Day: March 22, 2020

Q&A WITH JOSH BERSIN: THE NO. 1 PROBLEM FACING HR DEPARTMENTS TODAY — AND HOW TO FIX IT

The way many human resources departments are structured and operate needs to change, says Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP a human resources research and advisory firm. As the need for talent grows, the traditional approach to “centers of expertise” with HR generalists has to change, argues Bersin, driving more embedded talent expertise within the business. Bersin suggests that companies have to redefine talent management from “integrated” to a configurable “talent system.”

Why are companies rethinking their approaches to talent management?

We are entering a crisis in retention and engagement. Coming out of the recession skills are in short supply and organizations need to reinvigorate the value proposition and work experience for their employees.  We like to call it “building passion in the workplace” – it goes far beyond the traditional definition of engagement. 
Over the last ten years companies have been focused on “integrated talent management” – bringing the various talent teams together to implement coaching, performance management, development planning and other practices. 
Now, in 2014, we need to take the next step, and build what we call the “corporate talent system” — not software. Rather than think about how to “tweak” or “change” the performance appraisal and compensation process to improve engagement or retention, for example, we now need to shift our thinking to all elements of talent management at the same time.  The whole talent “system” works together, so you really can’t change one process without looking at all the others.
Suppose you want to improve employee engagement and performance in a given business area. First, of course, you have to look at management skills and behaviors. But beyond this, the likely solution may involve a change in performance management, an increase in diversity and inclusion, changing the work environment and work rules, modifying compensation, tweaking the employee development environment, and just about everything else. Rather than look at one talent practice as a solution to a problem, now we need to look at the “system” as a whole.
This takes a consultative approach. In 2014 we have to design HR to think about these problems in a systemic way and then take a systemic approach to solutions. Companies are not only going to need integrated software, but they’re going to need to have teams that work on problems in a consultative way.

Describe a company that solved a problem by taking a jigsaw puzzle approach to HR?

A Midwest electric utilities company is having a hard time recruiting engineers to work in its two nuclear power plants. The head of the nuclear division told HR that he wanted to raise the compensation by 35 percent to attract engineers. 
The HR leader said “not so fast” and created a small consulting team of HR experts that’s basically a SWAT team. After several months of study, the team concluded, “Yes, we’re not getting enough candidates, despite there being people in the market for these jobs. The reason we’re not getting them has nothing to do with compensation — it’s our employment brand. We have no brand value proposition, we’re unknown, and no one thinks we’re a cool company. You can raise the comp all you want, but we’re still not going to get them.” They implemented these recommendations, and sure enough, within six to nine months they developed a strong pipeline of engineers. 

How can a company begin to change its approach to HR?

We have to redesign HR to think about the entire “talent system” as a whole — and put in place senior specialists in the field who can implement and tweak these processes as needed. 
Generally there are three things in the way of this. First, many people in HR lack domain expertise. In one of our most recent surveys, nearly 45 percent of respondents ranked “reskilling HR” as a top priority. Second, HR structure is designed well for integrated consulting. Companies have spent a long time setting up HR generalists that serve the needs of line managers — these people have to become embedded specialists, connected to the center of expertise. Third, we have defined the HR roles based on service delivery, and HR people get paid based on the “customer satisfaction” of their line managers. While this is a good thing, it draws them away from becoming consultants and encourages them to spend time on administration.  We need to shift HR teams into consulting roles and need to train managers how to implement HR practices through self-service wherever possible.
2014 will be a challenging year to hire and retain people. It’s time to rethink about HR and redesign our teams to build a highly engaging workplace, drive development and performance, and attract the most highly skilled candidates.

Q&A WITH GARY WOODILL: WHY NOBODY WILL BE TALKING ABOUT MOBILE LEARNING IN 5 YEARS

There’s a lot of talk about the future of mobile learning in the workplace. But is it just that — talk? For now, the answer is mostly yes, says Gary Woodill, the CEO of i5 Research, a technology research firm, and author of Mobile Learning Edge. Here, Woodill explains why mobile learning hasn’t taken off, and why Big Data promises to fundamentally reshape employee education.

How are companies using mobile learning?

Mobile learning is at a very early stage. We’re not seeing a lot of companies using it in any systematic way. The types of companies that are most likely to jump in are sales-oriented companies where salespeople are on the road, field services where technicians go out to fix things, and transportation services — such as road, air or train services — where it’s tough to bring people together for training in one location.

Why hasn’t mobile learning taken hold in the workplace yet?

We haven’t really defined the problems that mobile learning can solve. That needs to happen. The most obvious problem mobile learning solves is performance support in the sense that you can get instant information at the moment of need using your mobile device. It’s a shift away from the standardized course-based model where people learned in a classroom and had to pass a test. 
The reason that doesn’t work anymore is because of rapid technological change. We can teach people about a new product, but six months later that product could have disappeared and a new one may have come along, and then you have to retrain again. If you’re able to do this on a continuous basis, that changes the parameter of everything.

How does mobile education change our approach to learning?

At the enterprise level, it’s becoming much more learner-driven where the person who has the mobile device starts to learn when they want to and when they need to. It’s being driven by immediate needs instead of a specific curriculum that’s coming out of the training department.
Another shift that’s important has to do with context. E-learning and classroom learning doesn’t take you into the environment you’re learning about. With mobile, you’re moving around and now you’re in a situation where you have a question, and you can immediately get an answer — and it’s relevant and motivating to do that because it’s something you have to deal with right now.  

Where is technology-based learning headed?

My own view is that mobile learning is a transitional technology. Mobile is only one of many ways that learning is changing. Learning is also becoming social, collaborative, networked, learner-driven, visual. In five years I don’t think we’re going to be talking about mobile learning. There’s a bigger change happening.
The term “ubiquitous computing” refers to the fact that computing facilities will one day be in every object you touch. We’re starting to talk about the “Internet of things,” where objects have an IP address and you can get information from them. Even though most people think mobile is the latest thing, in fact it isn’t — it’s been around since the 1980s.
The technology that’s most recent is Big Data and predictive analytics. Big Data and predictive analytics will take things like millions and millions of records and predict something or tell you a connection between two or more variables. That’s going to be used in the educational realm for what’s called “adaptive teaching,” where a teacher will get information as a student works to know what he needs to do to improve his learning. We can now monitor students individually to tell their moods and responses in order to figure out what the teacher should do next. Adaptive teaching is coming, not only to the classrooms but to enterprises as well.

