Facts are needed to give the proper perspective.  Understanding the make-up of the organization based on the demographics of the workforce can support many other inquiries and understandings.  There are those who want to regulate systems from collecting or reviewing various types of demographics of our workforce, but that prevents us from getting a holistic view of the team.  It is important that we are able to review and understand the DNA of our workforce.

What are the components that are impacting our workforce decisions?

The businesses and governments throughout developing nations are facing the aging population of their workforce.  Retirement of skilled, knowledgeable employees is going to be a challenge for a long time to come.  There are many decisions that need to be made to help lessen the impact of this demographic. Knowledge that some could use for discrimination should be used by most to create better work environments.  We can’t regulate ourselves with the notion that our employees are exactly alike, rather we need to know what makes them unique.

Age, gender, education levels, country of origin, life abroad and desired education level are all qualities that enhance the characteristics and dynamics of our teams.  So, why are we afraid to analyze the facts?  If 2% of your staff has children, would you throw a family picnic with clowns, bounce houses and face painters for your team-building summer gathering?  No, you wouldn’t.  If 100% of your lab staff boasts advanced degrees, would you invest in offering Chemistry 101 classes?  Not likely.  You need to know details about your team before you make assumptions.

Embrace diversity and commonalities in order to fully support your investments in your team.  This means you need to know the trends of the types of people you are hiring.  What are the demographics of those you are losing?  What are the commonalities among your star performers?  What are the demographics of your most satisfied employees?  Put your questions into the context of your staff demographics and not only will you reach your decisions much faster, but you will also realize better success with your initiatives.

This is not a utopian view.  If you are concerned about how people will use the information, then you have the wrong people making impactful decisions that will impact your employees.  Utilize the data, train people how to use it and reap the rewards.

Cheers,

Lois

There are times when this positioning or these opinions are accurate.  I have seen it myself when talking to human resource professionals about their analytics and workforce planning initiatives.  There were times when I was really surprised at how ill prepared professional HR departments were to answer tough scenario questions about their workforce of the future.  So, I went on a quest to figure out why they were unprepared?  Why were they scared to tackle the numbers.

Just like our advice to HR departments launching workforce planning projects, you have to ask the right questions to get the right results.  In this case, it was asking the questions of ‘Why?”  It opened up an entirely different perspective.

They are not ready to attach workforce planning and workforce analytics, because they have not had the right tools to do the job.  A melon-baller can create great holes, but you wouldn’t use it to dig a ditch.  So, why are companies pretending that reporting tools are giving you data in the right context or that they are providing you with analytics, when they are providing you with rows of data?  Why are companies telling their HR departments that their BI tool that is used for data mining customer data or manufacturing details is good enough because there is a shiny little HR dashboard and a few tables dedicated to employee data included?

Workforce analytics are a breed all their own, and they require the focus and dedication of those tools that are designed for their purpose and are usable for far more then the finance department’s analyst.  They need to be understandable for the managers that are dealing with the people.  They need to be secure so that you can get to the right data and drill down to the information that allows you to make decisions, without a PhD.  They need to segment the data by the types of demographics and organizational structure, so that you can get to the root of the troubles or triumphs you are studying.

In a conversation with Bill Kutik, he asked me why there is a need for standalone solutions for workforce analytics, when it would appear more critical to build analytics into point solutions.  I agree that nearly all talent management and HRIS systems greatly need to improve their reporting and their representation of trends and data in their vast tables of data.  However, analytics, especially those that are going to support workforce planning initiatives, need to contain far more data than is typically housed in one system.  You need talent management data in context with the HRIS data, in connection with corporate scorecard trends and productivity numbers.  Costs from payroll and financial data need to lay alongside the performance management data and the satisfaction information of many stakeholders.  To unify this type of data, you need a powerful analytics tool that can take the information from these disparate systems and position them in a logical, meaningful representation that allows comparison and contrast leader by leader throughout the organization.

Frankly, this is why Aquire built our offering of InSight and offer it with specialist and technology in our “InSight as a Service”.  You have to have the right tools for your HR department, if you want them to deliver the promise of powerful workforce planning and analytics.

Cheers,

Lois

Awful Policy 1: Only Allowing Planners to Select Successors from the chain of command under a position

Successors should be the best candidates for the role regardless of the current department or position they hold in a company.

Awful Policy 2: Heralding super-flat organizations as a nirvana of efficiency.

Communication, goal setting, career paths and many other issues are often crippled by the huge gap between levels in a flat organization.

Awful Policy 3: Allowing performance review scores to be weighted as high as 80% of criteria for placement as successor

Unless your performance management rates and process are perfect AND geared specifically for succession planning, you are setting yourself up for complete failure.

Awful Policy 4: Only doing succession planning for the top three layers of an organization.

There are key positions throughout organizations that need succession plans or replacement plans far more than many in the upper ranks of the organization.

Awful Policy 5: Producing future workforce strategies without reviewing the data of historic workforce trends and external market conditions.

History will repeat itself. It’s a famous adage and it applies to the lessons you need to learn in your own employee base as well. What can history prepare you for now?

Awful Policy 6: Avoiding line managers and business unit leaders when it comes to making employee policies, because they “don’t understand HR”

Help them understand their workforce and make sure you distribute the input gathering to include the management in the fields from succession planning, to compensation decisions, to team structures and many other topics. If they don’t understand the impact of their decisions on the big picture of the workforce, then shame on you, not them. It is your job to engage them with tools and conversations.

