But, what about when you need helpful measurements?  It is interesting to me where measurements and metrics can go so wrong.  So, I am going to try and be helpful, as you face the umpteenth report for counts of this and lists of that being demanded from your organization.  Beware and be prepared!

Why First…Then What

It is first important to look at why we need to know information about the workforce before we race off to create reports.  Let’s face it, most data pulls are not that informative or that interesting.  However, if we understand the goals for the organizations and the struggles the leaders are noodling, then we can start assessing what information would be helpful towards solving those problems. These conversations require a real dialog to get the best results.

Can you remember when you were a kid and were told to clean your room and you asked Why?  The result and motivation was very different if you got the annoyed parent “Because!!!”, then if it was explained that Grandma was coming and she was staying in your room over night.  The latter answer received much more care to the details.  The same is true when needing to understand why the organization or individual is seeking information.

The Right What

After understanding the needs of your internal customer you can design the proper information content and put it into context.  Take this real example of a lack of information making the problem worse.

A finance director is concerned about productivity and asks HR for the number of employees in each deparment.  He runs his numbers and produces a cost and profit per employee and compares it to industry standards and his predecessor’s numbers. He thinks he has the right picture of productivity, but there were several problems in this scenario.  He asked for the number of employees and that is what he received.  However, the data didn’t include the differentiation between full-time and part-time employees, so his number was skewed.  He didn’t include the number of contract workers being used in each department, thus he missed 8% of his workforce in the packing and office administration areas of the companies.  He also didn’t get a picture of the trends over time on this number, he just received a single data point.  This is a problem because the snapshot in time was right after the busiest part of the season was over, and the student workers were no longer on the payroll, so his numbers couldn’t measure the busy season’s productivity.

How successful do you think his recommendations are going to be based on these numbers?  Without context of the information and proper comparisons to the historical data, his analysis is going to be significantly flawed.  He was focused on his numbers and didn’t focus on the dynamics of the organization’s workforce.  It is critical that HR participate in the analysis of any details involving the workforce.  Bring your talent, knowledge and data to the discussion.

Cheers,
Lois

CIO magazine ran a recent article citing the pain being felt in IT departments because their employees generally have narrow technical skill sets, but lack the broader business skills needed today. It’s a great read. And timely. I gave a presentation devoted to internal talent movement at the IHR Contract Workforce & Talent Exchange conference this week in San Francisco.

Here’s the gist of my presentation:
It’s critical to think bigger than the task. When a company ignores talent mobility, they can’t promote their own people to the next level. They’ve neglected to cultivate their talent in the broader business skills of understanding business initiatives and handling financial responsibilities for projects.

Organizations need leaders with a big picture understanding. They need IT people who also understand the business line they are supporting. They need financial people who comprehend the products the company is selling. Working at one task and doing it very well doesn’t give you the experience you need to lead a department. Guess what? This forces you to hire leaders from the outside, and then you have to train those people on your business lines and products anyway.

So if you haven’t done it lately, measure the who and where of talent mobility in your organization. Find out where you are developing people, and where the pipeline of talent is stagnant. Successful and best practice businesses know this and act on it regularly. Just look at the study shown in Good to Great by Jim Collins – less than 5% of CEOs at “great” companies came from outside, while nearly 30% of CEOs at comparable companies were outsiders. Where do you get your leaders from?

Cheers,

Lois

P.S. Stay tuned the presentation will be posted soon!

Daniel Debow wrote such a great blog, “An Open Letter to Gen Xers and Baby Boomers” that I want you to read.

I will add to his comments some of my personal experiences.  I hire interns, a lot of them.  Not only the “stuff the envelope” type interns, but real jobs to help college students  find reality in the workforce.  At the moment I have an amazing student employee who is coordinating the office move of Aquire at the end of the year.  Clare (@CChadwi) is phenomenal.  It is turning into one of the best non-product projects I have been a part of in years!

Mike Miranda (@GenY_Mike) works for us too.  He constantly impresses me.  He started a business club at University Dallas (@UD_MARKETshare),  which has lasted beyond his graduation.  Through that group, I met Amanda Machado (@amandamachado), Matt, Nicholas, Logan and Jennifer, who were also all volunteering at the Social Media For CEOs (#SM4CEO) book signing last night, so that they could get more exposure to the business community.

I did these same types of things as a college student.  That may be why I relate so well to their ambition.  At 18 years old I was the office manager for a $3 million ad agency. Because I networked with the owner, he knew I could pull it off.  It was wonderful experience and I know I added value.

Anyone who complains or disparages a generation is often fearful of being shown up by the strengths of the people and their own weaknesses.  Daniel really has some powerful stuff to share about it.  I hope you read his post.

Cheers,

Lois

Halloween is not far away and the horror stories are mounting.  Oh, bad data will really mess you up!  Here are bad decisions or issues seen recently due to bad or no hierarchy data or lack of visibility to data:

1. Company could not implement automated performance reviews because the data didn’t provide who reported to who.
2. Company could not implement manager’s self service, because the data was so messed up regarding who the managers should actually serve.
3. Raises were not approved for 10% of the employee base in time for them to be implemented, because the system data didn’t have them connected to any specific boss.
4. Payroll and HRMS was way to difficult to integrate. Due to the inefficient implementation of terminations in the payroll system, the firm paid at least $800,000 year in excess payroll
5. 15% of high performers were cut during layoffs, because decision-makers did not have visibility to performance data until after announcements.

The list could go on and on.  Aquire has seen these errors and many more because companies were not paying attention to the quality of their data.  When I created the list, it actually hit 15 horror stories, and I decided to cut it back to 5.  By enabling rapid data clean up, identification of data issues and visualization of data, we have helped companies recover from these problems and overcome barriers to progress.  It is really difficult to address data you can’t see.  Visibility and awareness of true information (or lack of information) are critical enablers we are experienced at delivering.

I don’t usually put real blatant marketing messages in this blog.  But when we share some of these horror stories with a client, it made me realize that things we help with every day can be often overlooked by really great organizations.  Sometimes, you have to step back and think about the problems being created by what you don’t know.  Let me know how we can help.  Don’t let the spooky bad data be your ‘trick’ this year.  It can be VERY costly.

