This week at our WISDOM 2012 Conference in Dallas, we invited a select group of analysts and business leaders to see a preview of the latest version of our workforce analytics solution, Aquire InSight 3.0.

Not only did we show off InSight 3.0’s most exciting new features, we gave those attendees an opportunity to give us some great feedback on the application—feedback that we’ll take into account before InSight 3.0 is released.

The key new features and benefits of InSight 3 previewed to this exclusive group of individuals include most importantly a “Business-First design” with state of the art boardroom-ready dashboards for executives to keep everyone accountable for the performance and costs of the workforce by monitoring and tracking key performance indicators.  Whereas most analytics packages provide only discovery tools InSight 3 delivers accountability via goal tracking as well as metric and analytic discovery capabilities.  InSight 3 makes it simple to set goals and track workforce results to goals.  Executives can be alerted if any key performance indicator goes out of threshold or is simply trending in the wrong direction.  InSight 3 also delivers an innovative ad-hoc workforce planning function allowing planners to predict headcount supply and demand and to build various scenarios to fill resulting talent gaps.

Be on the lookout for our formal InSight 3.0 announcement coming soon!

Cheers,

Ross Melbourne

We have been answering these questions and many more at the WISDOM 2012 Conference in Dallas this week. During my keynote address yesterday morning, I set the stage for HR professionals and executives to learn how to gain a competitive edge in their business with data-driven strategic workforce planning. I believe that the way we structured WISDOM 2012 to approach workforce planning is unique in that Aquire understands that people cannot be industrialized.

Thanks to industrialization and information technology, HR departments categorize employees as resources. However, as I mentioned in my keynote address: “People are your only sentient resource.”

During WISDOM 2012, we discussed how to measure your sentient resources. It’s about how the measurement of key metrics must show the before and after, how mapping historical data to the trends can tell you why people are leaving the company, the importance of aligning your workforce planning with your company’s strategy, and finally, how to talk to decision makers in an organization to make that happen.

Our company’s solutions provide your organization with workforce analytics—but in the context of workforce planning, we know it’s very early on in making this information available and understandable for audiences beyond the analyst. I’m excited to talk more about this topic and many other issues facing workforce planning professionals during WISDOM 2012. I hope you join the conversation on this blog!

Cheers,

Lois

If you give a mouse a cookie…he will ask for…

It is an amazing children’s book and every one of you with kids under 16 have read it.

This is also a great management story. If you give a manager a metric, she is going to want to another one to go with it.  So, if you give her a total headcount, she is going to want it segmented by location. Once she has it segmented by location, she is going to want to filter it by key performers. If you give her key performers, she is going to want to know the history of their career path, where they were hired from, and how many of their co-key performers have already left the company and why.  When she has all those metrics, she is going to want to know the trends of key performers over the last five years and why they all report to so that she understand where they fit in the organization.

The point is, you can’t run the business on just reports.  You need access to data in the context in which it is important.  You need to be able to see the information over time and in the context of the organization’s structure.  You need to be able to slice it and dice it to fit your needs.

Spreadsheets and reports with rows and rows of columns are not enough.  Your decisions makers must be able to drill into the data and evaluate the information from different angles so that they can come back around to making their decisions in an informed way.

Don’t stick them with flat data.  Give it depth.  It might help if you serve it with a cookie too…

Cheers,

Lois Melbourne, GPHR

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/16/opinion/stone-leave-work-day/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

The article is a good, fair piece.  But the challenge I have is that it doesn’t go far enough.  Working 9 – 5:30  should not be considered flexible hours.  This is what should be the normal life span of a day’s work.  It should not be the exception that you get to go home at night before everyone else is tucked in to bed.  If companies are designing deadlines and jobs to fit the “all or nothing” time commitment model, they are poor planners, poor members of their community, and their business model is broken.

Some businesses think they have to work people that hard to get their money’s worth.  How about providing a good wage and a reasonable workload and you will get excellent fresh workers with a happy mental balance.  I hear executives complain about the distractions that divorces create for the workplace, yet they do not take responsibility for the fact that they worked the employee so many hours that their family life fell apart.  Other costs of poor design in the management of a company’s workforce are the losses suffered due to illness, substance abuse or burnout.

Of course, there are times when many jobs need extra effort and extra time poured into them.  Not every deadline and every project can be pushed out far enough to fit into a 40 hour workweek, including those in executive management.  Nor do all people have the same circadian rhythm and want to work the standard hours.  However, if your organization has their jobs designed around a permanent commitment of your staff to stay in the office or on the job 60 or 70 plus hours a week, you have a significant problem.  You need to take a serious look at why this is built into your business model and if it is really sustainable, not to mention the consideration of whether or not it is the right thing to do.  Only by understanding what it means to have a true work-life balance can a company sustain a productive and satisfied workforce.

Cheers,

Lois

He was hot under the collar and he was right.  Workforce data is a bad issue for nearly every company on the planet of any size.  It happens when data collection tools are difficult to use. People hate them and will do as little work within them as possible.  It happens when policies change and data is not collected retroactively, so there is often large quantities of missing data.  It happens when staff turns over and training doesn’t include the importance of standardized data entry.  It happens for many reasons.

The challenge our new friend at SAPHR was angry about was that this known issue is huge and vendors don’t want to touch it with a 30 foot pool.  They want the client to clean up the data.  Aquire’s innovators have recognized this problem for nearly 2 decades and chose to do something about it a long time ago.  We know that clients need help with dirty data, missing data and inconsistent data.  So we built tools to help.