Awful Policy 7: Accepting that hard to use software is better because it is more complex and will do more for you. Or, cheaper software is merely simpler or give you a faster, yet lesser return.

You need to select software that fits your organization’s needs and the way your people think and process their requirements.

Oh boy, I could keep going but then this wouldn’t be a blog post, it would be a manifesto or something too scary to read.  If you are harboring out dated, closed minded or dusty traditions shake them off and kick them out of your company.  You know there are some ugly ones out there.  I didn’t even go to the illegal, discriminatory or evil things, that should be a given.  Improve your kingdom (or queendom if we have to be politically correct and in the spirit of the new Commonwealth perspective.

Much of Talent Management can be summed up by paraphrasing Jim Collins in “Good To Great”.  It’s about getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats on the bus. It is paramount that you build the right paths for your talent pool to ensure that critical roles in the company stay filled and filled with the right people. Here are two  key metrics to help you get there:

Successor Pool Coverage:  How deep is your bench for critical roles? This is not just for succession planning in the highest levels of management.  This is about replacement planning throughout the organization.  Can you fill critical roles quickly with ready talent?  What will be the cascading effect of these moves and are you prepared for outside searches where necessary? Monitoring your successor pool or employee bench strength mitigates the severe risks of changes in critical roles and puts you in a good position for long-term strategic goals.

Promotion Rate: Are you measuring your rate of internal hires and how many are promotions?  Are you developing your people enough to move them up? Do you know the Time-to-Fill numbers if you hire externally?  Do you know how long it takes you to fill the positions when there are internal candidates? Promotion rate gives you insight into how well you develop your talent and how prepared you are to deal with personnel changes.

These numbers will help you assess your risk of dangerous open positions.  They will help you measure the effectiveness of your talent management initiatives.  Are you building your talent so that they will be ready to move to the next level or into another positions?  Are you prepared for change in your workforce even in the current structure of the organization?  What happens if you add more products or services, will you have the bench strength to support the new initiatives?

Don’t guess or assume that the investments you have made in talent management tools, training or assessments are paying off.  Measure them and make sure your workforce is prepared for today and for the future.

Cheers,

Lois

Measurement needs to happen in talent management from many perspectives. Two of them are very obvious.

1. We need to measure the success of talent management initiatives.
2. We need to measure current and historic states in order to plan for changes to our talent management initiatives.

The Blame Game

What happens when Training is taking the blame or the credit for the change in trends?  While at the same time the Benefits Department is caught in the same siloed argument of blame or credit.  If you are not conducting holistic workforce analytics and bringing data from as many impactful sources as possible, the real discussions cannot begin.  And when you get right down to it, the measurement is there to start the conversations.  Get the facts and then go exploring.  Learn what people think and feel.  Data in context and with nuance is the real information.

Managing and leading talent is a relationship game as well

In order to find the most impactful leaders (positive or negative), you need to look at the numbers and compare them over time.  The right analytics delivery can make that straight forward and very transparent.  When you compare the trends between leaders, who had the same programs applied to their talent management, you will find which elements are impacting your talent the most. Was it the programs or the leaders themselves.

Now you can start making your changes.

Cheers,

Lois

Think about it – if we are thinking ahead in terms of talent development and management, then we’ll be prepared for change with resources at the ready (to a degree, of course). Take the 9 box, for example. If your company consistently rates and reviews top talent, you benefit in a couple of ways. First, you can easily see where you have gaps that you need to fill. That knowledge alerts you to start looking for talent to add to your bench. Second, you can see who needs talent development in order to be ready for that next opportunity. If someone’s a low-performer, could training or coaching help? If you’ve got a high-performer in their current specialty, is it time to move them into a different position to give them a broader view of the organization and groom them to be a successor?

Speaking of successors…your succession and replacement planning duties are critical to the ABP credo. By investing the time and energy to identify and develop a strong bench of talented candidates for key positions, you (and a prepared candidate) are ready to fill that critical position as soon as it opens up. Be sure to make those plans at least two or even better, three, candidates deep to keep your plan in place even if your top succession candidate unexpectedly becomes unavailable.

Strategically speaking, it’s also important for HR to know where the organization is headed so that they can support those future goals with the necessary talent. When we are a part of conversations regarding new product lines, headquarters relocation, outsourcing, etc, we have the chance to keep both individuals and the larger workforce population ready. You’ll know that a new Product Marketing Manager will be necessary to head up that new line in the not too distant future. And you can share with the relocation committee important workforce considerations – such as nearby colleges that could feed the labor pool. I hope to see more organizations recognizing the value of HR input ahead of the game and including us in more of those meetings.

Meanwhile, remember this mantra: Always. Be. Planning.

Cheers,

Lois

Most interviewing cycles have several phases.  A typical one would have you go through a screening interview with someone in HR, followed by a more in depth interview with the hiring manager, and then possibly talking to his or her boss, followed by conversations with other specialists in the company.  The interviewer in each scenario will have a series of questions that you will, of course, need to be prepared for, but I find that the best candidates distinguish themselves when they prepare questions to ask me.  It is particularly effective if they can introduce some idea of a process or methodology that could help me or my company.   As a tip, next time you’re at this point in an interview try asking “What qualities do you or your company look for when evaluating high potential employees?”