Cheers,

Lois

Lately, there has been a lot of talk  about how the recruiting department is a critical location to focus your brand and culture training.  But what about your purchasing department?  Are they damaging your brand?  Here are a few examples of bad corporate citizenship displayed by purchasing departments recently.  They seriously tarnish their corporate reputation.

1. A company marketing their green practices sent a paper based 24 page RFP and requested the responses to be returned paper based – 4 copies, only to be accepted by overnight courier style delivery. (not very environmentally friendly as a whole)
2. A ‘communication’ company’s purchasing department failed to acknowledge receipt or respond to emails,voicemails and requests for information when their Purchase Orders were incomplete.
3. An accounts payable person at a company on the Bloomberg ‘Best Places To Work’ list recently referred to the ‘idiots I work for that can’t fill out their paperwork’, during a collections call.
4. Many companies during the evaluation process of a product:

• Play head games with the sales reps
• String the vendor on after they know the vendor is not the vendor of choice, often to apply price pressure to another vendor
• Stay vague about their requirements, which doesn’t allow the vendor to really solve their problem
• Write an RFP for a vendor pre-destined to get the bid, yet waste huge amounts of money and time for the other vendors trying to get the business
• Change the pricing the user agreed to, once the purchasing agent gets their hands on the deal (they are often measured by the discounts they are able to secure)

The list could actually go on and on.  So often, I hear about great relationships during a selling process, only to hear about abysmal experiences with the purchasing department of the company.  I once saw a seminar title by a huge consultancy, Torturing Your Vendors with an RFP, for Fun and Profit.  Was it tongue in cheek?

If your mission statement and value propositions are designed for fairness, integrity, customer service or anything that deals with humanity and interactions, I encourage you to mystery shop your purchasing department.  Are they living up to the well-manicured brand image your call centers, sales people and executives are trained to uphold?  Remind them that often your vendors are your customers too, and they are watching.  They are assessing the true character of your organization through these interactions.  Trust me – many of these interactions are not pretty.  This could be a real test of HR’s ability to influence the image of the company, by assessing and influencing improvements of these people in your company.

Cheers,

Lois

We see good companies go into their layoffs with laser focus and critical decision making.  It takes strategic thinking and only slightly more time at the critical assessment level than a slash and burn approach to layoffs, but it pays off for YEARS.  We spend good time with our customers helping them to understand their employee base, their corporate structure, their successor bench strength and giving them the ability to manage it when the time for change occurs.  We see what works and help to facilitate it again and again and again.

So what does a best practice reorganization with layoffs look like?

Critical roles are assessed and protected

Under performing products or services are reduced or eliminated, and the people responsible for them are reviewed and likely removed.  If there are high potential and high performer employees in those areas, they are redeployed instead of cut from the company.  If you make your savings because you canceled an entire product line and the costs associated with it, then you are not fueling the burnout of the remaining employees. They should not be  expected to add another product to their work load, because you cut staff. (see link to the Buzz article above)

Good companies have been assessing successors or replacements for all or most key positions. Weigh up those successors against the incumbents. Which could do a better job? Which could be deployed and would work better somewhere else in the company?

A layoff is the best time to cut their under performers (this example fits in America, the EU and Work Councils in the EU have some different perspectives here – ugh, frankly I like the American system on this one,  guys), so they whip out their ‘Dead Wood Be Gone’ eraser and use it.

Don’t just remove layers of management positions. You will strip your ability to develop your leaders and keep your communication lines flowing (unless you are ridiculously structured).

You are ridiculously restructured in having really straight branches in your org chart with managers being the sole report to another manager and so on…

Analyze the number of direct reports that report to a manager. Make sure the number within a given span of control does not get out of hand for the type of work being done. Review redundancy in tasks.  Hint to us Americans: There is a reason that it is called ‘being made redundant’ instead of  ‘laid off’ in England.

The last best practice for a layoff – when you don’t have to have the reduction in force to weather the economy anymore, HIRE MORE GOOD PEOPLE and recognize those that have carried you through the tough times!  It is good for the economy.  It is good for the customer.  It is good for the employees that you have ‘saved’ and may be working to a frazzle.

Cheers,

Lois

But besides all the rabbit holes we could go down for that specific topic, let’s talk about the needs for succession planning.  Do you think that 6 months ago BP thought they would be discussing the replacement of their CEO this summer?  Do you think that there is only one person being replaced at BP? – NOT  What about the people that specifically managed the work around regulations to avoid building a relief well?  I would bet these less visible positions will be turning over quickly too.

Any given high level position change is likely to target 2 – 6 more moves or hires within the organization.  Each person that get moved up, leaves a position that needs to be filled.  New people in new positions, whether hired from the outside or promoted from a succession plan is going to consider their new team and evaluate if they want to make changes.  This creates another cascade affect.  Companies need to be prepared for this dynamic. Staffing changes ALL THE TIME!  Critical roles cannot be left unfilled for very long, regardless of the reason they were made empty.  What are you doing to either…

1)help prepare your organization deal with the trickle effect of replacing people throughout your company

or

2)make sure you are qualified and willing to step up to new responsibilities in the organization when opportunities arrive.

Look at the steps for succession planning (these are very high level, there is much more to the process, but these  will get you started.

Know that when a decision goes wrong, there may be ramifications up and down the chain of command.  Succession Planning is not just for the c-suite.  Are you watching the trends of your organization to see where the highest turnover is taking place?  Could you change those turnover trends by doing a better job of succession planning?  Are your people being developed so that when they are needed to fill another position? Are they are trained and familiar with the teams and processes in the department?  Are you measuring which leaders are preparing your future executives by promoting them and providing career and project mobility?

These are critical questions to be asking of your organization and putting systems in place to make all of this information visible and the plans executable.  What are you doing to make sure you are contributing to the stability and growth of the organization?  You think that might be a hot seat today.  It is a much cooler seat then it will be when there is a crises for replacements raises its head, so step up.

Cheers,

Lois

An ardent supporter of mentoring programs, Lois Melbourne reveals the secret to ensuring successful mentor-mentee matches and explains why corporate mentorship programs are more important than ever to organizations. Discover how she has shaped her own career and taken her company global with lessons learned as both mentor and mentee. From students to entrepreneurs, mentors and mentees, Lois shares the benefits of this enriching personal development tool.

