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?   read more »

The movie Glengarry Glen Ross introduced the sales catchphrase “ABC: Always Be Closing” to pop culture. Here’s one for HR: “ABP: Always Be Planning.” It’s an especially good philosophy to follow when it comes to talent management.

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 read more »

A Nine-Box matrix is typically used in succession planning to plot the potential of an employee to move up in the organization on one axis and performance ratings on the other axis.  This allows you to compare, contrast, and desk check that you are considering as many individuals as possible for succession plans.

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. read more »

During our annual employee meeting at Aquire, one of the exercises included a breakout session where small groups of employees discussed the workforce planning of their own departments.  The discussion was supported with the corporate workforce planning specifics for future hiring.  The conversations ranged from, when is it time to hire more people in your department?  What are the problems with hiring people before you capacity for them?  What are the challenges with not having enough staff on board?

The employee feedback included great ideas for managing workforce planning for capacity to huge kudos for being included in the discussion that will help them understand future hiring decisions.

Training your team how to provide input to the forecasting of staff requirements provides a great deal of buy-in from the staff, as well as insight into the mindset of your team for management to consider.

The applause was repeated over and over again, as the promotions were announced at the meeting.  Then a hand was raised.  The question:  With all of these promotions our workforce planning has to include succession planning doesn’t it?

Succession Planning is a huge part of workforce planning.  It is a good thing we know how to do succession planning, because we have a lot of work to do for all the growth we are experiencing.  Planning for new positions and promotions, as well as adapting to the employment market and the staff development changes are all strategic workforce planning.

The more open the process is for the staff, the better they feel about their opportunities and even the pain they experience as they wait for a new co-worker to be hired.  They get it. And, when your staff gets the strategy, department goals align with corporate goals, new ideas are brought to the organization, and the workforce plan becomes more effective and efficient.

There are many stories regarding best practices for identifying high potential managers. One key succession measurement is the ability of a manager to develop subordinates for bigger and better things. This talent measurement is typically done by tracking the number of subordinates who have been developed by the manager, and have moved on to enhanced career positions. This can be very hard, at times, for managers to observe and execute. They develop their team and then they lose the team members as they are moved to other areas of the company. Weak managers hide their talented employees so the subordinates can continue making the managers look good. read more »