The chances are that the hiring manager will struggle a little to answer that question, and that’s your opening.  If there is a board somewhere, ask permission and go draw a nine-box on it demonstrating how you use the tool to evaluate yourself.  The manager may have heard of a nine-box, but it is likely he or she never used it with any regularity.  This gives you the chance to visually paint a flattering picture of yourself while introducing a useful scoring tool to the manager to run his organization.  I can almost guarantee that he or she will remember you after the interview.

The reason the nine-box is effective is that strong leaders tend to be more visual than oral, so any chance you get to leave an imprint on their mind will likely leave you with a leg up on the competition.   Good hunting!

Our tool allows professionals to…

• Analyze trends at every level of the organization
• Know where your talent is headed and the reason why
• Slice and dice analytics to get to the heart of any workforce problem
• And, create workforce reports you need when you need them

So, take a look and let us know what you think. And afterwards, grab the free white paper below.

We have the “Top Gun” award, which goes to the top salesperson.  The “Wingman” award which is a vote of the sales team for who has helped them the most in getting their deals done.

We have a number of innovation awards to recognize the continuous innovation within the company.  This award has categories for both product innovation and internal business innovation.  There are a lot of nominations for all the categories included in this area.  Some winners have consistent habits of innovation, some a “stroke of genius” style. They are all celebrated here.  We have had awards around our Workforce Planning and Analytics tool.  Recognition for the design of the Talent Pipeline tracking for talent mobility within InSight.  Innovation regarding methods to collect and communicate customer’s requests have been recognized a few times.

Many years ago we added a “Stars” award.  This is in recognition of the employee which receives the most ‘Stars’ from their co-workers for helping outside of their normal day-to-day tasks.  This program is fully peer oriented and is recognized each and every month with lots of praise and ‘ata boys’.  A Platinum star is awarded for activities that directly save the company money.

Last year, we added a “Game Changer” award.  This was in recognition of the individual(s) that bring something to the table that really changes the game for Aquire.  This could be something that changes our mindsets.  It could be from the genius of a new process that sends Aquire into a new market or a new way of doing things.

Our “InTune with the Customer” award is given to the employee(s) with the best connection to our customers.  It centers around listening and learning from our customer base and providing that knowledge back to Aquire, so that we can develop great products and services that our customers need.

We believe that you are going to get results around what you measure (and in this case measurement also includes recognition).  We use this mantra with clients so much when we approach their workforce analytics.  We know it works, because these awards recognize the practices we want to encourage in the organization.  By measuring and acknowledging innovation, team work, risk taking and strong sales numbers, we get these results.  Layer this on top of the regular recognition and discussion regarding customer service and you get a well engaged workforce and one of the “Best Places to Work” environments.  You get Aquire.

It is going to be another exciting awards ceremony!

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!

So, this week we had a roast.  We had a big roast.  Aquire celebrated 6 employees reaching their 10th year with the company.  It was awesome and hysterical.  Because we had a big group, we attached a happy hour at a great restaurant close to the office.  We lined up the people from development, marketing, operations, tech writing and sales.  The jokes were rolling. The stories were fun and heart felt.  The roastees felt loved and appreciated and the newer employees learned more about the legends of our company.

I believe that stories are critical to keep the torch of the culture burning bright while the business grows.  The sales guy, being roasted, stood up and told the story that he just had a conversation with a prospect that had challenged his presentation of caring employees and deep knowledge in the team.  The prospect had commented that one of our competitors was averaging a between 100 to 200% turnover in sales staff.  He asked my employee how long he had been with the company, and our rep proudly responded with “10 years.”  The prospect now has a purchase order in purchasing!

If you don’t think you should celebrate longevity, then you have missed the glorious feeling of coworkers being in the right job for themselves and for the company.  You are missing something that the Aquire employees relish.  Retention of great employees is beautiful!

Cheers,

Lois

P.S. For a more pics of our Roast, visit our Facebook Page www.facebook.com/aquire

Succession planning discussions aren’t limited to HR industry magazines and websites anymore – just Google search “Yankees succession plan” and you’ll get a host of hits from a wide range of sources. Clearly this is more than just buzz – it’s top of mind in the business community, as I believe it should be. A sound succession plan keeps organizations on the path to success.

So why do we hesitate to create that crucial blueprint? Confusion? Dread? Lack of resources and tools? Too many of us get bogged down in the concept of managing the process instead of focusing on the plan itself.

This is a subject that I’ve been tackling head on lately. So, I thought I’d put all of our recent succession planning resources here. I hope you enjoy!

The Fort Worth Business Press recently published my article Succession Planning Needed to Safeguard Future that addresses solutions to the roadblocks many organizations throw in the way of succession planning.

I also blogged about it – Five Succession Planning Steps: Don’t make it harder than it is!, It must have struck a chord, because that entry was picked up and reposted on the Entrepreneurs’ Organization website – a group of more than 7,300 business owners in 42 countries dedicated to sharing business and leadership knowledge.

So now Aquire has developed another resource to help break down the process into manageable steps: Safeguard the Future with Succession Planning – a short presentation that breaks down the process into five easy steps. It’s free to watch on demand with no registration required. What’s holding you back from succession planning? I’d love to know!

