Sierra Southwest Powers Up Future Managers

Sierra Southwest Cooperative Services Inc. in Benson, Ariz., faces a problem common to the energy industry: Finding the right people to lead the nonprofit cooperative into the next generation of providing electrical power and other specialized services to its members/owners.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association in Arlington, Va., reports that in less than a decade the co-op industry will lose more than half of its top leadership to retirement. More than a third of its rank-and-file will be eligible to retire by then, as well.

At Sierra Southwest, human resource experts anticipate the loss of 45 employees, nearly a quarter of its work force; many of them longtime employees who, over the years, gained their knowledge and skills through on-the-job experience. Emery Silvester, director of human resources at Sierra Southwest, said the organization needed to do more than recruit the right number of replacements; it needed to find candidates who had the skill sets necessary to carry on the Cooperative’s business with no interruption.

Another required element usually not found in for-profit environs is employees’ altruistic sense that their contribution makes a priceless difference to the community. Their employer is not in it for the money, and, likewise, Cooperative employees “believe in what they do and receive the satisfaction of knowing that their work directly improves people's lives,” says Russell Turner, senior human resources community representative for NRECA.

A unique problem calls for a unique solution.

The cooperative looked 1,500 miles northeast and enlisted the help of Success Performance Solutions, Lancaster, Pa., a consulting firm, and valued-added partner on ccoperative.com, with a mission to “help employers take the hassle and guesswork out of hiring and managing employees.” SPS was founded by Dr. Ira S. Wolfe, president.

Wolfe used his trademarked Criteria One, a whole-person approach to finding and hiring the right people for the job. The method looks at the knowledge and skill sets that links people performance to organizational goals.

“Co-ops need to be efficient in many areas,” said Wolfe. A co-op cannot afford a culture clash neither in its leadership nor among its line workers. A co-op has a social directive to its mission. Sierra Southwest wanted a hiring and assessment method that it could share with its members. For a solution, Success Performance Solutions recommended assessing four core areas of personality: behavior, values traits, and cognitive abilities. These are the traits and characteristics that most impact performance in the Cooperative culture, especially hiring workers who share similar or compatible values and are motivated by the culture.

Said Silvester: “We had to look at hiring in-house versus going outside. Our employees tend to stay here; this is not a metro area.” Sierra Southwest wanted to identify two groups: people interested in entering management and current managers eager to move ahead. Rather than merely eliminate unqualified candidates, SPS’s assessment tool invited employees to participate in the solution. “The testing identified people’s strengths and weaknesses,” Silverster said. SPS put together a development plan that worked on each participant’s three top developmental needs. Everyone who participated in the process learned where he/she excelled in job performance and where improvement was needed to fulfill the desire of personal and professional growth.  “Each layer of management has more complexity,” Wolfe said.

SPS and Sierra Southwest gave new meaning to the word cooperative when it joined with local community colleges and universities to create a management-development program for its employees.

Wolfe said it goes with the Cooperative’s new goal of building career paths for its employees. Sierra Southwest has seen 33 employees complete the program, and nine of those are current managers. “I’ve been in human resources for 25 years,” Silvester said, “and I’ve been doing testing for years.

“SPS tools are a definite advantage to the cooperative culture,” he said. “It’s a more beneficial process as it makes it easier to hire in-house.”

The message transmitted to employees is that growth and improvement is an ongoing process, Wolfe said.

Today, he said, “Sierra Southwest understands its talent; it knows whom it can call on in the future.”