relationship building within the medical device industry in SoCal. The purpose of the event on July 20th was simple – to have an informative discussion on ‘Changing Workforce Dynamics’ surrounding these three topics:
As we got into the meat of the content for the evening I started to pick up on a topic that seemed like it was trending in a fair amount of our conversation.
Is the Medical Device industry attracting younger generations at the rate it should? There seemed to be a fair amount of dialogue and a bit of concern from some people present at the event addressing a discrepancy within the industry as it seemed that new grads weren’t flocking to medical devices like they once had. I can’t substantiate this claim to say ‘yes’ it’s happening, or ‘no’ it isn’t, however it’s a powerful topic to discuss because it’s a potential challenge we face in the near term if in fact it is true. So let’s hypothesize for a moment: If new talent, in particular younger generations, are not entering the medical device industry like they used too, what are the potential cause and effects we’re faced with? CAUSES:
EFFECT:
Is the Medical Device industry attracting younger generations? What are you thoughts? Agree or disagree?
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The craze of the new hot app, Pokémon Go, has taken the world by storm as people meander aimlessly trying to catch little creatures to their hearts content. As users continue to increase and we gain a better understanding of the fanfare this game has adopted an interesting parallel is developing which isn’t necessarily what the game is about at all, yet it’s a great learning opportunity for anyone in a leadership role. Before we get into that, let’s start off with what the heck is this game anyways? What is Pokémon Go? It's a free-to-play, location-based, augmented reality, multiplayer online mobile game. It’s a rebirth of a game that came out originally in the early 90’s which allows you to search for critters, catch them, train them and battle with them. The game that was launched on July 6th uses your phone's GPS to track where you are while making use of a stylized Google map as the primary game board. Your character moves in the game as you walk around in real life, and events and objects – known as PokéStops – are associated with specific locations in the physical world. You can look at the game world through your phone's display which serves as a viewfinder that mixes reality with game objects. What has Pokémon Go accomplished? It took a mere 3 hours to hit #1 on the iPhone app sales charts and a total of 13 hours for the game to hit the top of the US sales charts, bringing in $2M a day in revenue. If that wasn’t impressive enough, its daily user penetration rate (% of people who download the app per day) is 10.81% whereas other blockbuster apps prior were only around 1.67% and 0.84%. The average amount of time a user spends on the app each day is upwards of 45 minutes and the games retention rates are double the industry norm. Lastly, this single app managed to raise Nintendo’s (creater of the app) market share by more than $7 billion, or 25%. Basically it’s minting money left and right for the gamer maker. Why are so many people across such a large age range totally immersed in this app and what could we learn from it to implement in the workplace? After reading that some of you might be thinking “why do we need to learn anything from it? It’s a game, not work.” That’s a valid point and you would be justified in saying that however I think there’s a great learning opportunity for any business owner or person in leadership to take note. People like Pokémon Go because it’s an experience! As leaders in business if we took anything away from what this app has accomplished it should be that the majority of people out there respond positively to things which elicit an interactive, creative and fun experience. Is it then possible to harness the Pokémon Go experience and create that in a business setting? You bet your backside it is, it’ll just take a little creative licensing to make it work. Before we get into the 'how' let’s quickly explore why we would want to do this in the first place? It’s a simple fact that happy employees produce successful companies. When employees are cared for, respected and engaged successfully their productivity levels and general happiness soar in the workplace. When people are happy they take less sick days, require less vacation and go above and beyond on the regular. They don’t need to be told to go above and beyond as they do so naturally. It’s not a utopian day dream to think that this is possible for every company out there because it is indeed possible. It just requires someone to recognize the need for positive change and actually do something about it. Now we’ll take what we’ve learned from the Pokémon Go experience and translate that into the workplace. To create an experience that people will gravitate towards in the workplace we first have to listen and give people what they want, not what you (the leader) wants. Once we know what our people desire we need to deliver on it by creating a work environment and culture that people are drawn too. As Pokémon Go shows us people are willing to adopt things very quickly when it meets their needs and interests. Creating a culture and environment that supports collaboration, appreciation and respect, along with having fun, are good starting points. We also need to keep in mind that over complicating things at work doesn’t necessarily make it a better experience. In fact, the simpler something is the better. Pokémon Go does this perfectly by using something we already know (our phone GPS) and integrates it with our personal space and creative expression. As a result we, the user, are put in the drivers’ seat to create an experience that is catered to our unique interests. What that looks like at work is giving people the autonomy to make decisions and do their job effectively. There’s an added bonus for us in the workplace! We can create an experience that is stimulating and rewarding without the worry of being hit by a car, running into light poles or literally falling on our faces, which have been some wonderful experiences to come as a result of using Pokémon Go. After more than a decade of hiring people on a daily basis I’ve seen a thing or two when it comes to good vs. bad practices as it relates to hiring employees. During that time I’ve also made my fair share of mistakes which have offered up a lot of learning opportunities. What I've learned over the years is that making a hiring mistake can be costly. Hiring an employee is an interesting and vital part of business. Interesting in that the end result is bringing on a new person into your company with the idea that they will fulfill a role to help the company move forward. Vital, because hiring really is one of the most important activities a business can do outside of generating revenue. Without revenue streaming in there is no need for hiring and no company for that matter. The act of hiring is often whimsical and mythical in nature, like a unicorn. Everyone loves to say they’re great at interviewing as they ‘know how to pick em’, they’re ‘able to sniff out the best from the worst’, etc. I always enjoy a good chuckle when I hear comments like this because the reality is that these words often come with hollow ground. In fact, the act of interviewing and hiring is so tough it’s probably best we just get these two stats out ahead of time:
With stats like that you’d think companies would focus more on hiring to improve that area of the business similarly to how they spend endless amounts of time and money on activities like kaizen events and lean initiatives in order to improve yields by a couple percentage points. In the end the numbers don’t lie as they tell us a very sobering story – no one is perfect when it comes to hiring employees. However the quicker we build awareness around our actual performance in the area of hiring the quicker we can begin to improve it. Take a look below and see where you land on these 10 hiring blunders:
Do you or your company fall short in any of these areas? If so you’ve got an opportunity to improve the process and create a great hiring experience for the sake of your new hire and company’s performance in the future. About the AuthorTravis Smith is the founder and managing director of Square-1 Engineering, a medical device consulting firm, providing end to end engineering and compliance services. He successfully served the life sciences marketplace in SoCal for over 15 years and has been recognized as a ‘40 Under 40’ honoree by the Greater Irvine Chamber of Commerce as a top leader in Orange County, CA. Categories
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