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

Written by President and COO of Aquire, Tom McKeown

Athletics can be great training for youths, as they mature into adulthood by providing vital lessons in discipline and hard work.  But, there are different types of sports that require different types of coaching and involvement.  There are individual sports such as track and wrestling, where the participant need only be concerned with maximum achievement in his or her own event and that result is grouped into a total score.  On the other hand there are team sports such as football and basketball where participants play different roles in order to achieve one common result.  The same can be said for departments within companies, consider sales and marketing.

Sales is an individual sport, where you give someone a territory and a quota and say go bring in as much as you can.  Although there is definitely back-up support required here, the individual need not sacrifice any key measurement for the good of the team and their contribution is easily measurable.  Marketing, however, is definitely a team sport with various people having different roles, where often one person completes their part of a project and then passes off to another for the next phase.  Thus the effectiveness of this group is judged by the quality of the end product.

As you grow your company and workforce, how do you evaluate when to add contributors and managers to these different types of groups?  The place to start is with visualized hierarchies and drill down analytics, like those offered by Aquire.  If you conditionally format the sales boxes in your organization chart with a certain color for 100% plus quota attainment and another for under achievement, you can navigate quickly to individual levels and get an indication as to whether you need to add or replace people.  In contrast by identifying responsibilities and group completion metrics in a department view, one might gain insight as to whether the creation of a new position in the marketing chain might accelerate project completion or improve quality.  Finally, by modeling all such proposed changes to the workforce and seeing span of control metrics you can decide whether additional management is justified in either department.

Different teams require different coaches, but knowing how to lead starts with knowing what you have.  Getting the best workforce management tools is why the most successful companies are just that.

Tom McKeown

As teams advance, the World Cup bracket looks like an org chart on its side. Org charts and the team bracket are important to visualize who the resources are and where they are in the process.

In football (I cannot call the World Cup soccer!), often the best plays are made by using your head, and it should be used with strategic intention of getting the ball in the right direction. Just as in Talent Management, the players use their heads to strategically advance the cause in the right direction.

In the first round of the World Cup, a team rotates within their group, testing their various strengths, and the best teams move to the next round. In Talent Management, the best should have the opportunity of career mobility, playing in a number of roles in order to be seen as the best at various skills, thus ready to move to the next level.

In football, if you don’t make the starting lineup, there are very few chances to actually play in the game. There are very few substitutions, but each team member must be ready and as well trained as the starting lineup – because at the critical moments, the coach never knows in which positions he will need to make a substitution. In Talent Management, it is seldom certain which position will need the replacement first. So, all team players need to be trained and at their best game, ready to be the next to advance.

In the World Cup, players may have played for years in a different country, but when the World Cup rolls around, they change teams to play for their country and a shot at international glory. Their once daily teammates may now be their competition, and they know their strategies well. However, the chemistry is different in so many ways. In Talent Management, someone may have been with a company for a very long time, but the opportunity for the better position may make them leap, and often, it is to the competition. This can change the chemistry of a corporate game as well.

To recruit the best for the World Cup, football teams watch for years the talent in their country and how they are playing in various teams. The coach needs a deep bench because injury or other complications may take one player out of the mix. Talent Management teams should be cultivating and coaching their best candidates for succession advancement, recruiting from all eligible teams, so that they have the best candidate when they need to fill a position. They should have a bench built up, so that they have choices. The best candidate last year may not be the best candidate for the current business environment. You have to be ready for change.

Now most of us do not do our jobs in front of the world wide stage, like the largest sporting event on the planet. However, we also don’t step into the limelight of this intensity once every four years. Every day, we need to be training, improving, building strategies and being prepared for the opportunity to shine in our own spotlight. Career mobility, constant learning, reaching stretch goals, and delivering as promised are key performance objectives towards that high potential status that puts you in the big game.

Cheers,

Lois

So, why did I nearly choke on my Diet Coke®? This un-conference, open debate format allows for lots of audience participation at HREvolution. So when a recruiter in the audience piped up and said, “I don’t always hire the best position for the job. It just takes too long and can take too much effort,” she was welcomed to engage. I had my soda in one hand and my iPhone in the other, and I had to put them both down; especially when the next guy chimed in and said, “I work in retail. We have 20% turnover. I often need to just fill a position, not fight for the best person for the job.” My brain and heart were screaming, “Did you ever think the reason you have 20+% turnover is because you don’t take the time to find the best person for the job?!” Now I know why I have to check my receipt at some retail stores to make sure it was calculated right and things were marked correctly. There are likely retail people just hired to fill a slot, and not selected because they would be good for the position or the company.

This session was designed to engage people. However, I really had to work to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t want to derail the wonderful presentation taking the audience through good talent management practices just to challenge the thought processes of a few. The saddest thing…there were nods of recognition by several heads in the room. I did what I seldom do. I stayed quiet. But it has been bugging me for weeks. It reminds me of one of my grandma’s quotes (she collects quotes); “If you don’t have time to do something right the first time, what makes you think you will have time to clean up the mess you created?” I wish I knew the wise person who said that. This issue also reminds me of Bradford Smart’s philosophy in Topgrading and Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street (the shorter, easier to consume version of the philosophy), which defines an “A Player” as the most qualified person available that you can afford for a position. Now, that is beautifully pragmatic and at least a strong effort towards defining the reasonably best person for the job.

Lesson learned here: I will very carefully assess any future recruiters and managers on their perspective of finding the best talent for a position prior to hiring them. Many smart, engaging people I meet could never fit in the Aquire culture because our standards are set very high.