Aquire directly helps clients identify what data may be missing in their HR systems.  We have methods to systematically clean up subsets of data and provide easy to use tools to identify and distribute the data clean up that must be done manually.  When the data is visible, it is so much easier to clean up and to seek the appropriate owners for accountability to the data.

Sometimes, we have become the system of record for pieces of data, but often we are cleaning the data and then bringing it back to the system of record, shiny, new and once again useful.  We have seen the issue and helped with an enormously wide variety of talent management and HR systems.

It is critical that new systems are fed good data; that decision makers have clean data in their analytics and reports and that employees are represented in the best way when you are doing evaluations, succession planning, reorganizations or future scenario planning.  This is what it takes to make good decisions.  You owe it to the company and to the employees.  Only use clean data, so only use vendors that know what that means, care and help you do something about it!

Cheers
Lois

There are many holes one can poke in this analogy, but open your mind and try and picture a way to bring playoff efficiency to selecting the best people to fill your company’s positions.  The major conferences in college basketball are the most experienced with how tournament selection works, and their leading contenders have been tested week in and week out against teams that will also make it to the tournament.  Look at these as your internal candidates to fill positions.  They won’t suffer any culture shock in playing for the title, but may not have what it takes to get beyond the first two rounds.  But, usually they are solid bets and are given a shot.

The smaller Division 1 conferences and independent teams are usually not as tested.  Often only one team, the conference champion gets to go from the smaller leagues, and an independent – if there are any left – has to rely on the large conference teams agreeing to play them during the regular season, so they can show their stuff on national television well enough to get noticed.  In other words they have to crash the party by bringing something unique to the table.  Those represent your outside candidates for positions.

Once you have picked your elite field you let them square off against each other for the privilege of running your company.  If you hire and develop well you will have the equivalent of Mike Krzyzewski (Duke), Roy Williams (North Carolina), and Bill Self (Kansas) regularly on board helping drive record revenues and profits with the occasional Brad Stevens (Butler University) brought in to add new ideas.  Granted no solution is perfect, but when in doubt I favor open competition and leaving it all on the court.

An Avid Fan,

Tom McKeown

Announcing the release of a new version of a product is always an exciting time, but announcing it in Las Vegas is even more exciting!  Aquire will be exhibiting at the upcoming SAP HR Conference in Las Vegas next week, and we are proud to announce the release of InSight 2.0 for SAP.  If you will be at this show, stop by our booth and be the first to see the awesome new features that come along with this release.  Not only are there new key features within the award-winning InSight Solution itself, but also for the first time, Aquire is able to provide executives that are running SAP with the power to visualize critical trends and the business events that influence those trends so they can quickly improve the profitability and performance of their organization.

We are looking forward to a great week in Las Vegas, and aside from all the glitz and glamor that just comes with the city, there are so many great opportunities to network and socialize with your peers during the discussion forums, or while sharing a cocktail with the HR experts at the evening receptions.  Of course, Aquire’s experts are always willing to discuss HR’s hottest topics over a glass of wine, so if the trade show scene is a bit too hectic for you, don’t hesitate to grab some time after hours with one of our reps at the show!

While at the Aquire booth (#225), there are some exciting new things that you won’t want to miss! Aquire recently re-branded with the foundation of our messaging being “Wisdom Within”.  So this year, the theme of our booth is WISDOM.  Not only will our experts impart their wisdom about our products, but we will also be handing out snippets of wisdom in the form of fortune cookies.  Ever wonder what the future would look like for HR at your organization?  Now you can find out!  All the answers are in the cookies (along with a chance to win a brand new iPad if you scan the QR code inside!). So make sure that you stop by to see us, and you just might walk away a little wiser.

Our WISDOM 2012 event is May 6-8 in Dallas, and I’m excited that we’re trying something unique this year by hosting two educational conference tracks in parallel.

One track will cater to the Aquire user community. If you’re already benefiting from any of our solutions, the Aquire User Conference is the perfect opportunity to get more value from your investment. Not only will you get hands-on training with our current solutions, you’ll get insights our product roadmap directly from our product team along a sneak peek at some of the exciting new solutions we’ll be introducing in the near future.

This year we’re introducing a separate conference track that deep dives into workforce planning and analytics. Targeted at the HR professional and business executive, the sessions in this conference are all about building actionable workforce planning frameworks. The industry experts we’ve tapped for this track like Patti Johnson, CEO of PeopleResult and Pat Chadbourne, Director of Strategic Workforce Planning and Talent Analytics, at Ingersoll Rand, will share real world examples of the tools, processes and techniques to align your planning and analytics with your business goals.

Speaking of industry experts, I’m pleased to welcome Doug Reed, the VP of HR at global real estate services powerhouse CB Richard Ellis, as a WISDOM 2012 keynote speaker. Don’t miss his “Presenting Your Workforce Plan to the Board/Executives,” an insider’s view of the key data points every decision maker wants to see before committing budget to a plan. Doug’s keynote is a must-attend for any HR professional that deals with C-level executives.

As always, you’ll feel the love from the Aquire team: experts from every department will be on hand in every session and in both conferences. We always enjoy networking with the community at our user conferences and if you register before March 16, you’ll get $250 off the regular price with our early bird discount.