When we were together at #HREvolution in Chicago this Spring, Paul Hebert, @incentintel, led a session with Jason Seiden with the objective of discussing how to influence people.  I found an interesting twist to the conversation that I have not been able to get out of my head for the last couple of months.  So, I have been reading and thinking and watching with this topic in mind.  I feel that my thoughts might be helpful for some.

The topic about influencing continually moved to compensation and incentives.  I believe some in the group had a very different perspective of these terms then I did. And, if I am going to develop myself and my managers as good leaders at Aquire, I need to figure out why!  Why were they moving a conversation about influencing to incentives?  They are very different things.  As I listened, I figured out that several of those gravitating to incentives  were recruiters who live their day in the compensation negotiation role, so they leap to money and benefits.  This got a little scary for me, when I thought about the deeper consequences of recruiters – the people setting the stage for new employees, thinking that motivation and inspiration were possibly the same as incentives or $.  I am glad to hear that my own staff clearly saw the difference between these terms.  One of my managers thought I should create a primer of some of the confused terms.

Being more a short story teller then an academic designing primers, I put together the following  scenario.

If I want you to leave the room:

• I can give you an incentive to leave the room by offering money or food if you leave the room.
• I can motivate you to leave the room by threatening to hit you if you don’t leave the room.
• I can influence you to leave the room by giving you information about why it might be better to be outside of the room.
• I can inspire you to leave the room by telling you a story about what we can achieve by helping the people in the room next door understand how reading to their children, as toddlers, helps them build their imagination, vocabulary, ability to focus and desire to have books in their lives.  So, we get up and eagerly leave the room to do better things.

There is a great deal of difference among these.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a book about this topic, which Paul did encourage us to read.  I had read it years ago, and in the last 2 months, it became available on the Kindle, so I am reviewing it again.  I encourage anyone needing to influence people (which is everyone) to read it and better understand the power and subtle science of influence.

For even more wisdom on Influence,  Paul’s website will continually educate you upon all of these nuances.

Cheers,

Lois

Let’s admit it – there’s been a buyer’s market for talent the past two years (when there’s been any hiring at all) resulting in a class of “underemployed” – laid-off overqualified types who were willing to trade in a title or a bit of salary in exchange for benefits. Even tenured employees who have been denied promotions or raises during hiring freezes and layoffs can be counted as underemployed. I recently wrote about this in the Dallas Business Journal.

Well, guess what? As the economy turns around, these high performers expect to move back up the ladder whether it’s at their current company or someone else’s. Employer/employee loyalty is on its way to becoming a thing of the past – just listen to HR Happy Hour’s “Re-thinking Talent” and see if you agree.

So before your highly-prized talent starts seeking greener pastures, it’s time to ramp up your workforce analytics and start being proactive.

Analyze the talent that you’ve got.

Assess the skills and experience of your newest hires. Don’t forget to review the qualifications of tenured staff, too – you don’t want to lose a longtime employee to a competitor. Tools like the 9 Box Matrix and side-by-side profile views in OrgPublisher Succession help document and compare talent easily.

Monitor your talent flow.

Check the pulse of your workforce by monitoring your talent pipeline. Analyze how talent is flowing through the organization, trends in turnover and other workforce analytics using Aquire InSight’s visualization tools and consulting services.

Spread the word.

Make it easy for employees to envision career paths and visualize a future with your company by publishing organizational charts through OrgPublisher Premier.

It’s time to roll up our sleeves and do some serious talent management to keep those high performers around for the long haul. Are you with me?

Cheers,

Lois

I will be contributing to the Women of HR blog and community, as well. Why would I add another commitment? There are several reasons:

• The team on this project is amazing, and I love being a part of an amazing team.
• There are topics that I like to share that don’t fit the Aquire purpose for a blog on this site; topics that cover work or life from the perspective of a CEO/Mom/Wife/Woman.
• I want to help gather more HR pros together to be part of the greater discussion.

This should be fun!

At the unveiling of the Women Of HR on the hot talk radio show, HR Happy Hour,  the question came up, “what is a woman’s issue that we might discuss on this site?” I offered up that maybe the distinction is more a matter of the perspective of women then specifically female exclusive issues. When I read the contributors blogs, I learn a lot about HR and about life. I encourage you to find some of these blogs and add them to your RSS feeder for regular reading. I believe you’ll be very pleased.

You can find more complete profiles on the founder page of the site, at  http://womenofhr.com/about/

Lisa Rosendahl, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief

Lisa blogs at Simply Lisa. You can connect with Lisa on Twitter as @lisarosendahl and on LinkedIn.

Trish McFarlane, Co-Founder

Trisha blogs at HRRingleader. You can connect with Trisha on Twitter as @TrishMcFarlane and on LinkedIn.

Shauna Moerke, Co-Founder

Shauna blogs at the HR Minion. You can connect with Shauna on Twitter as @HR_Minion and on LinkedIn.

Charee Klimek, Co-Founder

Sarah White, Co-Founder

Jennifer Payne, Co-Founder

You can connect with Jen on Twitter as @JennyJensHR.

Bryon D. Abramowitz, SPHR, Member in Denial

He blogs at The HR Technologist and is on twitter at @bryonabramowitz.

You can find the profiles of the amazing lineup of bloggers on the Contributors Page: http://womenofhr.com/contributors/

If you’re interested in adding content to the Women of HR, there are two ways to participate right now. You can comment on existing blogs, or you can write your own post and provide it to Lisa Rosenthal for consideration. We would like to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,
Lois

1. Regardless of your job title, if you’re not adding value to the organization, then you are not going to be seen as helpful, powerful, or an ally to help get things done. In my blunt way at HRevolution, “If you are not adding value – you suck!”  I believe that – I don’t care what your job title is.
2. If you add value, or your idea can add value, then you need to learn to articulate those ideas, as well as the value, and you will be heard.  Talent includes the ability to communicate your worth.
3. If HR professionals, like the ones in that room, are perpetuating the stereo type of title power and importance, they need to start working on the culture within their organizations. An awareness of respect and leadership skills will get you a lot farther.
4. Don’t ever mistake the respect for a job title as the respect for the person with the title. This especially goes for the person with the “important” title.  I work every day to earn and keep respect. It is not about my title.
5. If you do get one of those big important titles, make sure you use it for good and not evil.  Don’t perpetuate the myth and build barriers for your employees or people out of your chain of command to communicate with you or bring great ideas to fruition.