Be careful when you take a large gulp of soda and sit on the edge of your seat when it hits open mike time at an un-conference. Shocking things may be revealed.

Cheers,
Lois

The attendees should not blame the consultants for being on stage. That is what they do. They educate. They coach. They aggregate the information from multiple clients and share the experience with their clients and with their audience. If you have a practitoner speak for 45 minutes, you get the wisdom of one practitoner from, typically, one company, with one point of view. A quality presentation from a consultant or a vendor, assuming they know this is not an opportunity to sell, can give you the wins and losses from multiple companies, industries, and projects. It should be a win/win situation.

I don’t like an infomercial when I attend a conference anymore than the next person. There is a place for the sales pitch, but not during a session track. I know that many vendors have shed a bad light on the reputation of good speakers because they have blown the trust of the audience by thinly veiling their presentation as a content driven story, then selling. That shouldn’t ruin the chance for a good speaker to present and deliver the goods. The bottom line? I love data and lessons learned. Consultants are usually willing to really tell the ugly parts of a story that get glossed over when somebody is talking about a pet project that they hung their career upon.

I have incredible stories of saving companies millions of dollars during a RIF (Reduction in Force), but it is much harder for a customer to stand up and tell a story about how she laid people off faster to save her company money. The corporate communication department doesn’t want employees knowing that their collective loss of a month’s salary was a huge savings for the company and due to a faster and more efficient reorganization. I seldom get a chance to share this story on stage because I don’t have a customer willing to take the risk (in this case, rightfully so) of exposing their story.

I can provide you with dozens of pros and cons for using a 9 Box representation while  working on your succession planning without selling my software. But, I have seldom seen a practitioner presentation give multiple views or methods to reach a broad group in an audience.

If you want more practitioners to speak at conferences, be one of them. Volunteer to speak on a panel if you don’t want to speak on your own. Look at what you are doing that is worth sharing with others and find a way to present it.

The reason conference organizers use vendors and consultants is because they are willing to raise their hand and tell the good stories. HR professionals, usually, are not willing. Even at vendor user conferences, it can be difficult to get users to commit. Their company often won’t let them speak because then it looks like an endorsement. That is a load of #$*&. If you are a satisfied customer and and found a product that serves your company well, then please share the story.

Don’t blame the consultants for being on the stage. Step up to the mic and tell your story. Look for the call for presentation requests for next year’s conferences and be a part of them. Or, when your favorite vendor or consultant asks you to present with them – PLEASE take them up on the offer.

Cheers,
Lois

Are you measuring various elements of your talent strategy and trying anything to desperately put a kick into the numbers to get them to go in the right direction? Or, worse yet, are you not measuring at all, but continually reinventing projects to improve engagement, increase retention, or some other initiative?

You have to start with the corporate strategies and the business goals in place that will support them. Then, you look at what talent strategies will help achieve those goals. From there, you build the projects and initiatives to improve your employee base. If you look at talent strategically, you’re a lot less likely to make wild and nonsensical choices that will “jump the shark” and send your department’s credibility into the equivalent of a Neilsen (© The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.) ratings slide.

Once your solid talent strategy is in place, you can then look at the systems, processes, and technologies that can help you support those plans. You don’t want to buy any type of human resource system that forces you to follow rigid methodologies or processes. Technology is an enabler. You must be the one to define what you want to do. The technology should be flexible. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy smart technology, but it should not be a crutch for not doing your own talent strategy and process building. If you did that – you might just become the guy in a leather jacket who doesn’t look so cool anymore on water skis.

Cheers,
Lois

Recently, I shared some of my chat about Talent Movement analysis with Dr. Kevin Carlson, Associate Professor of Management at Virginia Tech. In Part 2 of our discussion, I asked him about specific metrics to monitor that can improve business performance and results.

Q: We’ve been talking about how talent movement impacts workforce planning and business results. What are some of the key metrics you think organizations should monitor or be analyzing that affect business performance?

A: First, I think part of what we can do is move beyond just the analysis of turnover rates. Turnover rate is the most common metric we have for looking at movement within organizations, but in many cases, that isn’t the only lever that we can use as managers to improve or combat potential costs associated with turnover. We might be able to engage in activities that reduce turnover rates such as improving the quality of management, reducing overall compensation, or changing the design of the jobs to make them more attractive or make them easier to do so people will enjoy them more. But in some cases, we really can’t do anything that’s cost effective to change the rate of turnover. And so, in those cases, we’re much more interested in not necessarily affecting the rate of turnover, but its consequences, or how painful a turnover event is. That includes the impact on other employees and their productivity, as well as the time it takes to bring a new employee up to full productivity.

If you take a look at the other metric other than turnover rate that gets managed most often in organizations, it’s time-to-fill. But not every organization that measures time-to-fill manages time-to-fill. Employers need to balance the length of time a position is vacant with the impact that vacancy has on the organization.

Q: We’ve discussed the costs and impact of filling positions with internal hires. What sort of metrics or analytics do you think companies should be looking at with respect to retention?

A: We’re interested in retention, but we also need to match retention with functionality. Ideally, I want to have long tenures on really high performing employees. In the case of poor performing employees, I’d like to transition them to either a position where they can be a high performer and have high potential, or, if that’s not in my organization, transition them someplace else where they can be a high performer and have high potential.