Q&A WITH TIM SACKETT: IN THE FUTURE, MARKETING WILL DO THE RECRUITING

Marketers as chief company recruiters? Yes, predicts Tim Sackett, president of staffing firm HRU Technical Resources and blogger at The Tim Sackett Project. With new technologies, the way today’s job candidate looks for a potential employer is ever-changing. Same holds true for the way recruiters find appropriate talent. While networking events and personal connections still drive talent acquisition, social tools are becoming more important for recruiters in the early stages. Sackett predicts that as this trend continues, recruiters will eventually become part of a company’s marketing department — branding employment as it does its products.

What is the biggest change in the future of company hiring?

Eventually recruiting and talent acquisition will be taken out of HR departments and it’ll be put with the marketing department. Most companies have really good consumer branding, while employment branding is generally run by one person in HR who is working with the marketing department and the IT department. Instead of HR messing with the career site and job descriptions, marketing should deal with it. HR people see job descriptions as a legal thing, but marketing and sales would make the descriptions fun and attractive—like a story.

How have recruiting tools and technology changed over the past five years?

What you’ve seen is this evolution of the job board 2.0. For years Monster, CareerBuilder and Dice were the go-to for recruiting. Companies turned to a resume database site—whether it’s internal or external—plowed through the data and contacted as many people as possible. Then LinkedIn came into the picture, which started out as a cool networking tool for professionals, and then two years ago became a job board site. LinkedIn is different than Monster and CareerBuilder because it has found a way to get companies to think that it’s okay to have employees on LinkedIn. If my profile is on LinkedIn, I don’t have an HR manager coming down to my office asking if everything’s okay, whereas if my resume was on Monster or CareerBuilder, I was going to have that talk because they were afraid I was going to leave.
A number of job board companies are learning how to aggregate all of the data online. Let’s say you belong to Pinterest and Facebook, but you’re not necessarily looking for a job, you’re still leaving a social exhaust, a path of crumbs and pieces of you all over the web. These new technologies have found ways to take these crumbs and create a profile of who a person is—what they do, where they live. Recruiters might only have a Twitter account, but they can now connect with someone who they may have never found before. That’s the future of recruiting.

Because of all of this data on the Internet, do you think more recruiters are searching for people that aren’t actively looking for jobs?

There are two kinds of recruiters. The majority of people in the corporate recruiting industry follow post-and-pray—they’re the gatherers. Then you have a smaller minority that are the hunters—they go out and find people. Hiring managers want that passive candidate that’s already working and not looking for a job because they think that candidate’s better because they aren’t in the job market. It’s a warped sense of reality.

Looking down the road, how will recruiters change their strategies to seek out those passive candidates?

Recruiters need to leverage their networks—such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter—and their giant network of employees. Most talent acquisition professionals do a terrible job of leveraging their own employees. They put a poster up about employee referral and then they forget about it—and employees forget about it, too.
You can expand your network as a recruiter by making it super simple to leverage your employees’ networks. In an email to all of your employees, you can say, “We need a new accountant,” and in one button, employees can say, “Yes, I want to send this to my network,” and it goes to their LinkedIn or Twitter friends. Then their friends within one button can send it to their friends. This is how viral marketing and recruiting takes place. Those companies that figure out how to leverage networks are going to be the ones that find the better talent faster

Q&A WITH JOHN SUMSER: HOW DNA SEQUENCING, BIG DATA WILL CHANGE WHO WE HIRE — AND HOW WE THINK ABOUT HR

Technology can be overwhelming. It can also be enlightening. Take the fact that women earn less than men. That’s true, but the glass ceiling isn’t to blame, says John Sumser, editor-in-chief of HRExaminer Online Magazine and a principal of Two Color Hat, an HR advisory firm. Here, Sumser describes how technology is challenging HR to think differently about common assumptions — and how it will inevitably impact who gets hired and why.

Why do we feel so overwhelmed by technology?

Eric Schmidt [Google’s executive chairman] once said, “Every two days we create as much data as we did from the dawn of civilization to 2003.” People want to make the most of the technology, but can’t make sense of it all. For example, most people download 40 apps for their smartphones, but only use five of them. Plus most people have smartphones that are more powerful than the technology that put the man on the moon.

Technology is becoming more powerful than the human brain. What does this mean for recruiting?

HR has to be able to tell the difference between a person and a machine. If I come to work for you with my iPhone and all the latest business analysis tools, I can use that data at my fingertips. But what about the guy from Harvard with a 4.0 who doesn’t have all those tools? How can you tell in a world where the real advantage is access to information, not educational credentials, who is the more valuable hire? You can’t tell the difference between me and my phone or me and the data that my computer provides me.

What skills will HR employees need to learn to be able to adapt to the data overload?

People in HR should take four or five advanced statistics classes at MIT, which are online for free. With all of the data comes the requirement that you’re able to understand what it means from a statistical perspective. 
I’m sure you’ve heard of the idea that the amount of time people spend at the same job is declining, and we’re moving toward a freelance economy. If you don’t have a college education, statistics show that you’re going to hold your job for about 18 months. That’s 73 percent of the population. The other 25 percent, the college educated, have been staying at their jobs longer and longer for the last 25 years. That’s not a freelance economy — that’s an economy where the middle class has been gutted, where the people who don’t have the ability to process information are being penalized, and where the economy is moving from hard goods production to service production.
Here’s one that hits closer to home. The average woman’s salary is 87 cents for every dollar a man makes. What that doesn’t tell you is that the vast majority of that difference is composed of the jobs that are almost exclusively female professions like teaching and social work, where the wage is lower than the median wage for a man in all jobs that men hold. If you go into any workplace in America, there’s not a statistical difference between what men make and women make. The difference is in in the distribution of jobs that women take and men take. You can’t solve that as a workplace issue, even though it sounds like you can if you say, “Women make 87 cents on a man’s dollar.”

What’s the most radical change you think HR will experience in the near future?