Now, I don’t pretend that there aren’t times (and, sometimes, LOTS of times) that, due to a job title, somebody was given an advantage or an appointment or some other privilege.  But if you want to make an impact in a business, you need to make sure you are adding value, respecting people at all levels of the organization chart, and building communication that allows ideas to be captured and elevated to execution if they are worthy, regardless of who suggests them.  Then, you need to recognize the achievements of the quality players and coach, or remove, the non-quality players.

To Laurie’s point, career paths are important.  Progressing to positions where you have more authority and ability to control budgets can certainly further your cause.  However, the bigger job title does not always mean a more critical or important position within the organization.  Just ask true succession planning professionals. They know the power of identifying the real key positions – and that is to make sure you have a talent pipeline to fill those key positions. It is not just about how high you are on the org chart.

Cheers,
Lois

A financial planner does not plan my financials. They can’t (don’t or won’t) tell me if I should refinance my mortgage and make it 30 years instead of 15 years so that I can double-up on the principle without changing my monthly expense. They don’t remind me to get an additional rider on my insurance to protect my financial investment in a new valuable collection. They certainly don’t help plan what percent of my income is best spent on each area of my household expenditures. Now, THAT would be financial planning.

I’m picking on this job title because it really does bug me personally. But I also bring up the topic so that HR and hiring managers can think about the job titles they use and see if they’re misleading the organization, confusing the customer, or setting false hopes for the employee. How can you possibly begin skills and competency assessment projects if you have not started with the basics, such as clear, concise job titles?

I’m a big fan of the fun and illustrative titles – but they’re not for everybody. I love the Chief Listening Officer, the Coffee Googlet; I could change my title from CEO to Queen Bee or Chief Conductor, but I think CEO is simply less confusing.

If you have pet peeves for job titles, recommendations for cleaning up our job titles, or a super cool example of a job title, please comment.

Cheers,
Lois

How do bloggers make a difference? How are bloggers different/better than typical journalist and their outlets? Why should I spend time reading blogs? These are often asked questions. A big answer to all of these questions is Mike VanDervort and the other bloggers who will participate in his Carnival of HR and Charitable Giving.

A carnival of blogs is a “table of contents” of similar blog posts gathered by a dedicated individual willing to encourage, nurture, and challenge other bloggers to rally within a topic. This time Mike is doing it with a wonderful purpose. He’s pulling together blog posts which will encourage giving to charity and highlight the stories about the value of charities. Mike will personally donate money to one charity, selected from all those submitted for the Carnival. Head over to Mike’s blog right now. It might give you the jumpstart to begin blogging yourself. Charities are  suffering terribly in this economy and need all the help they can get.

My submittal for this carnival is the need for the cure for Breast Cancer. Susan G Komen foundation is working diligently to raise funds and encourage research, free mammograms where needed, and support for women in the battle with breast cancer.

I lost my mother to breast cancer and both my sister and grandma are survivors. My mother was my best friend. At 14, when I started working, she would pick me up from school or cheerleading practice and drive me to work, then come back and get me.  At 17, I became a manager at the same direct mail firm and I hired my Mom. Three years later, with her sweat equity and a miracle, she bought the company.

Nancy Buckingham was like Winnie-the-Pooh. Loved by everyone, never a bad word about anyone, and wise when she didn’t even know it. I was robbed of my mother, as was my son, siblings, her other grandchildren, and the rest of the world. She was taken from us by breast cancer at the early age of 61. She had diminished quality of life for several years as she fought like hell to beat the invasion. I want the Komen foundation to fund finding a cure and to support the mammography routine for all women.

This is an HR Carnival – how does this tie to HR? Here are my recommendations for HR to help fight deaths from breast cancer:

1. Help promote the usage of the terms mammogram and breast cancer within your company. There is still too much of a stigma to these terms being used in “polite company” which is ridiculous. Breast Cancer Awareness month is a good time to start this discussion, but any time is great.
2. Benefits departments should boycott any insurance company that will not cover mammograms as wellness procedures. Especially in light of the study that was released this week saying women don’t need regular mammograms until their 50’s. (I could have lost my sister, if she had not benefited from early detection of her breast cancer.)
3. Support employees who want to donate their time to the Komen foundation or other charities that need volunteers for money raising or awareness activities. Let them to take time off or build in flex time to their schedule to allow for the donated time. You could even donate their hours to the foundation – by allowing employees to volunteer on company time.
4. Develop humane policies for your employees who are cancer patients or family members of those struggling with cancer. They need your support.
5. Be prepared to refer your employees who face the trauma of being diagnosed with breast cancer themselve, or if one of their family members is diagnosed. The Komen Foundation can help you find counseling and provide you with ideas on the best response in these situations.
6. Consider holding corporate events to raise money for the Komen Foundation or another charity of your choice.

Please share your ideas of other ways HR and corporations can have an impact on charitable foundations.

Cheers,
Lois

I didn’t get what I went for, but I did get great connections and ideas. The interaction was better than other HR gatherings. Eric corrected me quickly when I raised my hand. We would have “none of that.” It was all about conversation.

And there were many valuable conversations. Here are some highlights.

1. Listening to Jessica Miller-Merrell (@blogging4jobs) and Eric Winegardner (@ewmonster) generate ideas from the room’s conversations and racing to see if the corresponding URLs were available on Go Daddy.
2. Talking to Susan Fawcett (@culturebabe) and Bill Campion (@culturedude), both from Cultural Catalyst of Talent Revolution, and being completely inspired by how they can help a company and individuals change.
3. Talking technology with Jon Gillespie (@jongillespieTR) of Talent Revolution and, no offense to @TheLance, but I think Jon was the “smartest man in the room.”
4. Discussion with Steve Boese (@steveboese) regarding the real competitive advantage of being a good networker (if you’re a good person).
5. I also had a short conversation with Amanda Hite (@sexythinker), the CEO and change agent at Talent Revolution. We didn’t get enough time to talk as much as we would have liked, but we now know each other and will be able to have many more discussions.
6. I loved the fact that with all the Twitter conversations mentioning going to Louisville, the local chamber of commerce and newspaper gave us shout-outs through their Twitter accounts using the events hashtag #revolution. I thought that was very smart and very classy.