Q: Finally, what are your thoughts on benchmarking data? Do you find that it’s relevant to employee movement across the organization?

A: The key is to determine if the data speaks to the circumstances in the organization. Without knowing if an average value for some metric across a wide range of organizations is relevant to my organization, I might think I’m much better off than the average company. Or I may think my company is in trouble. Either way, I might make inappropriate decisions as a manager.

There you have it – some food for thought about talent management from a top scholar in the field. Think about how you can take his insight and apply it to your business. Make sure you’re not looking at statistics just for the sake of looking at numbers. Take a moment to see them in context and correlate them to your organization’s specifics to improve your workforce planning strategy and your business performance as well.

Cheers,
Lois

Talent movement can tell you more than you think about your organization, yet many businesses don’t plumb its full depth. Talent movement statistics have more to offer than just the basics of whether your employees are leaving on their terms or yours. With some deeper analysis, you can actually improve business performance. I recently sat down with Dr. Kevin Carlson, Associate Professor of Management at Virginia Tech, to discuss the topic of monitoring talent movement and why it’s a key factor in effective workforce planning and management. He shared his insight into how businesses can analyze employee movement to maximize business performance in specific areas of their organization.

Q: How do you see most businesses managing their talent needs – are they bringing fresh talent in from outside or are they working to challenge and train their current employees to fill positions?

A: Firms tend to prefer to hire from within if they can. They see a lot of benefit in internal hiring, from decreased training times to maintaining company culture and standard practices. It’s essentially adding additional skills to these folks and promoting them up within the organization. BUT, while we may  reduce risk by hiring from within, we need to balance that with finding the best person for the position, whether that’s internally or externally. We have a tendency in many cases to say, “I have an internal candidate that’s good enough,” so we never look outside. And in some cases, we miss opportunities to find an external candidate who’s substantially better than the best internal candidate. I think in many cases we’ll still hire internally. But I believe there’s a very real benefit to expanding the search and not limiting ourselves either internally or externally.

Q: So what would you say are key metrics we should monitor to assess the pros and cons of filling a vacancy internally versus externally?

A: We need to monitor turnover rates, which also leads to us looking at how people come into organizations and positions and the associated costs. An employee departure causes a certain amount of turbulence, from the length of time a position is vacant to the learning period where a new person is learning the position, establishing relationships and becoming effective within the organization. An outside hire causes a certain amount of turbulence.

But, in most cases, a high-level employee’s departure or promotion within the organization causes a vacancy that is filled internally. That triggers a whole series of internal promotions and transfers as multiple employees move up or transfer to fill each newly vacated position initiated from that first internal promotion. I think we don’t do a good job of recognizing the associated turbulence that goes with internal transfers.

Keep in mind that we typically have far more internal transfers than departures. If you ignore all the associated turbulence, hiring from within seems preferable. But if one internal move creates five or six other sets of moves, you’ve got a different cost equation associated with an internal promotion rather than an external hire. That doesn’t mean that we should prefer one to the other, but we need to think about the entire cost structure, including that turbulence caused by internal transfers.

Well, that is but a drop in the bucket of Dr. Carlson’s insight. Look for more of my talk with him coming soon. How many of you are filling your positions internally vs. externally? What benefits have you seen of one over the other? Something to think about.

Cheers,
Lois

A review of The 30-Minute Guide to Talent and Succession Management, by Doris Sims

Talent and succession management may be unfamiliar ideas to many business leaders, but when they are likened to more recognizable business concepts – like financial budgeting and sales pipelines – they not only quickly become clear, but clearly necessary. The 30-Minute Guide to Talent and Succession Management by Doris Sims does exactly this; concisely demonstrating how important and easy it is for every organization to create and maintain talent and succession management plans. And, yes, it really can be read in about half an hour. 

The book is surprisingly comprehensive for its relative brevity, covering everything from basic definitions of talent, succession and performance management, to teaching how to identify top talent, to demonstrating the use of assessment tools like the elegantly simple 9-Box Chart. Throughout, Sims reinforces her forward-thinking philosophy that organizational success depends just as much on the development and retention of top talent as it does on good financial planning. In Sims’ own words:

“If you are able to identify and retain top talent, and provide an environment that fosters engagement and productivity, EVERYTHING else you are striving to achieve for your organization will naturally follow.”

The beauty of this book is that it not only provides an easy-to-follow roadmap for achieving this organizational ideal, but also a compelling case for business leaders to start viewing talent management as the equal of established business processes like new product development, advertising, mergers and acquisitions, etc. After all, who better to develop better products, advertise company services, and navigate change than an organization full of loyal and efficient top talent? Likewise, as Sims points out, talent management is a lot like risk management: a process that analyzes data, helps make informed decisions, and reduces risk – in this case, the risk of leadership vacancy, which can seriously damage an organization’s momentum.

Even though the book can be read in just 30 minutes, it still manages to serve as a comprehensive desk reference with straightforward indexing of key points. In addition, good use of graphics and charts throughout the book not only reinforce the concepts described, but could also easily serve as basic implementation models.

Kind Regards,
Candi Varisco

There are a number of challenges facing the HRIS and ERP vendors in the Talent Management space. I believe the 5 items listed here will make it increasingly difficult for them to sell their Talent Management tools.