Please join us for WISDOM 2012 at the W Hotel in Dallas this May!

Cheers,

Lois

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

This time of year, HR pros (and all other business professionals) are being bombarded by various conferences, trade events, and the like.  For the most part, they all sound appealing, if not spectacular and sometimes glamorous with destination cities, celebrities and riveting keynote speakers. Is it about the content? Or is it your favorite 80’s band—reunited “one-last time” just for THIS special occasion?  Or, the chance to go to the fabulous “insert your dream city here”? How can you refuse?  You are torn.  You want to attend but, how do you sell to the Boss?

When proposing conferences, here is a list of “Don’ts and Do’s”:

#1 Do not sell the desination.

“May I go to Vegas to attend a 3-4 day conference?”

***Translation: Will you pay for me to go to VEGAS…..for a WEEK…Vacation…

#2 Do not focus on Cost:

“It only cost $1500..”

***Translation: It costs $1500 plus travel & expenses, plus a week of work…

#3 Do not sell the entertainment

“All of my favorite rock stars/actors/actresses are booked for the week.

***Translation:  Vacation…Vacation…Vacation…Paid-vacation

#4 Do focus on content:

“Hi Boss…There is a Conference in June that is offering 24 sessions specific to our 2012 Strategy. ‘Expert A’, ‘Expert B’, and ‘Expert C’ will outline all of the industry’s best practices regarding….”

#5 Do focus on Learning & Development:

“By attending, we will learn the real-world tips from ‘Big Name Company A’s  strategy”.  Big Company B’ will be also illustrating their obstacles & pains. By attending these sessions, we’ll also be able to receive/ update our “xxxxx” certifications. By the way, with regard to that new system upgrade—we will also receive hands-on training on the latest release…for  free!”

#6 Do focus on the future:

“At the conference, ‘Big Name’ will be addressing the hottest trends.  Attending these sessions will insure we are in the know and well prepared for ‘xxxxx’.”

#7 Do focus on efficiencies & ROI:

“Through the education, development, & training we will receive, we will be able to fast-track this upgrade by 2 months, saving us ‘$$$$$’ in time and services.  With the new system in place, we will be able to then accomplish ‘xxxx’in half-the time.  In the end, we can then focus on ‘yyyy,’ giving us the strategic advantage we have been searching for…

Other Hints:

#8 The Zero Expense Show: Vendors typically budget to meet and entertain prospects.  Meet the vendors, have a nice meal, and if you are uber-lucky, you may even learn something. Always, invite your boss.  It’s great to learn together.

#9 Have a Good Time, but It’s Not a Paid Vacation

Act & spend as if as you are paying for your own way, be frugal.  Don’t abuse the expense and you’ll have the budget again for the next show.

You should list and publicize your measurable goals for attending.  Definitely, schedule a post-show briefing.  Finally, schedule some time to teach the team the lessons you learned at the conference.

Okay…With that in mind, what shows are you attending this year?

I hear the cast of the Breakfast Club is kicking-off an event in New York in the Spring!

Better yet, if you are wanting to learn how to build and deploy your Workforce Planning & Analytics Corporate Strategy, you will not want to miss Wisdom2012!

2011 was another tremendous year for all of us at Aquire, and the press took note. Take a look at the top Aquire articles of 2011, written by industry experts and our own, Lois Melbourne. Also, keep up to date on the latest HR Industry News and HR Events on our website.

Rules of Engagement: How to Retain Your Most Engaged Employees - “84 percent of employees plan to look for a new position,” Lois Melbourne provides tips on how to retain top talent

Bill Kutik Radio Show - Leading HR Technology Analyst, Bill Kutik, sits down with Lois Melbourne to discuss the value and tactics of workforce analytics. Listen to the recording here!

The New ‘Office’ – Aquire CEO, Lois Melbourne, the pros, cons, and talent management strategies for telecommuting in the modern workforce environment.

The Rapid Video-Gamification of Business – It may not be Mario and Ms. Pacman running the show, but game dynamics  are making an impact in today’s businesses, explains Fast Company Blogger, Kaihan Krippendorff.

Workforce Reorganization – Far too often companies do not place enough time and effort in to the planning process before a reorganization. Lois Melbourne discusses the right steps to a successful reorg.

Numbers Game: Companies Utilize Data to Predict Workforce Needs – Workforce.com writer, Ed Frauenheim, discusses the state of workforce analytics and its growing importance.

To “Low-Ball” or Not to “Low-Ball” -While low-ball allary offers, “may lower costs initially, such a practice could cost an organization a lot more as time goes on,” explains Kristen Frasch of HRE Online, as she discusses with Lois Melbourne.

Talent Management – Kristy O’Hara at Smart Business interviews Lois Melbourne on how to effectively manage your talent.

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.

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.  In the Bloomberg article, according to Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington,  “Output per employee hour will continue to lag behind until companies start spending more on technology and ideas that boost production without requiring more input.”