So, I didn’t get the advise and feedback I wanted about blogging, which was my main purpose for attending. Yet I wouldn’t trade that for what I did get, meeting great people and really building some relationships that will allow me to connect for future discussions about those things I crave/need. These relationships are far more valuable than my original agenda.

If you were hoping to get a lot of content from tweets and blogs, you’ll find this was the ultimate “you just had to be there” event.

Thank you to the organizers and all of the Tweeps I turned into Peeps in Louisville, Kentucky.

Cheers,
Lois

The first challenge you’ll face in software hosting is wading through the very poorly defined list of terms  people use in an attempt to label this very nebulous suite of offerings. Some people talk about Software as a Service (SaaS), others will try to convince you that they have the best solution because it’s built on “Cloud Computing,” yet others will push Software + Services, or a hosted solution. Is your head spinning yet?

We don’t have time in this posting to wade through the naming nightmare, so I’ll trust you to accept that I’m talking about all of the above mentioned names.

More important than the name are the end results. What are you getting for your money and time? Is the software going to help make your business successful? Will the vendor provide stellar service to insure the success of the project? We’re going to assume you’ve selected a product that delivers the required functionality. Big leap of faith here, but we’ll also assume that you’ve found a provider who will step up and help insure your company’s success through stellar service and support.

Let’s look at the benefits and disadvantages of hosting. Please keep in mind that the list below is a generalization and your mileage may vary depending on where you are headed and who is behind the wheel.

Pros:

• Much quicker to deploy than traditional in-house software projects
• Ongoing updates are delivered with much less effort than in-house software
• Minimal if any investment in infrastructure – reducing project startup costs
• No additional overhead for internal IS to support additional systems
• Cost is spread out instead of up front (You end up paying only for what you use)
• Training is usually easier because demonstration systems are immediately available

Cons:

• Often not as easy to customize as an in-house software project
• Software data is housed at the vendor’s location and you are relying on them to maintain a secure and stable environment
• Greater risk should the provider get out of the business of providing hosted software
• May not be as tightly integrated with existing software systems as an in house solution

Summary:

Your vendor will be the key to a successful deployment. Ask a few questions before diving in. Have they been around long? Do they have any reference customers for the service you are purchasing? Be specific in your requests. Do they have any training references? Do they have any references from a company that struggled during deployment? It’s vital to understand how your vendor deals with difficulties during deployment.

As the methods of deployment change, the reasons IS/IT projects fail remain the same. All the things on the business side of your project that might cause an in-house solution to fail will also cause a hosted solution to fail.

Stay focused on your company’s business goals. Don’t let the cloud of “Cloud Computing” obscure your view of those goals. It can be an expedient and price friendly way to deploy a new solution, but be sure it aligns to your business first.

We win either way!

The first weekend of November, I will be attending an event in Louisville, KY that would never have been possible to create 10 years ago. Forget the fact that there likely were not enough (read as “any”) HR Bloggers around to make a gathering. What I’m talking about is the ability of a group of  geographic strangers to meet online and introduce each other to their electronic network of friends who are also passionate about HR. These people are so passionate about recruiting, human resources, workforce planning, succession planning, career development, and all things work/life/people related  that they share their wisdom, rants, ideas, and questions via their blogs. Often, these blogs are  written on their own time, sometimes they are corporate supported. The point is they communicate.

These friends chat via Twitter. They recommend each other’s blog posts. They find ways to share and communicate in the nonelectronic world, too. Then an amazing thing happened. Trish McFarlane and Ben Eubanks (whom we have not seen nearly enough of on Twitter lately) hatched the idea that this talented network of HR professionals needed to learn from each other in a more concentrated venue. So, they hatched the idea of an HR Bloggers gathering. They named it HRevolution.  What I don’t know is, have they realized the true coolness of this event beyond the fact that we are all going to learn to be better bloggers? We are going to become better HR professionals but we’re also experiencing a new way to create brain trusts in a rapid fire, get it organized, light the spark and let it happen way.

I know that the, now four, organizers (see the awesome list of individuals below) have jumped through hoops to pull off what has now become a 50 person gathering. Yet, I challenge all of us to not be fearful and use this concept as a way to bring together previously unmet individuals to solve a problem, inspire development, strategize a plan, et al, by connecting. Gather people in your social network, bring them together, toss out your challenges and watch the great minds move further ahead than you could ever dream of doing on your own. Can you tell I am psyched about HRevolution? I am also excited about exploring whole new ways of building new collaborative teams.

Check out the HRrevoultion site and see the individuals attending. Most of them have blogs or will in the future. Read their stuff, comment on the posts that you enjoy or disagree with, follow them on Twitter. Engage. I promise you will learn.

Huge “thank yous” in advance to

• Trish McFarlane @trishmcfarlane http://hrringleader.wordpress.com/
• Ben Eubanks – @beneubanks http://upstarthr.com
• Crystal Peterson – @crystalpeterson  http://crisscrossed.wordpress.com/
• Steve Boese @steveboese http://steveboese.squarespace.com/

I can’t wait to tell you what happens at the event. I’m sure these blog posts will get better because of it.

Family life, 60-hour work weeks (if you’re lucky), soccer practices, helping with homework, diaper duty, PTA – in our hectic lives, who has time to join a professional organization, much less volunteer to help run a professional organization?

My response is, “Perhaps you simply start with baby steps.” Joining an HR professional organization is incredibly easy. Many of these organizations offer membership at no charge, resulting in incredible value. Target a group or two that are pertinent to your field, in my case HR groups such as IHRIM, SHRM, or OAUG. Initially, attend a few meetings as a guest, meet the members.