1. Cost – which, for both the time and the license of ERP talent management, appears to be exponentially higher than alternatives in the market. If you cannot provide significantly more and better functionality then you are not likely to claim the larger money. Vendors can’t claim brand and stability either when the focused Talent Management players have famously strong brands as well.
2. Legacy mindset – Talent Management is a rapidly evolving industry. The HRIS vendors are often restricted in their development to fit the paradigm of their existing products. This isn’t a good way to pursue a burgeoning industry.
3. Different buyers – the top executive might be the same buyer for both Talent Management technology and HRIS systems, but the influencers, users and often the decision makers at a lower level of the organization, are different. The strategic thinkers in the Talent Management divisions of companies are separating themselves from the more tactical, even though critically important, transactional folks.
4. ERP vendors design for HR – even with the development of MSS or ESS systems, the design is focused on the benefit it delivers the HR department. Talent Management is a business owner user and is needed for their benefit in developing, evaluating, managing, and planning for their workforce. This is a different paradigm than the HRIS vendors are accustomed to on a day-to-day basis.
5. Long development and implementation cycles – vendors can’t make changes fast enough to keep pace with the evolving growth of this infant industry of Talent Management. Changes that address pressing business needs must happen quickly.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,
Lois

Related blogs:

8 Essential Questions for Every Software Purchase

As software options grow from “integrated” solutions to “best of breed” solutions, so many considerations must be taken into account. The cost of an integrated talent management suite may or may not be worth the one-stop shopping and support. The succession planning feature in the last version of the HRMS really has to be worth the longer implementation cycle it requires. All of this, and so much more, requires a great deal of thought and due diligence.

Some members of the human resource technology market use organizations like IHRIM to seek advice from their peers online or at their conference. Some organizations attend tradeshows by vendors or the Human Resource Executive’s HR Technology Conference to do their shopping. Everybody asks a multitude of questions of their vendors and perspective vendors to support their decisions. I have created a list of the top 8 items I think companies should add to their consideration when evaluating a software company. I think these points are all powerful components of the customer experience you will have once you make a software selection.

1. What is the tenure of the developers on the development team, and has there been a lot of turn over?

The experience on the team should foster a depth of understanding of the code and the customer issues involved. This also speaks of the respect the company gives to their important assets and how hard they work to keep their people.

2. What is the tenure of the support team?

Depth of knowledge of the product can be taught more rapidly than some can imagine. The reason this is a good question is that it demonstrates the respect the company gives to their support people, to make them feel it is worth staying in a mentally stimulating but exhausting job. When you are handling support calls, you are always “on.” You are on the “stage” even if the stage you’re performing on is only through the phone.

3. What percentage of technical support calls are due to people wanting to know how to do something and what percentage is for bugs and software that will perform as advertised?

This gives an indication whether or not customers are always finding bugs and problems in the software.

4. How are features and products designed and enhancements considered, and how involved are the executives?

It’s imperative to find evidence of customer participation in this process. There should also be a mechanism for sales people to bring requests and ideas into the development team and have them taken seriously. Enhancements and features are often specifics gathered from many sources, and the better plugged into the market the employees are, the more ideas can be gathered for consideration. Sometimes products or new features need to be designed before the customers realize they need them. The visionaries within the company decide how that occurs.

5. Who has owned the software code; how many times has the executive leadership changed for a product or a company?

It’s important that at least some of the developers on the team now also wrote the product for earlier versions. Let me put it this way, have you ever heard of a Monet being finished by another painter? Other than a relay, can anybody else finish a race for you? It is not always possible, but I like some consistency on the teams, somewhere along the line.

6. Have there been any litigation issues with customers?

That can happen even within the best companies. But something must have changed to prevent it from happening again.

7. Is the company actively involved in their industry?

Companies should give back to the community that buys from them. Organizations have to learn from their market place by participating in conferences, committees, associations, etc. This shows a willingness to learn and a respect for the market place.

8. Can you try out the software before you buy it to test for usability and stability?

Maybe some software is functional within a pilot program, maybe some might need a lab environment for testing. Be creative to verify that things are not just smoke and mirrors. You can seldom expect to work with a fully functional implementation without an investment, but the company must ensure your comfort level with the tools you will be investing your time and money on.

There are so MANY additional elements of a software evaluation. These are just a few that I think need to be added to the mix.

Cheers,
Lois

If you don’t think the average employee is creative, think again. Consider just who in the world is creating all those cool YouTube Broadcast Yourself^TM videos, customizing cars, growing the scrapbook industry, blogging, and learning how to cook from one of the fastest-growing segments on TV, cooking shows. Our people are creative.

How are we tapping that creativity to improve our businesses? And if you do tap into their creativity, won’t it lead to further employee engagement?

I have heard some objections to soliciting employee ideas, and often the excuse of “then if we don’t implement their ideas they’ll think we don’t listen.” So the company doesn’t do anything. What if employees were submitting hundreds or thousands of ideas? They wouldn’t expect all of them to be implemented. If you ask for both the wild and pragmatic you will see some things you can use. Toyota received an astounding 540,000 employee suggestions in one year alone!

So now Gary Hamel and I challenge you – tap into the creativity of your employees. It just might be amazing.

Cheers,
Lois

Talent can see things and do things others can’t or won’t see. People will get some work done and collect a paycheck.

Talent will pour themselves into work that has a purpose and vision they understand. People want to work for a pay check, and a job is something they are supposed to do.