The manufacturing world has metrics down to a T – information as granular as how many bad screws were rejected and how many turns the good ones will take before they break.  This type of information isn’t easily captured in the non-manufacturing realm but is vital intelligence to have when upper management must make decisions on a company’s direction.  Rather, information that gets percolated up the chain tends to be less than objective, colored by the person gathering and disseminating it.  Ross Melbourne, Aquire’s CTO often says, “It is more important to carefully select things to measure which directly affect your goals.  So, first decide what you want to improve or fix and then decide on how you will actually measure if improvements actually occur. “

Just as in manufacturing, efficiency is key in non-manufacturing jobs .  When your workforce has reached a plateau in productivity, what can you do to get to the next level?  Improving upon existing best practices, processes, and tools will definitely be a boost. Knowing where and how resources are used becomes even more important to upper management.  How do you currently track resources and productivity?
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Today, we had a company-wide discussion and departmental breakout sessions to discuss what Wisdom is at Aquire, and what it means to our employees.  I was going to synthesize the message for this blog post, but the value is really in the direct quotes from the Aquire staff.  These are unrehearsed, rapid fire brainstorming snippets of thought.  I am so proud of them and impressed by them, I am sharing directly, without synthesis.  They are not all inclusive, but they are good ones.

“Wisdom feels synonymous to the passion for the job and customer.  Everybody lives this every day at Aquire!”

“Wisdom is knowing your gaps between your current state and your desired state.”

“Wisdom gives you the ability to make the right choice and not just a choice.”

“Wisdom is understanding the need behind the problem.”

“Wisdom is the culmination of life experiences, both positive and negative.  You should learn from both.”

“Wisdom goes back to action.  It is not what they know, it is how they act and what they do.  You can be smart and still do foolish things.”

“Don’t confuse knowledge with wisdom.  Knowledge is information.  Wisdom is the ability to know how to act upon the knowledge you have.”

“You can share your wisdom, only if the recipient already has the ability to receive and assimilate it.”

“Wisdom is looking at how the need and the solution will fit in the big picture, so that the right action is taken.”

“Wisdom is finding a solution that can solve a problem for many, not just fixing a symptom.”

“We must ask questions to put things into context.  Without context and experience, wisdom can’t be drawn upon.”

“Wisdom helps us, help people address their problems in a different way.”

“Applying collective wisdom allows better solutions.  It often requires a lot of information to build the wisdom around an issue.”

“Experience can be painful but it often leads to wisdom.”

“Based on wisdom we have established our recommendations. Those recommendations gathered from many sources become best practices.”

“One of the wise things that have been taught to me at Aquire is that we are not just here to sell you products.  We are here to solve your problems.”

“Wisdom is all about the journey; our department has 87 years of experience in within Aquire.  We want and are willing (drive) to participate and share WHAT we know.”

“Wisdom enables us to be our clients’ GPS.  We learn from the past in order to position our customers in the path of compelling events.”

Cheers,
Lois and Team

Guest Post by Nora Murphy, Aquire Workforce Planning Analyst

Have you ever noticed that there seems to be a great deal of confusion on the basic terminology involved in workforce analytics?  What is a measure and how is it different from pure data?  Is an indicator equivalent to a HR metric?  And finally, how do these tie into analytics in the world of human capital?

We have all heard these terms being used interchangeably.  While the differences between them can seem negligible, you have to apply the terminology appropriately if you want to confidently engage in discussions related to any organizational activity.

So, how does data become an integral part of analytics?  Below is a brief discussion on understanding its progress.

A measure is no more than data that is collected with no specific reason or purpose.  For example, the number of terminations in January 2011 is an example of a measure.  How do we know if 100 terminations a month is good or bad?  We don’t – a single measure has very little value without context.

Suppose we track terminations monthly over a five-year period between 2006 and 2011.  Now we have some perspective and can see, perhaps, that our terminations have been creeping up.  We are looking to capture a specific quality to the data.  Whenever we measure something with the goal of gauging some quantifiable component of a company’s performance, whether it is revenues or terminations, we are talking about a metric.

Let’s take this one step further.  Now we are examining the five-year trend of terminations which gives us a basic understanding of the relationship between our monthly numbers.  However, the fact that terminations have been trending up does not give us the complete picture of how well (or not well) the organization is doing with respect to attrition.  Do we know, for example, if the increase is attributable to the growth in our employee count due to our recent expansion efforts?  Or are members of our staff leaving because they are unhappy with management?  Measuring terminations against a baseline such as the average number of employees or budgeted terminations gives us significantly more context.  Termination rates and actual vs. budgeted terminations are both indicators.  They are metrics that act as guides to help assess the performance of a certain aspect of organizational activities – in this case, attrition.  Additionally, employee turnover can become a Key Performance Indicator if it reflects organizational goals and has been selected as a key metric to measure progress toward those goals.

And tying it all together – analytics.  Workforce analytics transforms all the above – measures, metrics and KPIs – into a relevant storyline.  It is the process by which we identify what story is developing and then explain the plot by looking at trends, patterns, outliers, and possible relationships in the data, breaking it down and turning it into insight in order to make human capital decisions that impact business results.

So…what is your story?

Seven ways to get included on the corporate succession plan.  There are many things that get evaluated by management and talent management teams when they are doing succession planning.  As I  observe succession plans I see the desired requirements for the planners.  However there are often gaps between the planners needs and the candidates focus on what they should be developing about themselves.  For many people these may be obvious, but for others I hope it will help them think about the things they do to develop and promote themselves.  There are, of course, specific skills required for different roles and career paths.  This list is more about the universal traits.

