This is the fifth blog in the Cisco Partner Talent series, helping partners attract, develop, and retain the right people with the right skills at the right time. This month’s blog post goes into detail about stage five of the Cisco Fit4Talent Employee Lifecycle: Coaching and Mentoring. 

In my previous blog post, I discussed the value of learning—for your employees’ success and your firm’s bottom line. This month, I’m digging deeper, sharing the important link between behavior change and learning, based on recommendations by Workforce Management on the five steps employers need to take for improved performance.

Why is this important? Well, do you want to increase your firm’s profit? Productivity? Competitive edge? If the answer is yes, and I imagine it would be, you can accomplish all of that—and more—by educating your workforce.

And if you’re not convinced by all of the benefits, here’s a scary stat: people involved in training typically forget most of what they’ve learned within 60 to 90 days. So how can you prevent this knowledge “drain”? Let’s use golf as an example.  Read More »

Tags: Cisco, Cisco Fit4Talent, coaching, fit4talent, mentoring, partner

Every Friday, we’ll highlight the most important Cisco partner news and stories of the week, as well as point you to important Cisco-related content you may have missed along the way. Let’s have it.

Off The Top

Andrew Sage, Cisco vice president, Worldwide Partner-Led, has good news for top-performing participants in Partner Plus: you’ll not only be recognized as part of Cisco’s new Winners Circle sales initiative, but you’ll also get to attend a special event at a luxury resort with some of Cisco’s key executives. You heard it right: prime networking, a gorgeous location, and an earnest reward for the hard work that goes into building and executing on Partner Led solutions.

It’s all part of the ongoing expansion of Partner Plus, including, as Andrew mentioned, new Partner Led Sales Excellence Training.

“You leverage the same content the Cisco sales team uses, meaning that partners and the field are on the same page when it comes to the fundamentals of business planning for an account or territory,” Andrew explains. “In turn, you can better manage sales.  It’s truly a collaborative learning process that we have seen transform partners from salespeople into more strategic advisors that get at what customers really want and need.”

Read More »

Tags: andrew sage, Cisco, Cisco Fit4Talent, IoE, Partner Plus, Public Cloud, Ubiquysis, Weekly Rewind

This is the fourth blog in the Cisco Partner Talent series, helping partners attract, develop, and retain the right people with the right skills at the right time. Last month’s blog discussed the importance of “emotional” onboarding. This month’s blog post goes into detail about stage four of the Cisco Fit4Talent Employee Lifecycle: Learning and Development.

It’s hard to predict the future, but one thing is for sure: technology will continue to evolve and your business will, too. The question is: will you still be able to beat your competition as the industry shifts and the rules change?

The answer may lie in your people. Are you offering them the training they need to succeed? Just as important, are you seeing a solid ROI from those offers? A recent article available to Cisco partners sheds light on these questions and more.

Read More »

Tags: Cisco, Cisco Fit4Talent, partner

This is the third blog in the Cisco Partner Talent series, helping partners attract, develop, and retain the right people with the right skills at the right time. Last month’s blog shared talent attraction tips. This month’s blog post goes into detail about stage three of the Cisco Fit4Talent Employee Lifecycle: Onboarding.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. Maybe we should get back together.

Many of us have thought something like this at some point in our lives. But you might be surprised to learn that your new employees are having these same thoughts about their previous organization—and often from day one on the job

In many cases, new employees haven’t broken their emotional ties with their previous employers, nor established new ties with you. Humetrics, a talent recruitment and retention specialist, recently conducted employee exit interviews on behalf of a client, and found that as many as 20 percent of that client’s employees would consider returning to their former employer.

The reason? They said that hadn’t yet developed an emotional attachment to their new employer. And having that emotional attachment is critical, according to Humetrics, because emotionally-connected employees are the predictor of business outcomes such as productivity, profitability, customer engagement and turnover.

How can Cisco Fit4Talent help partners?
Read More »

Tags: Cisco, Cisco Fit4Talent, fit4talent, onboarding, partner, talent

This is the second in the Cisco Partner Talent blog series helping partners attract, develop, and retain the right people with the right skills at the right time. This month’s blog post goes into detail about stage two of the Cisco Fit4Talent Employee Lifecycle: Attraction and Hiring.

An aging workforce and changes in required skillsets can lead to a staff shortage for Cisco partners. 

In fact, according to the McKinsey Global Institute’s 2012 World at Work study, developed countries will be short up to 85 million medium-skilled and highly skilled workers by 2020.

This means employing best practices for sourcing, attracting, and hiring top talent is more important than ever. And by following the Talent Attraction Lifecycle, you will exponentially increase your ability to address staffing needs in 2013 and beyond.

What is the Talent Attraction Lifecycle and how can it help you? Read More »

Tags: Cisco Fit4Talent, cisco partner talent network, employee engagement, mckinsey world at work study