DNA is going to find its way into the workplace. There’s a genetic snippet of how well you process oxygen, and if you don’t have it, it’s impossible to be a sprinter. Then there’s a gene that the military looks at to select front-line soldiers, called the warrior gene, which controls how long you stay mad about something. The army tries to get people who stay mad for about 12 hours, but if you have someone who stays mad for 12 hours running a candy store, that’s a bad decision. It’s probably against the law to make that decision right now. There’s not a talent management system that I know of that can import and understand genetic data. It’s going to be very interesting, and nothing like people think it’s going to be.

THE GOOD & BAD NEWS ABOUT WOMEN’S RISE IN THE WORKPLACE

Women who work have come a long way since the macho, cigar-puffing, strip club-filled ways of “Mad Men.” But they still have a lot farther to go.
Women are equally represented in the workforce in terms of their numbers — and, yes, are paid more than they ever have been when compared to men — but young workers still think gender inequality is a major issue in the workplace, according to a Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends survey. Seventy-five percent of Millennial women think more changes are necessary to achieve gender equality in the office, compared to 50 percent of young males.
What changes do Millennial females want to see? More career advancement and more money.

Cracking the Glass Ceiling

Females still struggle to climb the corporate ladder. Just look at Fortune 500 companies: only 4.2 percent of CEOs are female, a figure that hasn’t really changed in recent memory. The culprit, according to the study’s authors: women are still opting out of their careers in droves to raise children. According to the survey, 51 percent of women said being a working mother made it harder to advance in their careers, whereas only 16 percent of men said the same. What’s more, more fathers found that parenthood made career advancement easier (10 percent) compared to mothers (2 percent). 
As for compensation, female workers, not surprisingly, want to earn the same wage as their male peers (50 years ago women earned 57 cents for every dollar men pocketed; today it’s 77 cents). But one reason for the narrowing disparity: male wages have dropped 4 percent on average for men over the last 30 years while female wages have risen 25 percent.
Why can’t women get equal pay for equal work? Education isn’t the answer; more Millennial women are enrolled in college and graduating with Bachelor’s degrees today than men are. Other unquantifiable factors, according to the survey, include gender stereotypes, discrimination, lack of professional networks and women’s resistance to negotiate for promotions. Experts agree these factors likely account for 20 to 40 percent of the earnings gap, according to the survey. 

Perception vs. Reality

The study highlights some interesting disconnects. While many women say that men have an unfair advantage when it comes to wages and treatment at the office, only 15 percent say they have been discriminated against based on gender. Also, most men and women say the genders are paid equally for performing the same job — and only one in 10 women say they are paid less than their male peers.
What gives? Why do you think there’s such a difference between perception and reality? And what do you think needs to happen before women are truly equal — both in pay and status — in the workplace?

JASON CORSELLO: WHAT’S MISSING IN THE PILE OF HR PREDICTIONS FOR 2014

Jason Corsello, our special good buddy, credits his HR colleagues with some sound predictions for the year ahead. But what’s missing, he cautions, is some much-needed perspective.
“[M]ore often than not, the grandiose thoughts we all wrap with a pretty bow for the new year never really pan out the way we hope they will,” writes Corsello on Human Capitalist.
Here, Corsello sheds some “realistic light” on what many HR experts predict will happen in 2014:

Technology Isn’t a Job Killer

  • Prediction: Technology is rendering many HR jobs obsolete.
  • Reality: “[T]echnologies will transform HR jobs, not remove them. This isn’t to say HR folks weren’t doing their jobs before, but with the help of new technologies, the growth of skills and the depth of reach for HR professionals previously swamped with paperwork and a difficulty connecting with talent will increase.”

There’s a New Way to Narrow the ‘Skills Gap’ 

  • Prediction: The gap between what educators are delivering and what today’s modern workforce needs will close.
  • Reality: No it won’t. “Instead of hiring for experience in 2014, let’s hire for learnability,” writes Corsello. “Why not teach them rather than dismiss them as unqualified?”

Wearable Tech Is a Personal — not HR —Trend

  • Prediction: Wearable computers are coming to HR departments.
  • Reality: “As HR tech is still being adopted on more traditional devices like PCs and mobile, jumping right to wearable because people are talking about it right now is a mistake. The groundwork needs to be solid before companies invest in the extra bells and whistles.”

Face-Time with Remote Workers Still Matters

  • Prediction: New technologies will help remote workers retain a sense of culture and community.
  • Reality: “While I don’t doubt these technologies will help, I do think that HR teams will have to work much harder to maintain a sense of culture and community for remote workers…discounting in-person company interaction could be a mistake.”

SPOTLIGHT ON WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY: HOW A BADGE CAN IMPROVE EMPLOYEE COLLABORATION

In the age of mobile technology, wearable devices like Google Glass and FitBit are redefining the way people move and, ultimately, interact. While some HR experts argue that mobile technology — specifically wearable — is redefining the way employees work, others believe it’s only a transitional technology. Nevertheless, companies are investing in different types of mobile technologies to improve employee collaboration in 2014.
One wearable that is on some company’s radars comes from engineering and electronics company Hitachi. In 2007, it introduced the Business Microscope: a device that uses sensors to monitor and analyze how employees interact with one another — from how many interactions specific employees have with one another to the hand gestures they use and energy in their voices. Companies are now leveraging the technology to boost workplace productivity and reduce inter-team conflicts.
It may seem far off, but as Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte, recently wrote on Forbes, it’s not as far off as it may seem. “While products in this space have not emerged yet, we anticipate that [in 2014] we will be discussing ‘wearables’ and ‘location based devices’ as the next big trend in workplace and workforce technology. Disruptive? You bet. These applications will challenge HR in many ways (privacy for one) but also give us brand new ways to improve how we work.” 

Big Data in the Workplace

Business Microscope is just one of many examples of how companies are leveraging big data to better understand how to enable their employees to be more productive and efficient. And it seems to work…when used correctly.
According to H. James Wilson at The Wall Street Journal, one company used Business Microscope to merge two product-design groups that failed to communicate. The manager of one group was able to analyze communications and conclude that he was the problem since he didn’t interact with the groups much. As a result, the manager connected the groups and encouraged them to interact with one another and leverage the others’ expertise.