1. Think strategically. This may be one of the most critically evaluated traits during promotion consideration.   Department leaders that focus on their goals as if their department objectives are the end goal have just painted themselves into their ‘end goal’.  They can’t advance if they can’t understand and communicate their part of the mission as a piece of the greater objective.
2. Be a learner.  In order to take on new responsibilities you will have to grow.  In order to grow you have to learn new things.  Keep this skill always active.  Stretch yourself outside of your comfort zone until it becomes your comfort zone.  If you can’t look back at your year and see giant strides you have made, how will anyone else see the progress?
3. Mentor/Leader. Leadership is needed throughout all organizations.  Even if your next role is not a management position, the ability to mentor and lead others is needed.  If you can’t get enough visible practice within your organization, then practice these skills in your community, and make sure your employee profile and LinkedIn profile include these contributions.  The real boost to your career is when management recognizes you are developing others and leading teams successfully through projects that tie to the mission of the department or company.
4. Open/Flexible.  Business is changing faster than ever before.  You don’t want to be the barrier of progress.  Fads can be dangerous.  Trends are valuable.  Do you know the difference?  Are you ready to make several lateral moves within the organization to be prepared for a future role further up in the organization.  This is often a measurement watched during succession planning.
5. Be successful.  Excel at what you do now – if you can’t do really well now in your current position, then you won’t show up on anyone’s radar as a high performer.  Even if you are under-employed, don’t assume your past laurels will get you where you want to be.  A proven track record is essential to gain a champion for your career leaps.  People like to back winners.
6. Visibility/being connected. Let’s face it, if the world doesn’t know who you are, how will they know they need to consider you for promotion?  Some organizations have methods to find the hidden jewels in the organization for promotion, but most organizations still use direct relationships to consider who is going to be put into the pool for evaluation.  Both methods have good supporting arguments.  If you are not visible to your leaders, are you ready to be one of them?  However, this bullet comes with a warning sign – don’t make these connections superficial.  Add value to the organization and support the leadership to help foster the relationship.
7. Have a vision.  The main criteria I hear when executives are reviewing their management team for the future, is the ability to see and shape the possibilities yet to come. Know where you want to go.  Know where the business is going.

There are many elements to the decision making process for promotions and developmental moves.  These are, at the same time, the fundamentals as well as the critical support beams to the structure of your career advancement.  They can be both the table stakes and the high stakes at the talent review table.  I suggest you focus closely on where you excel and share these strengths with your organization.  All will benefit from these qualities and that is what it’s all about.

Qualifiers such as the following may be needed

• Full time vs. Part-time headcount
• Full-Time Equivalency (where a fraction is assigned to the head counted based on the percentage of a work week typically assigned as this person’s work responsibility)
• Contractor vs. Employee
• Seasonal vs. Permanent
• Exempt vs. Non-Exempt
• Salaried vs. Hourly
• Active vs. On-leave

There are more qualifiers and even these simplified descriptors often need further qualifiers.  Hear within lies the challenges with coming up with a headcount report.  If you don’t have strong definitions, then it depends on who you ask and what their investment is in the number of people working for your company or within your “four walls”.  If you ask someone doing payroll about headcount, they are likely to look at the number of checks they are cutting and give you the number.  Yet if you have furloughed employees or people on disability, checks may be paused for those employees, so you don’t have the full employed number from the payroll person.  If you ask the building/equipment facilities management, their headcount may include contractors but not permanently telecommuting employees.

So that gives us step 1…

Step 1:  Agree on the definitions of headcount and its qualifiers

Step 2:  Determine where you can appropriately obtain the count and detail of who fits each of these qualifiers.

Step 3:  Test said systems to assure their data is accurate

Step 4:  Publish these definitions and source data systems of record to ALL parties that need or think they need these numbers to do their job.

Repeat Step 3 and 4 often!

By making the definitions public and broadly  accepted, future reports will see an increase in accuracy, meeting the needs of the requesting party.  Without proper headcount data, reporting and agreed upon assumptions, most other data analysis of your workforce is likely to be flawed.  It may only be off a little bit, but based on our experience it is often a large enough margin of error that you don’t want to be staking your job or decisions about other’s jobs upon faulty data.

Cheers,

Lois

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

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. Regret Attrition is the HR metric to track.  It isn’t valuable enough to just have the snap shot of regret attrition for the entire company.  You need to drill in and compare how different leaders are impacting the brain drain.  Are some leaders retaining the future executives of the company while others are building a feeling of hopeless career paths, thus playing ‘blocker’ for the best and the brightest?  Can you tell if you are not measuring the regret attrition leader by leader?  I doubt it.

Some attrition is good.  If you have under-performers who are over their head in their position and they leave, this is good attrition.  This can be a healthy churn.  It is important to measure this attrition and put it in context.  Attrition within the first year of employment may be a problem.  This measurement should lead to further analysis of the on-boarding process, the source of the hire for those that leave the company or the reasons given for leaving during the exit process.  Even the loss of an employee base that you want to  leave needs to be investigated.  How did you get those people onboard to begin with?  What changes can be made to avoid miss hires in the future?

The context of attrition should be very valuable.  The quality of the people leaving, the tenure of the crowd, voluntary versus involuntary exits, the trend of each of these demographics, the reasons given for leaving, the timing in relationship to the exits, the management these people reported to and the percentage compared to the control group (their peers that stay with the company) should all be evaluated to build appropriate workforce analysis.  There are many variables that can impact the attrition trends within an organization.  You need to start with these measurements so that you can drill down to ways that you can positively impact attrition of your workforce.  If you can reduce the feelings of regret and avoid the wasted energy of the “If only…”. There will be positive impact in productivity and profitability.