Often times, board members of professional organizations are mistaken for full-time paid employees. I wish! The fact is, many of us, like my fellow board members of OHUG, donate our time, sweat, and tears for lots of reasons. Whatever the reason, the rewards are limitless, both personally and professionally.

So, why join? In a professional group, you can:

• Socialize and network with your peers.
• Learn best practices – which makes you an MVP for your company and a more efficient worker. (And should cut into that 60 hr work week.)
• Learn through shared experiences.
• See cutting edge technologies and solutions.
• Enjoy and have fun – it’s not all work.
• Meet new friends with common interest and similar business anxieties. Life-long friendships are very commonplace.
• Contacts, contacts, contacts – build your personal and professional social network. You never know who you may meet.

Keys to being successful in a professional group; you should:

• Be a resource – offer your skills/knowledge. You will get it back 10-fold.
• Find a mentor or coach. Your mentor will gladly introduce you around.
• Be a kid – kids are the best networkers. Young ones are extremely open minded – don’t put up walls and don’t make judgments.
• Join with a friend and navigate the waters together.
• Smile!

Feeling really bold? Volunteer. Then run for a board position!

How does it work? Anyone with a Twitter account may participate by reading the live chat and chiming in (tweeting) to the discussion. Tweets are text messages limited to 140 characters at a time. Using a code called a hashtag, you can track a conversation between anyone on Twitter around the world. The hashtag, #hr_tech, follows each message to be included in the real time chat.

So, a question may be asked, What is the worst part of making a software purchase? #hr_tech.

Answers may be posted by several people, for example, The fight between HR and IT is the worst part #hr_tech, or The creation of RFPs is the worst part #hr_tech.

The #HR_tech discussion occurs once a month, usually in the evening. But the coordinators decided to have one in September during office hours to see how that impacts the number of participants and the discussions. Bryon Abramowitz @bryonabramowitz, from Knowledge Infusion, and Steve Boese @SteveBoese, an instructor of HR in Rochester New York and a blogger, are the coordinators of all the #HR_Tech sessions in which I have participated. They do a wonderful job of keeping the conversations on topic, as well as letting them flow.

I hope you join us for this discussion. I always learn something and often find new friends to connect with on Twitter.

Cheers,
Lois

One of the greatest gifts my late mother gave me is the ability to appreciate many things and to be open to inspiration from many sources. When I have to tackle a tough or especially detailed job, I try to find something that inspires me to the proper mindset. If I can find inspiration in a natural view like the sea, sky, leaves, a content cat, it helps ground me. I can then deal with the tough stuff, like a workforce planning proposal for a client, a response to a tricky succession planning issue, a presentation for an analyst to show how solid the business is and how uniquely we approach our dedication to our clients.

Another place I find inspiration and grounding is music. I have one great musical talent – I play a mean iPod®! Yes, music certainly can tame the beast, lift the mood, add a bounce to the step, and focus the mind. From classical to hip-hop, heavy metal to pop, music calls to each of us.

Truly engaging employees takes more than career development and employee recognition programs. These, as well as domain education and succession planning, are key ingredients in motivating and developing employees – within the standard corporate practice. They must exist in all organizations, but you should also infuse your corporate culture (and check this article on Zappos for a unique corporate culture) with individuality, personal as well as professional creativity – and just that right touch of quirkiness.

Obviously, blinking lights and a loud radio aren’t what you want in the way of personalizing a workspace. Don’t be afraid to give employees the freedom to view family photos added to the desktop wallpaper, read cartoons pinned to their bulletin board, or listen to music on their iPod® at work – LET THEM. It may be their best moment of inspired focus.

Cheers,
Lois

Workforce Management provides a basic checklist indicating who does which part of the workforce planning. As with most  checklists, this is an oversimplification of the process, but a GREAT place to start.

Your organization will have many ideas for integrating these tasks and tracking key metrics. Just a few observations on the checklist points:

• Why aren’t line managers included in charting the organization? HR can compile (using automatic tools) input from managers and leadership, providing a complete picture of the hierarchy.

• HR should never conduct succession planning alone. Again, line managers play a key role.

• Once competencies are identified, you must also determine how the competencies should be measured. For instance, if you select 6 required competencies can you quantify all of them with a numeric measure?

One of the gaps in both the checklist and the general practice of workforce planning is that HR and leadership often struggle to find people who have the number skills to scan and analyze the trends provided by the numbers. Or, an organization decides it must get outside help to determine which numbers they should track.

Earlier this year at the Human Capital Institute National Human Capital Summit, 2 of the 3 case studies in the Workforce Planning session mentioned that they recruited people from accounting or finance into HR to help focus on the numbers and analytics. These studies support the discussion on Blog TalkRadio , Episode 5 of the HR Happy Hour that HR executives should, at least in part, come from outside HR. The HR executives who must do strategic planning in order to make the workforce match the business strategy typically need business management and/or finance experience.

Sometimes workforce planning appears to be described as a separate discipline from the talent management or succession planning efforts, just because it takes more numeric considerations. But it has to be strategically integrated into those programs as well. It’s exciting to find more and more organizations providing the human resource career pathing that includes extended experience throughout the organization.

Can you see where succession planning is part of workforce planning? And it can’t be just in the executive suite.

Cheers,
Lois

I frequently tune in to the Friday HR Happy Hour on Blog TalkRadio, a twice monthly radio talk show hosted by Steve Boese and Shauna Moerke, two great bloggers, HR professionals, and superstars in the  HR Twitter world. Between Steve, Shauna, and their call-in guests the conversation moves among many topics. During Episode 5 – Why HR?, one theme struck right to the core of the succession planning and workforce planning I do. It concerned where HR executives come from inside an organization.

Many professionals on the call came from different education and  work experience backgrounds. Callers were in heavy agreement that a large number of successful HR executives came from other areas of the company, and moved into HR to provide a strong business background as well as effect change within the workforce dynamics of the organization.

This reflects a number of impactful topics now facing the HR world. It illustrates the logic in succession planning that you must tap people from multiple disciplines as successors, not just people within the line-of-site of the key position being planned for. The concept that succession planners shouldn’t be allowed to tag somebody from outside their span-of-control is detrimental to the success of the organization. Departments need new perspectives. They need people’s input from outside their regular gravitational pull.