Tackling Privacy

Tracking when and how employees interact can push the limits of employee privacy if not communicated from the get-go. That’s the whole goal of the technology anyway — improved communication and collaboration. Talent management experts from Sociometric Solutions suggest three tips to be transparent about this type of technology moving forward:
  1. Tell employees what’s being tracked and analyzed
  2. Clarify that individual data isn’t seen, only aggregate data 
  3. Give them the option of participating, don’t make it mandatory 

Is Criminal Justice Studies Right For You?

The field of criminal justice can be attractive to anyone interested in how justice is dispensed in the US and around the world. Earning a degree in Criminal Justice Studies from Bryant & Stratton College is the perfect way to pursue a career in the field of criminal justice.
The right program is a mix of finding the right fit for your personality, academic habits and needs, qualified instructors, and the flexibility and structure needed for your unique situation. To help you think through some important characteristics for a degree program, we’ve identified four questions for you to answer.
What degree level is best?
There are a lot of career paths that start with earning a criminal justice studies degree. But, there are differences depending on what degree-level you choose. An associate degree in criminal justice studies will give you a broad understanding of the U.S. criminal justice system by studying its aspects including law enforcement, courts, corrections and private security. A diploma in Criminal Justice and Security Services provides the key foundation for students to pursue jobs in security while also having the opportunity to continue their education with an associate degree if they so choose.
What is your best learning environment?
Some people like to learn on their own and to set their own schedule to work around an existing job, raising a family or other responsibilities. Others like to very structured environments and sitting in a classroom with a teacher and other students. If the first scenario appeals to you then earning a criminal justice studies degree online might make sense. Online degrees offer flexibility to choose set your own schedule, as there is not set class to attend each week. To figure out whether an online classroom or a traditional environment is best for you, spend some time thinking about your life, your weekly schedule and your learning habits.
Is there balance in what skills are being taught?
A good criminal justice studies degree will offer a balance between theoretical training, practical knowledge and soft skills development. The first two types of knowledge in that list may be assumed but don’t underestimate the value of the last category. Employers across all field are increasingly looking for new hires with strong soft skills. In field related to criminal justice the ability to work with people of diverse backgrounds, curiosity, analytical skills and good problem solving are all important. Be sure to think about what kind of soft skills are being cultivated in the programs you are considering.
How much field experience do the instructors have?
There are a lot of changes taking place in the domestic justice, legal and security systems. Instructors who have spent time teaching as well as working in the field can offer unique insights the most current information and best practices in criminal justice. Seasoned professionals can also be helpful in building a job search network when you get closer to graduation.
If you’d like to learn more about earning a degree in Criminal Justice Studies at Bryant & Stratton College, call 866-948-0571 today!

LEARNING CORNER WITH JEFFREY PFEFFER: HOW TO REDESIGN JOBS TO IMPROVE EMPLOYEE HEALTH & COMPANY PERFORMANCE

Employers today face an epidemic of workplace stress and depression that takes an enormous toll on employees and company performance. In late 2019, the American Institute of Stress pulled together “42 Worrying Workplace Stress Statistics” from a variety of sources, including Gallup, Korn Ferry and the American Psychological Association. Some of the most troubling revelations:
  • 83% of U.S. workers suffer from work-related stress
  • In 2018, a third of US-based respondents visited a doctor for something stress-related
  • 16% of workers have quit their jobs due to stress
And then there’s depression: The American Psychiatric Association reported that depression “significantly impacts productivity” (along with stress, it also leads to absenteeism, presenteeism and turnover), and the World Health Organization noted that it’s one of the leading causes of disability. But that’s not all: Numerous studies show that depression has physiological repercussions and can increase the risk of heart disease, insomnia, weight gain and other unexplained aches or pains. No wonder employers are placing more focus on employees’ mental and physical health.
But to make a difference, they—and we—need to acknowledge the causes. Research has uncovered some principal sources of workplace-induced stress, anxiety and depression: job strain resulting from a combination of high job demands and low job control, long work hours, economic insecurity due to job loss and scheduling uncertainty, low wages that produce economic insecurity, work-family conflict, workplace bullying and harassment, perceived unfairness or a sense of injustice and a lack of social support. So how do we go about fixing these issues?

Redesigning Jobs and Work Environments to Fix the Problem

Many of the factors causing stress and burnout can be at least partly remedied if companies stop taking existing jobs and organizational arrangements as sacrosanct and engage in serious redesign initiatives. Below are two examples of businesses doing just that:
Removing Unnecessary Distractions
When I wrote a case on SAS, the largest privately owned software company in the world, I interviewed co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight about the company’s 35-hour workweek and what made it possible. Goodnight, his VP of HR and many other SAS employees all had the same response: Few people work 35 productive hours in a week. 
SAS successfully reduced distractions that wasted time by providing employees with high-quality help for their life issues. This included on-site childcare, assistance with elder care, a chief medical officer to help choose the best health providers and select health plans that didn’t bog people down with paperwork and adoption assistance.
An emphasis on employee trust and the decentralization of decision-making also eliminated endless “check-in meetings” and the need to get approval from layers of management—processes that unnecessarily consume much of people’s time. 
Using Automation to Relieve Burdens
Recently, I met with the CEO of a company that is redesigning the primary care experience for both patients and providers. To be successful, he needs to reduce physician turnover and burnout (a massive problem within the industry) and to provide an outstanding patient experience by increasing doctors’ level of engagement. Doing so requires addressing a dramatic rise in bureaucratic tasks, too many hours spent at work, and the increasing computerization of practice—what some people call desktop medicine. 
The company is doing something that any organization can do to reduce the wasted effort that makes long hours necessary and work stressful. I describe it as “user-centered work design.” User-centered product design, which was more or less pioneered by IDEO, has become de rigueur and typically includes an almost anthropological observation of people’s product experiences.
User-centered work design takes the same form. The company has hired more than 100 software engineers—and does not use off-the-shelf software. Instead, the engineers engage with physicians to figure out what tasks can be automated to reduce doctors’ workloads and to provide doctors with software designed to be easy to use and helpful. Groups of people from all jobs and levels at the company now meet regularly to determine how to allocate work in ways that reduce stress. This helps the employees figure out what practices, tasks and operations can be eliminated without any adverse consequences. 

