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”: More »

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.

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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 More »

Well how do you like that?  The British Commonwealth countries have now decided it is okay to break tradition and make new laws that allow succession plans to transfer females, even if they have a little brother.  More detail here .  Yes, royalty have a different world to live by, but I have heard some pretty lame excuses for corporations to keep old outdated methods and traditions when it comes to their employee processes.  And they are not all just related to succession planning.  I thought I would create a list of the some of the really stupid decisions or policies that we see.  If you don’t want your co-workers, peers or executives to roll their eyes and scoff at your ancient processes, get rid of these 7 succession policies NOW!

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.

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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.  More »