Which are you hiring, people or talent? Which is your recruiting process designed for?

Think about it.

Cheers,
Lois

A Families and Work Institute (FWI) study shows that overworked employees are more likely to make mistakes and be angry at their employers and colleagues who appear not to work as hard. We all know these people are fun to work with, don’t we? These employees have higher stress levels, experience symptoms of clinical depression, report poorer health, and neglect themselves. Their families are not likely to be very happy with them or their teammates, either. Yet the same study said that a full 1/3 of the Americans in the study had no intentions of taking all of their earned vacation time!

We go through the exercise at the end of June each year. Who has taken a reasonable amount of their holiday time or at least scheduled a fair amount of their time during the summer or early fall? If there are hoarders or workaholics who are not taking their vacations, their managers discuss the need for time off with these employees so they can get a new perspective on the world, spend time with their family, or do charity work. I had one employee who was single and told me that she didn’t want to take time off because she didn’t want to spend the money to travel, and she didn’t have family to spend the time with. I encouraged her to take the time to help Habitat for Humanity® build houses in the area. She took the week off and loved it.

In addition to just being away from the daily routine, I also believe that everyone should travel out of their home country to see a little bit of the world. So, this year I am on a mission to get 100% of my employee base to at least get a passport to open up the opportunity. Most probably already have a passport, but for those who don’t, we’re going to make it easy for them by going through the process in groups, if they like.

As an employee I took my vacations; as a business owner I did not until I was taught how by my courses with The Strategic Coach® program. Now it’s more valuable to me and my company that I take time off. (Stop snickering about why you want me out of the office, guys!) I have to push the reset button once in awhile, all humans do. My team knows they must take their time off, because it is a win-win for everyone.

Have you scheduled your time off? By the way, I wrote this one before I left on my summer vacation. More to come when I get back.

Cheers,
Lois

This image is important in the search for talent, helping us nurture a rapidly growing company like Aquire. Aquire’s talent management includes the development of a great company culture. This helps us:

• keep employees (we have incredibly low turnover)
• get referrals from existing employees for new talent (more than 50% of our employees have come from direct referrals)
• convince the candidate to whom we make an offer that Aquire is the employer of choice

The three points noted above are some of the measurements of our success. We also measure it through independent surveys like SHRM’s Best Places to Work survey, where we have placed in the published list every year our employees have been surveyed.

So, obviously, I take our Employment Brand very seriously. I wanted to write a blog entry to help my readers improve your Employment Brand, as well as help you build ideas and a plan, as so many of you are going through workforce transitions – workforce growth, workforce reductions, or the colossal mergers and acquisitions integration. I did a little research to determine what I should include beyond my own expertise in building your ideal org chart.

My research led to a VERY eloquent article on Building Your Employment Brand, and I decided that the best thing to do is direct you to an obvious expert in the field, Ryan Estis, Senior VP & Chief Talent Strategist at NAS Recruitment Communications. His article, Employment Brand Architecture, 8 Steps to Becoming an Employer of Choice, is fantastic – a must read for anyone who has influence or involvement in hiring, corporate communication, or employee retention. Please read, implement, and enjoy.

Thank you, Ryan, for such a great guide.

Great sources to help you articulate these processes include Marcus Buckingham’s Now Discover Your Strengths and Dan Sullivan’s “Unique Ability,” written by Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller. It doesn’t matter where you are in the org chart, there are some things that, if you could delegate them, someone else would love to do them. If you enjoy it – you’ll do a better job. Everyone wins.

This produces a team that really gels, and realizes the value of every member and what they bring to the organization. They will support each other. This process also works in leadership development but that’s a topic for another day.

This method of job description or task development also helps with recruiting and employee retention. If you really know exactly what a person will need to do in their job, it’s easier to qualify a candidate and find the best match. The best match for the job will stay longer, too.

This benefits employees because they can pursue other needs or interests (a little more about this later). And it benefits Deloitte because the organization keeps talented people from leaving permanently – less brain drain, fewer recruiting fees, and the practice attracts the best and brightest of balanced people.

I’d even go so far as to say it benefits society. Employees may need to “dial back” for a number of reasons: maybe to personally raise your children as preschoolers and avoid becoming a stranger to them; (happier family, good for society). On a personal note, my husband, sister, and I took very active roles in helping my Mom and my mother-in-law in their final years of battling cancer. All of us benefited from the extra time and love shared.

You might want to take the time to pursue a mission sabbatical. Former Microsoft Employee, John Wood, took a sabbatical that led to “Room to Read” (www.Roomtoread.org) one of the most outstanding non-medical outreaches I have ever encountered. One of our customers, Eli Lilly, has seen employees take sabbaticals to 3rd world countries to provide medical care. I am sure the adrenalin rush from those trips brought new fervor and ideas back to Indianapolis.

On the same panel as Ms Allen was Margaret Robertson from Withers/Withers Bergman, an impressive law firm that allows career professionals to restructure their jobs for more flexible time. They were about to lose a talented man with highly sought after expertise because the demand of his current job did not allow him to maintain a practice schedule as a concert classical musician. A close-minded manager would have challenged his dedication to the firm. An enlightened manager asked him to take advantage of the firm’s flex time policies. The employee said he thought that was only for “new moms.” He still works for the law firm – and continues to play concerts.

Something to think about.