Making a Real Commitment to Change

The number of unnecessary work tasks performed in a given day is pretty astounding. Many activities are simply leftovers from long-established policies that no longer serve a purpose. Certain processes, including some owned by human resources—think job requisitions and the now-disappearing annual performance review—do not add significant economic value. And many companies take current job designs and work arrangements for granted, thereby foregoing opportunities to seriously reduce workplace stress.
Some of my colleagues from Stanford’s School of Medicine and I conducted more than 20 interviews with supposedly leading-edge companies that have embraced a holistic definition of health and well-being and claim to understand the connections between health and economic performance. We found that most organizations consider their work environments and habits necessary and never question what they are doing or how they are doing it. For instance, one financial services firm never even considered the idea that its 100 hour work-weeks were neither mandated by law nor useful in attracting or retaining talent. No wonder workplace stress is not only high, it’s on the rise.
Job redesign to reduce stress—and thereby increase health and productivity—is not a formulaic activity. Just like product design, it requires observation, employee interactions to ascertain how to remove unnecessary tasks and consultation with the people who do the work every day. 
Mostly, it requires people who refuse to accept workplace stress and depression as unchangeable and who don’t apply Band-Aids like yoga classes and stress-reduction workshops to the problem. Any organization can accomplish this if, and maybe only if, it’s willing to place employees at the center of the job redesign process. 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzOJDJZHoBttdHAjJsnN9w?sub_confirmation=1

THE BIG FIVE STEPS FOR MID-SIZED ORGANIZATIONS TO ADVANCE THEIR TALENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

Over the last 2-3 years, we’ve witnessed a real trend toward and acceptance of integrated talent management systems among most enterprise and many midsize organizations. However, over 25 percent of all organizations still have talent processes that are developed and managed individually, with practices and systems that are “siloed” and have little or no coordination across processes.
True talent management integration doesn’t happen all at once for a lot of companies. Instead, many organizations take a “layering it on” approach, selecting systems that support the evolution of their processes over time.

Challenges for Mid-Sized Organizations

Savvy leaders realize the importance of developing their internal bench strength today to competitively address the organizational demands of tomorrow.  But where do midsize companies start as they develop a talent management strategy to support growth and bench strength plans?
Identifying and adopting the ideal components needed to support an integrated performance and learning management process is complex and time-consuming. For midsize organizations with limited resources, it’s especially challenging.
Most HR practitioners get started by developing a performance management process based on so-called “proven best practices”, and then continue to layer on additional core performance and learning management processes one step at a time.
Of course, the very concept of a best practice is subjective and carries many meanings depending on an organization’s culture. What might be a best practice for one organization or industry may not be successful or acceptable in another

Cut Through the Haze with Five Core Components

In our recent whitepaper, we put forth the proposition that you should begin by focusing on the five core internal performance management components necessary to support key business priorities specifically for mid-sized organizations. These are:

1. Strategic Onboarding

The four building blocks of proactive and effective onboarding — compliance, clarification, culture and connection — should be thoughtfully organized and carefully implemented for a successful onboarding practice.

2. SMART Goals

Once the CEO and executive team have set the organization’s vision and the main financial, customer and organization-wide goals, each sub-unit creates associated team goals, which, in turn, contribute to the organization’s goals. This process “cascades” down the organization until it reaches front-line managers and their employees.  Aligning goals throughout the organization requires clarity and specificity as goals are cascaded organization-wide.

3. Employee Development

Performance assessment in isolation is not enough and it alone does not guarantee performance improvement. Having a performance management process without a learning and development component is like giving a student the motivation to study harder for a test but not giving them any study techniques or resources to help them succeed. Don’t leave training out of your talent management strategy.

4. Succession Planning

Planning the future for specific roles, specific people, or even general sets of critical skills is not for huge enterprise organizations only anymore. Without succession planning, organizations typically respond reactively to changes in leadership and are left to rely on external talent to fill critical internal roles. Worse yet, existing employees may be promoted to roles that are ill-fitted to their current skills or competencies.

5. Employee Engagement

With double-digit unemployment being the norm recently, employees are searching for ways to get ahead without getting out. Building internal résumés, openly expressing career preferences and being allowed to explore potential internal career paths are valuable strategies for employees who are itching to take active interest in managing their own mobility and development. Employees want to be engaged in their work for you – are you going to let them do so?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzOJDJZHoBttdHAjJsnN9w?sub_confirmation=1

FIVE CONSIDERATIONS FOR TM BUYERS IN THE WAKE OF SAP/SFSF

Last week SAP announced its intent to acquire SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion – which just so happens to be the predicted size of the entire talent management market for 2011 (according to Gartner and Bersin & Associates). This news is important for almost as many reasons as there have been opinions published over Twitter and in blogs in the aftermath.
Technology vendors in the talent management space have witnessed a lot of consolidation lately. For starters, just about every top-tier Learning Management System (LMS) – other than Cornerstone – was acquired in the last two years, reflecting the realization by performance management vendors that training and development must be a part of the broader talent management spectrum.
But the SAP/SuccessFactors deal represents a different kind of market shift – less about basic consolidation and the fleshing out of vendor portfolios and more about market validation and an expansion of the conversation outside our immediate neighborhood.
So what’s Cornerstone’s take (another voice in the bedlam)? We think the merger of SAP and SuccessFactors is a significant moment with at least five key possible outcomes to consider if you are a potential buyer (or just an interested observer):

1. This is the beginning of talent management, not the end.

The acquisition of SuccessFactors is a serious validation of human capital management in general. Jason Averbook puts it more passionately: “SAP has just broadcast to the world the single-most persuasive validation of Human Capital Management technology to date. It is a declaration we can all, as vendors and practitioners, lean on as we create workforce technology strategies and HCM business cases for years to come.”
Beyond business processes, SAP’s self-declared push into the “Cloud” market is a major validation of Software-as-a-Service as a delivery model.
So the talent management market is alive and well. If anything, SAP’s acquisition feels a little bit like the old “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” from the perspective of the ERP players. And hopefully that realization ends up benefitting organizations by raising the profile of talent management process and technology.