Cheers,

Lois

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 HR 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

Guest post by Nora Murphy, Workforce Planning Analyst at Aquire

Everything is three dimensional these days.  Not only do you have the option of watching all your favorite movies in 3D at the theater, you now have this incredible technology in TVs, video games, cameras, camcorders, and even in some phones.  If done right, it can make you feel like you are inside the picture and produce amazing effects that jump out at you.  And the numbers are staggering – by 2014, we are expected to be able to watch over a hundred television channels in 3D, and a third of US households will have a TV set with 3D capability.

While 3D is primarily rooted in the entertainment industry, who says it can’t be applied to workforce analytics?  Like everything else in our world, HR business data is also multidimensional.  For example, attrition records can include several values, such as age, gender, tenure, performance rating, termination reason, and promotion history.  Yet we tend to look at it two dimensionally, most often in an Excel table or chart that only tracks the total number of our terminated employees each month.

The only difference between 3D and 2D is added depth.  And that’s what the right analytics will bring to your metrics and measures – the ability to see the “depth of the data” and to fully understand the characteristics of it.  It allows you to examine information from different perspectives and look at its attributes through various angles.  What is driving our termination rates up each year?  Who are behind the numbers?  Can we correlate the rise in attrition to some specific event in the organization?  How are critical positions impacted?  And what are the implications for the future of our workforce?  Finding the right answers to these questions requires detailed multidimensional analytics.

Perhaps it is time we all put on our 3D glasses.  Who knows, the real answer might jump right out – something we could not see otherwise.

Why should we measure employees birthdates? And, I am not talking about the cake and ice cream day.   That is a day that comes around once a year and although it is a set of numbers, it doesn’t tell you much about your workforce.   I’m talking about the date that raises awkwardness and discomfort. We need to talk about the date of one’s birth.  The day that tells us how old we are.  Squirming about this conversation tells me a few things about you.  One, you are most likely American if the age of your workforce discussion makes you nervous.  Or, two, you are self conscious about your own age.

The age of our workforce is very important.  It is often a number that is VERY relevant in aggregate, sliced by departments, regions, territories or expertise.  The marching of time cannot be ignored nor can the fact that in Western Europe, Japan and the United States, we will be facing the largest percentage of retirement eligible workers we have EVER faced! 2011 has been the start of the big retirement curve we have been hearing about for decades.  Knowing how your workforce population is balanced in this aging workforce dilemma is important for many dynamics.  Recruiting, training, mentoring, outsourcing, succession planning are all very obviously impacted.

Benefits offerings and costs are significantly impacted by the age of the workforce, along with gender and many other dynamics.  While stereotyping and discrimination can be a problem, fact-based decision making should not be hindered by the inability to look at age impacts.  All ages might like to bring their dog to work, but some age groups are more likely than others to be impacted by changes in the maternity/paternity policies.

We use age of our audience to make decisions all of the time.  This is how we avoid booking Pink for our holiday party.  If you don’t know who Pink is – then she and I may have just made our point together.  So, don’t pretend you don’t need to know the demographics of your workforce and stop pussy footing around.  You need to give your workforce planners the ability to project appropriately, and your workforce demands and age is a critical component of that.

After talking to a lot of people in and around the human resource industry I have found that there is a great grasping for information about what is important to measure, why should you measure them and what do you do with the information once you have it.  So, over the next few weeks,  we are going to explore the need for and wonder of, critical workforce numbers.

Absenteeism:

When you mention measuring absenteeism to a business leader, the first thing that comes to mind is who do you fire because they missed too many days.  But, what about aligning absenteeism with other trends or metrics to get a better picture of why things might be happening?  If productivity in a plant has not been steady, and you can’t align it with equipment issues, you should likely be checking on absenteeism or other factors.  That trough in productivity in 2010 happened at the same time that the plant staff was ravaged with a flu epidemic – so don’t beat up the guy that was training on the new equipment, it may not be his fault.

While some industries need to track absenteeism trends to plot their future scheduling and hiring plans, for others it might just be a temperature gauge of policy, morale, or planning.  As with most HR metrics it often means as little as a snapshot or stand alone, but when put together with other elements of data it can really assist in workforce planning.

Cheers,

Lois

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 department.  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 HR metrics 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

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

We had previously kept our conferences pretty tight to just Users of Aquire’s software, but this year, with 4 HRCI credits available to earn, and the power of networking with so many great HR professionals facing the challenges of our day, we decided to open it up to all HR professionals.

Beth Carvin, a dynamic, say-it-like-it-is professional, is Key-noting with information near and dear to my heart – Mentoring, and its value to all involved.  By connecting people to their company through personal and professional development, while building closer relationships, everybody wins.

We will have the always charming Steve Boese, host of HR Happy Hour, speaking about managing the dynamics of the current workforce with contingent workers, part time staffers, long term vendors, etc.  The dynamics are increasing in this new economy, when you analyze the chemistry of the work force in your office, which are not all employees.  It goes way beyond headcount management.

Steve will also host a special edition of HRHappyHour directly from the User Conference.  If you are not familiar with HRHappyHour yet, you should be. This Thursday night (typically) BlogTalk Radio show is the happening place to learn about issues and creative resolutions in HR.  http://www.blogtalkradio.com/steve-boese

Bryon Abramowitz, also presenting, has seen plenty of the good, bad and ugly of technology issues within HR.  He has helped companies navigate through the selection of the right technology, and ushered the implantation of technology into successful realization for his clients.

