Other ideas — like consistent, meaningful employee performance reviews or stay interviews with new hires — are worth the effort and cost.
“You have to take care of your people, whether it’s a staff of my size, bigger or smaller,” he says. “It’s a people business.”
GAI is implementing a professional rotation program, so new employees can try different segments of the company to see how other sectors work and where they fit.
“It’s something to make them more feel more comfortable, that they have a vision of where they want to go,” DeJidas says. “Too many times people come in and they get pigeonholed doing something and they get bored.”
DeJidas also finds feedback to be a critical element in getting people in the right positions.
“Too many times, those people who are more technically oriented, we advance them into supervisory roles when they really don’t have the people skills to go along with that,” he says. “It’s a problem. We try to deal with it all the time and get people in the right slots.
“Part of career path planning is to try to understand your personality, what your goals are and how do we fit the type of person you are with where you ultimately want to go, or where you’re needed the most.”
Takeaways:
- Leaders are not created in a day. Stay persistent.
- Make it hard for employees to walk away but accept that they still might.
- Feedback and communication help put people in the right slots.
The file:
Name: Gary DeJidas
Title: Chairman and CEO
Company: GAI Consultants Inc.
Born: Pittsburgh
Education: Bachelor’s degree in engineering and an MBA from Point Park University
What did you want to be when you grew up? My dad was a welder at J&L Steel, so we had a pretty humble life. Being an airline pilot always seemed like a great thing to do. Unfortunately, I punctured an eardrum when I was young, so that dream went away quickly.
What was the hardest management skill for you to learn and why? Telling people that we’re going to let them go for whatever reason, a lack of work or disciplinary action. You start thinking about how you’re going to affect somebody’s life and their family. It’s a hard thing to overcome. It makes you feel bad, like you’ve let them down. But it’s your job and just one of those things you have to learn along the way. You’re not doing it to be mean. It comes with the territory.
Where might someone find you on the weekend? I travel a lot, so I hope they find me at home, sleeping in my own bed. When you’ve been traveling as long as I have and you fly 100,000 or 120,000 miles a year, you like being home.
I like to golf, but the true answer is doing things around the house, relaxing and being in one place for a change.
What are you currently reading? There’s a book I want to read. I haven’t had time to pick it up yet — “The Proximity Principle,” by Ken Coleman. I like reading business books, and Ken is one of these futurist guys that tries to clue you in on what he sees coming down the road.
Is there anything about you people might find surprising? I’m your typical engineer — a little bit introverted, although I’ve outgrown that. I was never looking to be the No. 1 guy, but I enjoy what I do, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing our successes. I’m not one of these flamboyant CEOs. I’m a quiet guy, and I have a great personal life. We have three grandchildren, and my son and my daughter live close to us.