2. Confusion and distraction will certainly be among the immediate consequences.

After a major industry event like this one, everyone immediately has one big question: how long will it take for the acquirer to integrate the acquired company? Integrating product sets and corporate cultures is never easy work, especially so in the case of a traditional software giant absorbing a fast-moving, cloud-based vendor.
One of the biggest challenges is likely to be the rationalization of the companies’ offerings. How do you make the merging products (and related services) work together? Which older, outdated products must be eliminated?  How do you make the user experience work between disparate products? How about data models and customer support programs and….on and on.
Naomi Bloom catalogs the product rationalization challenge in her recent blog post “SAP/SuccessFactors — Help Me Count the HRM Codebases”.
This is an ambitious assimilation of technologies and strategic approaches. Results may come, but there will certainly be a lot of growing pains along the way. And while SAP and SuccessFactors wrestle the eight-headed snake, other vendors will continue to innovate and serve their clients.

3. Innovation will continue to come from the best-of-breed talent management vendors.

While big ERP vendors like SAP certainly bring new attention to the talent management technology world, if history is any indicator, product innovation is not likely to be spurred by these combined companies in the foreseeable future.
Josh Bersin argues that this is precisely why the best-of-breed talent management vendors will continue to exist (and thrive) – “primarily because of the tremendous levels of innovation still yet to be achieved in talent management. New areas, like social recruiting, social performance management, social rewards, social learning, mobile talent management, talent analytics, talent risk management, employee engagement management, contingent workforce management and many others, continue to become more important to customers every day.”
Bersin goes further to note the worrying “upgrade interlock” problem that faces ERP/talent management customers. This means that, typically, every new release of an ERP vendor’s talent management offering is dependent on a new release of the HRMS.
On the other hand, organic talent management SaaS/cloud vendors are releasing new and improved functionality on a quarterly basis, in some cases. It comes down to a matter of being fast and nimble, accusations rarely leveled at lumbering ERPs.

4. HR technology should be owned by HR and not IT.

One of the other possible implications of an ERP vendor acquiring a talent management company is that it means that IT assumes control of HR technology. And we all know how well that works today.
For HR technology to realize its potential business benefits, it must be governed by HR itself. Relying on IT to source, implement and administer talent management software sounds like a recipe for limited business impact.

5. Organically developed talent management has never been more meaningful.

It won’t shock the reader to hear that Cornerstone OnDemand sees the SAP/SuccessFactors merger in the most positive of light. The merger validates the work of all the best-of-breed talent management SaaS/cloud vendors in the space for the past 10-15 years.
However, the considerable questions raised around integration and the role of the ERP as provider of talent management software leave a significant opportunity for the nimble, innovative, best-of-breed providers that remain in the market (and there aren’t many of us left).
With so much transformative possibility in the industry today – around social tools, mobile access, talent mobility, employee engagement, workforce planning, analytics, etc. – it seems like what we all need to focus on most is rapidly developing innovative products to match the ambitions of forward-thinking HR practitioners and good talent management processes.
Disruption often (always?) leads to opportunity. Tien Tzuo, founder and CEO of Zuora, reacted to the SAP/SuccessFactors news this way: “I’ve seen this movie before. When Siebel bought Upshot CRM in 2003, it instantly signaled to the world that SaaS CRM was the future, and catapulted Salesforce.com from ankle biter to the de facto industry leader.”
Tzou’s analogy has remarkable parallels today.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzOJDJZHoBttdHAjJsnN9w?sub_confirmation=1

TALENT MANAGEMENT AND SUCCESSION PLANNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

America’s higher learning institutions educate and develop society’s future thinkers and leaders. It’s ironic, then, that it seems many don’t develop their own administrative staff or leadership talent.

Administrator Talent Crisis

Research shows talent and succession planning is lacking at America’s colleges and universities. The American Council on Education (ACE), for example, reports in a survey that the talent pipeline of potential administrative leaders in academia is getting short shrift, as ACE reports that less than a third of all sitting chief academic officers are aspiring to presidencies or chancellorships.
That’s not good, but it gets worse. Research also shows that many tenure-track faculty members also are deciding to stay in the classroom, reluctant to pursue new challenges as administrators.
Here are some startling statistics that fortify the notion that academia’s talent pipeline needs serious tending. For example:
  • Nationally, more than 40 percent of the top investment executives within universities and endowments left in 2005 and 2006, according to a 2007 compensation survey by Mercer
  • A national study of 323 chief academic officers, conducted by Eduventures Academic Leadership Learning Collaborative, found that 43 percent of provosts surveyed are holding their positions for shorter periods of time.
  • A 2009 study of chief academic officers by the ACE found that the average tenure was 4.7 years on the job — less than half that of presidents

Where to Go From Here

It’s a dicey situation, but not an impossible one to overcome. For starters, effective succession planning starts with performance management supported by learning and development programs. Follow that “curriculum” and universities soon will discover potential leaders from within the ranks. Of course, one thing you don’t want when filling critical administrative posts is guesswork.
For many universities, performance management is merely an annual HR process to appraise performance, as opposed to an effort to improve performance or identify future leaders. Saddled with homegrown, paper-based processes, institutions often use performance management tools and approaches that fail to take advantage of the automation, integration and depth of technology available today. Or institutions may have processes that don’t enable managers to have meaningful, actionable discussions with their direct reports.
The solution is more strategic talent and peformanance management processes, supported by the right technology that can better lead, manage, develop, reward and assess employees in a concise, standardized way.
To make succession planning a reality, university leaders need a performance management system that:
  • Provides cascading goals that align the objectives of the institution with the professional goals and needs of the employee. Managing and measuring the employee performance of each of these goals is critical to performance management, but without automation and integration, it becomes a time-consuming, daunting task.
  • Assesses critical competencies and skills based on pre-defined criteria for staff success. Institutional leaders need an easy-to-use system that helps them predict and address potential competency gaps, performance strengths and opportunities.
  • Reviews and measures performance on a ongoing and interim basis. The cascading goals an employee will be assessed by might not reflect the institution’s current goals and objectives. Automated and integrated systems make managing and assessing performance an ongoing process — always keeping the employee and the institution aligned.
  • Identifies and tracks high-performing individuals. Performance management enables institution leaders to know who is a high-potential employee with the skills and motivation to transition into a leadership or administrative staff position.
  • Enables the creation of development plans that engage employee career development. Identifying high-performing, high-potential employees is great, but even more important is creating career development plans for those employees.
Ultimately, institutional leaders have an opportunity to better gather insight into the skills, knowledge and competencies that succession-ready employees have at hand – and, further, to turn this insight into action and talent they should develop for the future. 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzOJDJZHoBttdHAjJsnN9w?sub_confirmation=1