Then, there is the usual fun and hilarity of spending time with the Aquire team, product training with experts from every department, and more information about the innovation of products coming from Aquire.  At this conference, we will also have the unveiling of a new product!  Finally, we will show you how you can now measure the impact of all your hard work in talent management.

The event is always a joy due to the people that attend.  Please join us! http://www.aquire.com/structure2011/

Cheers,

Lois Melbourne

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

Thanks to all for the excellent posts. If you have not sent in a post and would like to be part of the carnival, feel free to drop your post in the comment section or email mmiranda@aquire.com

• “All wages and salaries will be publicized after the end of the year!“-Jim Brennan on Compensation Cafe, April 1 Brings Not a Shower but a Storm.

• “As with many weird work situations, it happened in the Sales Division…” Ian Clive on Workplace Shenanigans: The “Pot” Calling the Kettle Black

• “The guys came to work wearing…” Krista Ogburn Francis on Fun and Creativity at Work

• A Powerpoint misspelling led to a moment of inspiration for  Mary Jo Asmus on How to Create a Thanking Culture

• “We do have a group of pranksters, mostly hidden in ‘the cave’…” Karen Betts on April Fool

• “He was a sharp guy…that’s why we selected him as the object of out April Fool’s prank.” Wally Bock on Why I don’t do April Fool’s Pranks

• “The importance of “DIFFERENT” ideas“ by @BenjaminMcCall on RethinkHR

• We all know the most romantic day of the year is April Fool’s…or at least it is for Amy Wilson. Read about it on Shiny and Useful

• Bonus Points! Ben Eubanks sends in a video on Show Us Your Fools

What does this mean to you / us?

We are now poised to spread our wings like never before. We will work closely with Peopleclick Authoria and will continue to operate as Aquire with the same staff and management as always to service the world with our workforce planning and analytics, org charting, organizational modeling, succession planning and the rest of the Aquire product portfolio.

Aquire’s growth story is powerful, not only from our ability to create an international market for our technology solutions, but also by creating some of the best jobs, filled with the best software people any customer has ever worked with! (I get these letters, I know the customers feel that way). Now we keep all the goodness and get a boost.

We will expand our market reach through the Peopleclick Authoria teams. We will continue to execute the technology visions of our co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Ross Melbourne. Your favorite tech support people are still here to answer your calls. The unique Aquire culture focusing on customers, innovation and the awesome sustainable employee lifestyle will continue. The elegant and powerful software from Aquire will still be solving people’s data integrity, merger integration, workforce analytics, succession planning and organization visibility problems.

Aquire has been approached many times in the past for merger or acquisition opportunities. The opportunities were never right for us or the market. When approached by Peopleclick Authoria we started exploring the great product synergies. We started talking to the people and researching the people and we knew we had found an impressive organization, with quality, intelligent people who have high integrity standards and a strong market position. The opportunity to work together with PCA while continuing with our product roadmap, our Aquire team and great customers, was an evolution that is just so right.

We are very excited about this new stage of our lives. You may have questions and I am happy to address them. Please send them my way. I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

Lois

Aquire will be hosting the April Fool’s edition of Carnival of HR. We all know that HR experiences all the good, the bad, and the hilarious of the workplace. Share your stories of office shenanigans – the intern vs. employee prank wars, office talent show gone wrong, or an accidental email/tweet/text. The list can go on. Be creative and celebrate April Fool’s Day with us!

P.S. Please, send links to Mike Miranda at mmiranda@aquire.com by Monday April 11th. Include #CarnivalofHR in the subject line. The carnival will go live on April 13th.

P.P.S. – Bonus points for pictures

The phrase immediately made me think about what is so beautiful about my safety at home. It is the safety to be who I am. I can express what I care about. I can burst out laughing. I am appreciated for the things that I contribute to our home. I am also not chastised for the domestic skills I don’t have (there are many of those, especially creative cooking that would never be found in my domestic StrengthFinders exercise).

How does that relate to human resources? This safety is what I find important to bring into my corporate culture too. People should be appreciated for what they contribute and if they were hired appropriately, the things they don’t do well are not needed for their position. Or if it is a skill they are lacking, maybe they can be trained for the skill. (So, I have just upgraded creative cooking to a trait, not a skill, because I don’t think I can afford my husband thinking I can just take a class and compete with Food Network). It may sound silly in a home situation, but how many times have we done that in the corporate world.

I would like more organizations to strive for the Safe At Home concept or the ‘as safe as at home’ in the acceptance of individuals for who they are, what they care about and what they can contribute.

Oh, and the next time you think a news story is crazy about somebody having way to many kids to possibly manage them correctly and give them the best attention they should as parent, think about the “Safe At Home” translation into the office and evaluate how many people your managers have in the span of control. Can you really expect them to give the best attention and nurture their people, if they are spread that thin?

Written at home safely on the back deck, barefoot, jamming to Pandora on a March Saturday afternoon, because my family knows I love to blog and it is one of my Saturday relaxations, crazy.

Getting a chance to be a part of the Aquire Corporation has afforded me many responsibilities and challenges, but also far more opportunity than I could have ever imagined.  The chance to work with and meet some of the most creative and passionate people I know, to visit and interact with customers that cover every size and industry and to move my family from Syracuse, New York  to Dallas, Texas and help grow our sales team.