Get rid of the internal politics and allow for the exploration of candidates as successors to come from anywhere within your organization.

Cheers,
Lois

In good times, terminated employees have login credentials lasting 30 days, on average, to some systems  (Forrester Study). Identity management systems and outlying security administrations may not be able to keep up with the speed of layoffs and reorganizations. Even if IT is pulling double or triple duty to make sure that the terminated employees have been locked out of your systems, are they able to keep up with the reorganized people within the company and their new roles? Is the person who was moved from purchasing to the inventory control department removed from accessing the purchasing system?

Is the person who was moved from purchasing to the inventory control department removed from accessing the purchasing system? Without the ability to visually inspect the login credentials of individuals and see groups of people or positions assigned to various systems, the task becomes daunting and highly inaccurate. Both speed and accuracy are critical for consideration in this process. I have seen identity management handled very well, however, and have a few recommendations.

Top Tips I see working well:

• Overlay the identity management data upon the corporate org chart to visualize the logic of a position’s access to the corporate systems.
• Build business rules (or review your existing business rules) to assure the separation of roles. For example, access to an inventory system should not overlap access to purchasing systems; and DBAs shouldn’t have access to the same system’s security identity management.
• Require individuals to justify their need for access to any systems that management questions. Mass email requests to these groups can be automated.

Cheers,
Lois

We still need to be the best employers we can be. We still need to hire wisely and find the very best fits for our organizations. We need to work very closely during the trying times of a layoff to make sure we keep the talent we need for the future, and that our layoffs are done in such a way that we keep our employer brand intact.

BusinessWeek, January 26, 2009 issue, states that there are 125,000 registered nurse positions open in this country. This is a painful problem for healthcare institutions. Some argue in the same article that the issue is not just about education or immigration, but about working conditions and pay for registered nurses. Their statistics show that there are 500,000 RNs not working in healthcare. Why is there such a gap? What are the real issues in the healthcare industry? Do you have similar issues for your workforce? Now is not the time to ignore turnover trends (and the reasons) of the past.

The War for Talent is still with us. It is not going away due to a tough economy. We need to show our workers where they have potential within the organization. We need to fill open positions with key employees who might be in underperforming units about to get the ax. We need to foster an openness about what the organization looks like and who-reports-to-whom so that people feel a sense of security about how they fit in the organization. We need to keep our employees challenged and inspired so that they will stay with us through the hard economy we have now, and the great times that are ahead us.

Cheers,
Lois

Head count reports of various types are the most requested reports into HR. They are even more important now – if they’re the right reports being used the right way. We need to know our employees. Who are they? How many of them are there? What are their competencies? What jobs do they do? We need to make sure we hang on to the right people and get them into the most productive roles possible. We must create efficiencies within innovation. We need sparks of creativity to ignite new ways of doing business. This is how America has pulled out of tough economic situations before. But we can’t innovate our way to greatness if we let the great employees go.

In a poll this month conducted by the Conference Board, a global independent membership organization working in the public interest, about layoffs, the focus is directed toward precision layoffs. This means fewer voluntary packages will be offered to leave a job. Companies can be very selective about who they let go. HR must be very careful about their selection of who they let go. You don’t want to be the person responsible for letting an A Player go and keeping a B Player. Retaining great talent is critical. Business Week’s recent article, “Career Advancement in Tough Times,” says ’the time to shine’ in your career is now. It’s a good idea to watch for individuals who bring answers and great ideas to the table. Who is bringing value to the organization? Great ideas, not just great cost cutting, will move companies into the thrive stage of this economy. This has to be done with the people of an organization.

If you’re facing employee layoffs, I suggest you be VERY careful and help your company be very careful about the selection of who exits. There may be positions in your company that need the players you’re considering cutting. Do you know where those positions are? I recommend that you filter and sort your people in many ways to get the sense of which positions they could succeed. Make sure you build your succession plan deep into your bench with the employee base you have now, so that before you cut employees, you know who you’re planning as best successors in the future. Make sure you don’t cut rising stars and high potential employees. Your attention to detail in HR will be more important now than ever.

Cheers,
Lois

Here is his story. Many organizations in India and other countries compete based on efficiency which has led to very, very flat org charts. This means that a single manager could have 50, 100 or, in some cases, 150 direct reports. He said this results in never getting decisions from management on new initiatives for improvement, thus their efficiency advantage is eroding. The model is broken.

Based on my experience, the problems with this type of organizational design manifest themselves in many ways. My consultant friend and a few of my contacts, faced with the burden of a flat org chart, confirmed these problems are real.

1. Managers often don’t conduct any type of performance review with employees, because they do not know the individuals well enough to accomplish a review, and the volume is overwhelming.
2. With no personal engagement from your boss because he or she is spread too thin across too many employees, your loyalty to management and company can be non-existent, thus turnover is huge.
3. Managers are dealing with turnover and hiring at such excessive levels that they have no opportunity to attend to the strategy of the organization or to the innovation which might help the company leap forward.
4. Employees see little opportunity for advancement within the organization, as there is no where to advance, so they leave.
5. As mentioned in my earlier blog, without sufficient levels of middle management who can develop their leadership skills, communicate the needs of the organization to senior management, or have time to spend on innovations and business improvements, the organization develops large gaps in skill sets for leadership, especially senior leadership.

The world is not flat; your org chart shouldn’t be either.

Cheers,
Lois

As an infection control expert now managing vast implementations for the IT of the hospital, her expertise is amazing and very valuable. Yet during the lock down she wore many hats, including serving food in the cafeteria. When an organization is affected by emergencies, everybody has to do their part.

This raises a very vital human resource question. Is your organization cross trained to work in a wide variety of emergency situations? IT departments are typically charged with producing redundant systems to keep at least mission critical systems running. Is your staff trained to keep the technology in use? For instance, in small businesses, how deep is the bench that knows how to run payroll? In a disaster or emergency situation a large group of employees may be affected. Does an outsourcer or other department head at least have written instructions to keep the minimum systems operational? (I know IT would sure feel better if all that effort to make things work in a disaster recovery situation is going to be supported by the human side as well). In a large business, can the west coast office really support the east coast’s operations when you switch the phone lines to their direction? Are your people ready?