TALENT MANAGEMENT FOR HEALTHCARE

In the last few years, our old pals at Bersin & Associates argued that healthcare has lagged behind other industries in adoption and implementation of talent management automation and processes and that many healthcare organizations are working to make up for lost time. (Bersin & Associates 2009 Talent Management Factbook)
Any healthcare organization looking to jump-start a talent initiative should keep a few things front of mind:
  • Build with an eye toward integration – E-learning may be a natural starting point for healthcare organizations implementing new talent initiatives, but onboarding, performance management and succession initiatives all benefit from strong tie-ins to a learning management system (LMS). For example, performance assessments can automatically generate development plans for any area where deficiencies are identified. Don’t overlook targeted, formal development programs for employee supervisors. Extra training will prepare them to mentor and coach employees and maximize the value of your investment.
  • Automate job descriptions with a foundation of competencies – Establishing the competencies – the knowledge, skills and behaviors that are used to develop people in your healthcare organization – is a critical step for success of any talent management initiative. In the healthcare setting, it’s a requirement because compliance demands it. Maintaining one set of job descriptions and competencies is one way to integrate multiple locations common in large healthcare systems into a single culture and to build job profiles that will guide career development, training and performance improvement across your organization. You will also find it easier to deliver the ROI because the business impact of career planning is 45 percent higher for organizations with good or excellent leadership competencies. (Bersin & Associates,  Competency Management 2008)
  • Build internal talent pools – Every healthcare organization needs to fill positions in critical roles such as nursing, IT and senior management. Yet, suitable candidates are hard to find. Most healthcare employers understand that the only solution is to “grow their own” talent. Implementing appropriate talent management and learning tools and processes makes identification of high-potential employees and development of critical skills far easier to accomplish.
  • Collaborate to build a comprehensive succession strategy – Most healthcare organizations have a critical need to develop their next generation of leadership. The current senior leaders must understand the critical need to address this gap. HR can – and must – play a crucial role in facilitating this conversation, and technology can provide a key assist to identify the gaps and assign development plans for designated successors.
  • Leverage the power of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – SaaS technology allows healthcare employers to rapidly implement talent solutions at a far lower cost and with greater operational efficiency than traditional legacy on-premises ERP implementations of the past. The advantages include rapid deployment and easy scalability, and a lower cost with higher satisfaction, as well as less time to ROI.
In the end, empowering your people is the essential first step toward addressing talent challenges and delivering safer, higher-quality patient care and satisfaction. Using talent management technology, employers can manage their staffing, training and performance operations with healthcare-specific functionality, including competency-based job descriptions, pre-integrated training and continuing-education content – all in a single, secure location.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzOJDJZHoBttdHAjJsnN9w?sub_confirmation=1

THE CHOICE IS YOURS: ORACLE-TALEO ACQUISITION HIGHLIGHTS STARK CHOICES FACING HR BUYER

Few people who follow the HR software industry were surprised by last week’s announcement by Oracle that they intend to acquire recruiting and talent management vendor Taleo.  In the wake of December’s acquisition of SuccessFactors by SAP and the preceding two years of increasingly frantic market consolidation, the news was greeted with little surprise.
There’s not much point in rehashing the analysis of some very smart HR practitioners and industry analysts here. The discussion taking place on Bill Kutik’s HR Tech Conference LinkedIn group is clearly a fine place to review the reaction.
From Cornerstone’s perspective, naturally, we have clear ideas about what the Taleo and SuccessFactors acquisitions mean for buyers of talent management software and services.
First, we believe that these shifts signal the beginning of talent management – not the end. Talent management is now more important than ever after $5.5 billion has been spent on acquisitions of TM applications in last 3 months.
Further, and more critically, we would suggest that buyers are at a serious crossroads today, facing very significant choices around where talent management software is going in the coming years, who will control it and what it will look like.

