You have likely heard the whining or bashing around the topics of “Why isn’t HR doing more with Workforce Planning and Workforce Analytics?”  If you are in these conversations you know there is a lot of banter about “people-people” not pursuing the science of the numbers in analytics; or that HR has a fear of the numbers, etc.

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 read more »

Guest post by Alvin Ee, Aquire Product Support

For the past year or so, the business news has reported that, although the U.S. economy was struggling, productivity was increasing.  Businesses were making the most of the people and resources that survived the layoffs and cuts in expenditures.  That was always the silver lining.

Then, in August, I heard a report that productivity had started to dip.  More recently, on October 18, Bloomberg reported that “worker output per hour has fallen for two consecutive quarters…” The figures are derived from manufacturing jobs but I think it is true across the board.  Look around your workplace. Do you notice that everyone’s plate seems to be overflowing?  Productivity is waning and its cause is productivity fatigue.  read more »

Just in time for baseball’s post-season, the film version of the book Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman, is due in theaters next month.  Moneyball is based on the true story of Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics and his attempt to use analytics to build a winning baseball team with limited resources.

If you are in HR, when you see the movie (and you will, it’s Brad Pitt), you won’t be able to get the comparisons to business world workforce planning and analytics out of your head.  Moneyball, written by Michael Lewis, articulates the challenges faced by Oakland Athletics GM, Billy Bean:

1. Through experimentation, find those factors that can be used to reliably predict success.
2. With this new ability to predict success, go recruit/procure/develop those success factors in the most affordable way possible.
3. Put the pieces together to form a winning team.

Aren’t these some of the same challenges we seek to solve in workforce planning and analytics?  Of course they are!

Save some money for your company by skipping that leadership development course and take your team out for a movie and popcorn.  What will they learn from Moneyball?

1. Challenge established thinking.  You can’t create a competitive advantage if you do things the same way everybody else does.
2. Use the scientific method to test what works best.  The time for gut-feel management has passed.
3. If you are successful, others will copy you.  But when you build your competitive advantage through people, it is much harder to copy.

I remember playing baseball as a kid and hearing teammates encourage a batter’s discretion by shouting “a walk is as good as a hit.”  Well, no kid thinks getting a walk is as good as a hit. Individual players have always been measured on their ability to hit the ball and reach base safely (batting average).  The point is that THE TEAM benefits as much from a walk as from a hit.  The result is a runner on first base, either way you accomplish it.  Billy Beane was one of the first to recognize and reward contributions to TEAM metrics above individual metrics in order to achieve team goals.

This is just another example of analytics changing the game.  Enjoy the movie!

Cheers,

Andrew Courtois

No one likes regrets.  It’s that feeling that we could have done better.  We should have done something different.  It creates stories that begin with “If only we had…”.

The discomfort of having to admit that we didn’t do things right often leads employers to measure all attrition together and not break the number out to Regret Attrition and Good or Acceptable Attrition.  The managers often know the stories of ‘The one that got away…” when a key player quits.  It is critical that a company track  the loss trends of valuable, high performers or high potential employees. read more »

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.   read more »