I’ve always been a part of a team for as long as I can remember.  Sports teams, school/youth groups, church activities and of course a working career have all helped make me who I am.  I am sure the teams you have been a part of helped mold who you are, but did you know they were doing it at the time you were a part of them?

Dallas, Texas introduced my family and I to a concept called Drill Team.  Drill teams, first called Pep Squads, were started in 1928 by Gussie Nell Davis, at Greenville High School in Greenville, Texas.  They perform intricate, well rehearsed dance routines at halftimes of football games, which here in Texas are bigger events that most college games you have ever seen.   These teams consist of a line of performers with a few girls selected as officers in front of the other girls leading the routine.  All the girls have to make the team based on their dance skills and the officers then are appointed by the Director after additional dance judging, team voting, a face to face interview and a review of their resume of community service, school grades and charity work.

Any of that sound familiar to you?  Do you have to practice your craft to get better at it?  Do you try and give back to the people who helped make you who you are?  Does the team work together towards one common goal, week in and week out, with each day being one small step of achievement towards that final goal?  Do you use words like precision, polish, synchronization and sharpness in every day conversation?  If you don’t perform at your best that day, do you feel like you let the team down and do all you can to make it up to them?  Do the leaders of your team take extra time to teach and mentor the others to make sure they get the best from everybody, every time?

These girls do every day, and they know what it means to be a team.  To see their commitment and passion is rather inspiring.  They don’t just do what is asked of them, they do more.  My 15 year old daughter Morgan had the honor of being Captain of her 10^th grade team this year and just this week was fortunate enough to make the Plano Senior High Planoettes as a baby Planoette for next year.  Her whole team did well on their tryouts and will soon be trying out for officers of their respective squads.  The move to Texas for me was worth it for this and so many reasons.

Drill team, like your business has been around for years – and as much as things have changed, there are also many traditions and processes that have stayed very much the same.  Your team operates in the same manner.  Improvement comes from continuing to do the things you do well and learning from your mistakes.  You need to be open to new ideas and ways of doing things while staying true to your core beliefs and principles.  Be flexible and ready for change, but also be clear on your ultimate goals.

Ms. Davis went on to create the first college drill team, the Kilgore Rangerettes in 1939, they are the drill team to which all teams past and present are ever compared.  Her simple goal was to get people to stay in their seats during halftimes of a game rather than leave for refreshments.  We need to get each of our teams ready to play each and every day like she did.  Give them the vision and the tools to be successful.  Make sure that, through education and learning, they are prepared to hit the stage, ready for success.  My team works hard at this every day, and I do all I can to listen to what they need to be successful.

I wanted to thank Ms. Davis.  She has me in my seat, riveted to see what this next generation of young ladies will do in the future – I know they will be a team forever, and I hope your organizations will be fortunate enough to have them become a member of your team someday soon.

- Tom Ericson

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!

There was a tree in Cambridge Mass, where George Washington first took command of his troops in 1775.  A scion of that tree (a part of the tree that you use to start another tree growing) traveled to the Washington University campus and was planted there around the turn of the century.

The original tree in Cambridge died from disease and the favor of a scion from the Washington University Elm traveled back across the country and was planted in the original spot in Cambridge.  Then there is another turn in this reciprocal gift of life.  The Washington University tree was struck by lightning and once again a scion from Cambridge came back to Washington State to plant this beautiful joy of a tree.

There are so many lessons of graciously giving and graciously receiving in this story.  There is a message of respecting your roots (no pun intended).  Knowing where you came from and giving back to what helped make your success happen.  We need to make sure we hang on to our history and we share it with others.  Without the recording of the history of these trees, their caregivers wouldn’t have known or thought of continuing the gift.

Do you recognize your mentors or the people that helped you get where you are?  Do you give back to them or pay it forward to others to continue to make the world a better place?  I am considering one last question now, for the lesson of the legend of the Cambridge and Washington Elms, What have you given to others today that can grow and keep on giving?  If we act upon the goodwill of this story, we would each develop a strong legacy.

But, why should we stop there?  Aquire is implementing some great creative usage in the 9 box to help solve many business and talent-driven decisions.  I bet you would love to see performance rating on one axis and the scale of salary or raise % within a 9 box.  It allows people to fall directly into the 9 box and you can see the outliers during your bonus planning.  It is very powerful.

Another use of the traditional potential by performance 9 box view is during bonus assignments and raise awards. This has increased management’s satisfaction with the compensation process.  The managers feel better about the fairness and the distribution of funds, when they can visualize the value distribution of their key players.

A workforce analyst is diagnosing risk for retirement pain points by reviewing age by tenure on the matrix.  When you need to see comparative details to a group of people, the visualization of the distribution is very powerful and makes the data very easy to understand.

The 9-box is powerful and its power is magnified when you can compare, side by side, the individuals in any area of the 9 box or select individuals.  Multiply the power again when you can transfer the visualization of the 9 box content in a color coded map in the org chart.  NOW, you have the power to see the applicable information in the context of the hierarchy structure of the organization and the information has real meaning.

Your planning is stronger.  Your decision making is more confident.  Your processes have a reduction in risk, when you can really see the information you need in an impactful view.  So to really deliver value to your management, I ask…What’s in your 9-box?

Cheers,

Lois

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