At the Crossroads

With Taleo and SuccessFactors giving up on providing independent talent management technologies, Cornerstone is really the only choice left if you favor an independent, best-of-breed solution. Why does this matter?
Choice – ERP or Best-of-Breed:  Buyers looking for compelling answers to their vexing talent management problems have to choose between, on the one hand, an ERP vendor, offering a mixed bag of products (acquired, homegrown, SaaS, on-premise) with long innovation and upgrade cycles and, on the other hand, a best-of-breed provider focused completely on talent management, client success, business impact, and pure Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery. The choice is yours.
Choice : – Integration vs. Innovation: Do you want your partner continuously improving your solution to provide state-of-the-art talent management or do you prefer to have your vendor tied up in a quagmire of product integrations?
The talent management product integration and rationalization challenges now facing Oracle and SAP are daunting. “Sorting out the myriad HCM-related code bases at both SAP/SFSF and Oracle/PSFT/Fusion/EBS/Taleo/Etc. is not for the feint of heart,” opines Naomi Bloom in the HR Tech Conference LinkedIn discussion group. It’s not just an overwhelming task to sort out these talent management products and codebases, but it’s also going to take a long time.
Further, if you are interested in learning and development (and you should be, just ask Josh Bersin – see his blog on the subject), consider that Learn.com (previously acquired by Taleo) and Plateau (previously acquired by SuccessFactors) clients have both been acquired twice in less than a year and are now buried under two layers of bureaucracy.
The choice is yours.
Choice – System of Record or System of Engagement:  Talent management should be about employee engagement and empowerment. ERP systems are about managing records and data. An independent, best-of-breed provider has the luxury of focusing innovation and the product roadmap on user centricity and helping clients to build an empowered workforce.  With all trends pointing to the need to engage a demographically shifting workforce, we believe buyers will prefer to side with a state-of-the-art, organically developed talent management solution rather than a bolted-on extension of a system of record. The choice is yours.
Choice – Who Owns This Thing? IT or HR?  In large enterprises, ERP systems are almost always controlled by the IT department. Often, the HR department and line of business owners struggle to get attention for their specific needs. Cloud-based technologies have enabled HR to control their destiny and closely align people, process and technology with business priorities. With formerly independent talent management software now becoming system-of-record dependent, customers will likely be locked into a single ERP stack where IT will regain sole control over technology decisions.  This might be an acceptable paradigm for some HR organizations, but it seems less likely to lead to successful talent management outcomes.  The choice is yours.
Back in December, we posted some thoughts about what the SAP-Success Factors merger meant for clients and potential buyers of talent management software. The issues at hand today are much the same and focus on the ability of the independent, best-of-breed vendor to deliver things like a better product, better client experience, more innovation, and faster response to client feedback. Compared to the challenges and confusion facing the ERP vendors and their recent absorption of talent management companies, the choices seem quite stark.
If you want to read more, we found these resources to be noteworthy:
♦ With Oracle’s $1.9 Billion Deal to Buy Taleo, Is Cornerstone Next?   (Bloomberg / Peter Burrows)
Walravens thinks Cornerstone will perform well as an independent company, and that its growth rates are “tremendous.”… Being the last independent talent management provider could goose Cornerstone’s sales. While loyal SAP shops will gladly use SuccessFactors and Oracle shops will gravitate to Taleo, Cornerstone is positioned to grab those that don’t want to buy into these giants’ soup-to-nuts offerings.
♦ Cornerstone Gears Up for Bigger Foes in Talent Management   (Wall Street Journal / Steven D. Jones)
Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund said he liked the \”elegance of the product architecture\” from Cornerstone and its ease of use. In addition, he said, Cornerstone may benefit from merger confusion at both SuccessFactors and Taleo and difficulty integrating those products into the inventory of products at SAP and Oracle.
♦ Cloud Software Consolidation – Is it all good?   (ZDNet / Brian Sommer)
I also get concerned when a progressive, modern vendor is snapped up by slow moving behemoths that excel in running end-of-life product lines…Vendors will create incredible works of fiction to explain how they will rationalize these products into their product lines. Let’s face it, if the software solution your organization is using is acquired by a firm that already has three, four or five different acquired product lines of similar functionality, don’t you think it’s going to take either the suspension of disbelief or an amazing technical writer to create a story that shows how all of these diverse products from very different creators, across different time lines and technical platforms will somehow come together in some single rational scheme?
♦ News Analysis: The Implications of Oracle\’s Acquisition of Taleo   (Forbes / Ray Wang)
These defensive plays indicate a realization that Cloud delivery emerges as the predominant option for applications.
♦ Roll up, roll up! Oracle digests Taleo (ZDNet / Oliver Marks)
Cornerstone are true multi tenant in their architecture, and some of their appeal to customers and prospects is sure to be the SaaS advantages of pushing out updates painlessly, as opposed to endless patch Tuesdays and upgrades many in the marketplace have past war wounds from. 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzOJDJZHoBttdHAjJsnN9w?sub_confirmation=1

EMPLOYERS NEED TO STEP UP TO CLOSE THE “SKILLS GAP”

Findings from a new Cornerstone OnDemand survey show that employers too often drop the ball when it comes to recognizing real source of perceived skills shortages.
Many of us have recently endured a bruising U.S. presidential electoral cycle centered squarely on economic and labor market issues and chock full of speechmaking focused on the need to create new jobs at any cost. We also hear a message of doom and gloom from loads of CEOs who echo a lingering message that they simply can\’t find enough skilled workers.
We do need jobs, of course – too many people are struggling with unemployment. And we need skilled people at every strata of the labor market. But a recent Cornerstone OnDemand survey shows that a single-minded focus on new job creation deflects attention from another critical area for improvement – focusing on the skills and engagement of existing internal employees. Further, the survey highlights that employers can no longer deny that they are partially to blame for the skills shortage.

A Skills Shortage?

The idea that there is a so-called “skills gap” is a contested one. CEOs often use it to explain the challenges they face in meeting their objectives and growing their businesses. It’s a pervasive belief one that seems to be growing – only 42% of employers believe new graduates in the workforce are adequately prepared by their colleges or other pre-employment training programs, according to a recent McKinsey study.
However, data from the recent Cornerstone survey, along with the loud voices of people like Peter Cappelli and Paul Krugman, bring the idea of a skills shortage into question. Cappelli argues that the perception of a shortage of skilled workers in the U.S. is mere illusion. It’s not the fault of the national education system, but instead of employers and their hiring practices and failure to invest properly in employee skills and alignment.

With Bosses Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

The bottom line is that employers are not making the right investments in building skills and nurturing employee performance.
Modern business seems to rely on a “plug-and-play” type of labor market, dependent on the immediate availability of deep pools of skilled labor. This stands in stark contrast to how employment functioned a few decades ago, where fresh faces could join a new company and feel content in the knowledge that they would be trained to be successful in their new jobs.
Cappelli has documented a decline in employer commitment to training, workforce development and apprenticeship programs over the past two decades, a finding that is reflected strongly in the most recent Cornerstone survey:
  • Only 32% of respondents have received training and development to better perform their job in the past six months;
  • Only 25% have established career goals with their manager/employer;
  • A full 66% said they haven’t received useful feedback from their manager/employer; and
  • Only 19% said their employer’s performance review process helps them increase their potential through education and training.

Narrow the Gap at Home

External job creation is undoubtedly critical for the healthy function of the economy as a whole. In the meantime, employers should beware of blaming performance shortcomings on a perceived (and often wage-based) skills shortage, when, in fact, they are doing precious little to develop and engage their current internal employees.
The goal should be to invest in narrowing the skills gap at home – to meet looming business challenges by better mobilizing the existing talent base. Not every one of our challenges will be met through net new hiring.
For more insight and detailed findings from the latest Cornerstone OnDemand survey, go to http://www.cornerstoneondemand.com/resources/research/survey-2013.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCzOJDJZHoBttdHAjJsnN9w?sub_confirmation=1