Our cousins are safe. The people hit the hardest by Katrina were spared the worst this time. There are many unsung heroes in these situations. I hope your team takes Gustav as a reminder that contingency plans go way beyond call trees and evacuation plans. Keeping the company going is the next level needed after the safety of the employees is addressed. This level of planning keeps their future safe, too.

Cheers,
Lois

This was obviously a breakdown in process in a number of areas. The quick fix that helped stop the $800,000 annual bleed of unnecessary payroll spending was to implement consistent confirmation of payroll to the corporate org chart. Makes perfect sense: the org chart is the most visible representation used by an organization to understand who works there. When somebody leaves a company, people often check the org chart to see if it’s up-to-date and if the position is currently open, removed, or filled with an existing employee. Any of these options may change dynamics for the employees, so they care about it. With all those eyes on the org chart, using a process that flags the org chart when one system shows a person terminated while another system still has them active, will guarantee the data gets cleaned up FAST.

Maybe now you’ll look at some of the regulatory requirements a little differently. There are reasons they want to make sure your data is accurate.

Cheers,
Lois

I believe what really needs to be looked at in many companies is wholesale reorganizations. The magnitude of change in the workforce demands an assessment of every inefficiency, every redundancy, and every complexity to improve productivity. This time the reorganizations would not be designed to engineer layoffs. They would be designed for the exits we’re going to experience in so many layers of our organizations. They would be creating career paths for the employees who must be retained. The reorganizations would be redesigning the way business is done.

Automation, outsourcing, and streamlining processes will be demanded of our companies. We will have to do more with less people. But the less people part lasts for a long time, not just a belt tightening exercise for Wall Street. Organizations that figure out they can improve their efficiencies and cope with the brain drain without spinning their wheels believing they just need to be the best at hiring, will benefit from appropriate scale AND the financial reward of simply being more efficient.

Reorganizations done with advance planning will be different and more strategic than ever. Evaluating the structure, spans of control, budget, and planning hierarchies, along with the succession planning and replacement planning, will help HR meet the strategic needs of the organization as the world goes into what is looking like the largest talent crunch we have ever experienced.

Cheers,
Lois

Challenge number 1
A company knew they had many out-of-date open positions, but the positions were scattered across so many different managers who couldn’t realistically be given access to the recruiting software to sort through the positions and make changes or updates. These positions became out-of-date because the computer systems didn’t always get updated when a position was filled. A position would also be filled with a different job title than the original request was created with, thus the HR clerk didn’t always know if this was a match and they could mark the requisition as completed.

Value to solving the problem to Challenge number 1
After solving the “hidden open position” challenge (how to do that is later in this blog), the company was able to clean up 10.1 million dollars of budget sitting in unwanted open positions that could now be reallocated more productively. This clean up was not disruptive to any department, and took less than 3 weeks.

Challenge number 2
A company went through a major reorganization from a geographic organizational structure to more of a product line of business structure, while maintaining the back stage consolidations for departments, such as legal and finance, within headquarters. This reorganization created many changes with the workforce reporting structure. Managers who inherited new departments were unaware of existing open positions within their span-of-control unless they specifically looked for them through their department financial data for allotted budgeting for open positions. This led to many managers creating new, and unnecessary, job requisitions for the positions they needed filled in their areas.

Value to solving the problem to Challenge number 2
This company was unable to provide dollar figures to solve their problem, but you can imagine that the financial reward was large. The company cleaned up the open positions database, managers learned about budget dollars they could reallocate, they stopped the recruitment process on over 100 unnecessary positions including nearly 20 positions with annual salaries exceeding $180,000 and required advanced degrees (very difficult and costly positions in their industry to fill). Due to the huge load of additional recruiting the company thought had to be done, the current staff was so overwhelmed and overworked, they needed more assistance. They created two new recruiter positions to help with the onslaught of open positions the reorganization had generated and were trying to fill those positions. At the end of the clean up process, the two recruiter positions were cancelled.

Both of these challenges are repeated across many organizations around the globe. Blatant Aquire plug about to appear: We helped both of these companies make their open positions readily recognizable for each manager. By adding their open positions to the OrgPublisher corporate org chart, everyone could access the open positions they were responsible for and determine if they were accurate. The information regarding the open positions for Challenge #1 company was in their HRIS system and for Challenge #2 company, the data was in a different system. This didn’t matter to us.

We combined the data and showed the open positions in color coded boxes throughout the entire organization. The visibility allowed collaboration and discussion to clean up the data. Click on the thumbnail graphic below to see a portion of an org chart that includes open positions.

Another day I’ll tell you about open positions and recruiting from within.

Cheers,
Lois

Let me take you through a common scenario for prospects and customers we are working with:

A company is moving to a new HRIS system. They are implementing SAP® ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) solution, and they need the hierarchy of their employees in order to go-live. They test the process of distributing spreadsheets to HR Partners to build the list of employees assigned to each manager. In this example the company has 10,000 employees.

The test of this manual process yielded the following cost projections:

150 HR Partners, spending 170 hours each on the project total 25,550 hours of effort. A conservative estimate of $30/hr for this portion of the project totals $765,000. But that is only the beginning of their problems.

4,000 managers must then spend at least 2 hours each on the project at a very low estimate of $40/hr. This will cost $320,000. We are now up to $1,085,000 just to get the hierarchy built within this organization.

Then two very scary elements become clear. They still need to aggregate the data from all those spreadsheets and the duration of the project prior to aggregation is sitting at 4 months. This pushes back their go-live date, which is completely unacceptable.

Enter Aquire. Our rapidly deployed solution using Unifi and OrgPublisher allows the HR partners to reduce their effort to less than 50 hours and the managers’ time to approximately 20 minutes. Because the solution is collaborative, the data is ready as soon as the managers review it. There is no further preparation required to pull the information together. Bottom line of the story really is a huge cost savings of over $850,000.

In addition to that savings they won’t have to spend the money to aggregate the data (that is done automatically via the nature of the Aquire solution); go-live can be achieved 75% quicker; everyone is happier and they now have tools to help them with their workforce planning and modeling, their org charting, and many other reporting and management needs.

Cheers,
Lois