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HRM Today attended the sixth annual Talent Planning & Leadership Development conference presented by marcus evans August 30-31 in Chicago. A diverse mix of organizations (industries, sizes and structures) presented case studies during the two days, focusing on strategies and best practices to address the unique challenges for managing the talent life cycle. Common themes discussed were connecting talent management practices to the business strategy, measurement of practice impact, differentiating top talent, leveraging (and selling to) internal champions and action learning. The sessions generated questions about the changing role of HR and the capabilities and competencies necessary for success (e.g. business acumen).
Day One Highlights – August 30, 2010
Michelle Golden – Turner Broadcasting –VP of Talent Management
Michelle talked about Turner’s Talent Strategy, which is driven by robust analysis of data, with a primary focus on longitudinal engagement survey results. They use discovery process to identify business drivers for TM. One key metric is average diversity. They see this as a growth driver as it relates to things such as acquiring content from a multi-cultural perspective.
Michelle stated that Governance is “the most important part of success.” Turner Broadcasting established a talent council of 36 key executives around the globe. These execs help share what challenges the business is facing and what they need from talent management.
They are proud of the use simple language to drive and reinforce behavior: FIND.GROW.KEEP
One other highlight: Turner is conducting functional talent reviews that help break down barriers across business units to promote broader mobility.
Employers may want to pay attention to a new CareerBuilder survey that reveals that one in five workers are having trouble making ends meet. After all, financial worries don’t just take a toll on workers’ stress levels: Studies have shown that money-related distress can negatively affect employees’ quality of work - and, ultimately, the company’s bottom line.
According to the survey of more than 4,400 workers nationwide, 77 percent of workers live paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet, up from 61 percent who said the same last year. And as many as 22 percent said they’ve missed bill payment in the last year.
You might not be able to manually solve your employees’ financial problems, but you can help them better manage – and feel more in control of – their finances. As a result, they will be less distracted on the job and more focused on their work:
Ask for feedback. Instead of guessing what your employees want, go straight to the source to find out how you can be of assistance to your employees. From there, you can negotiate which cost-effective benefits you can provide – such as flexible schedules (to cut down on child-care costs or gas) – to best address their needs.
Some excerpts from the article
In his new book, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance, Groysberg studies a group of professionals renowned for the portability of their talent — Wall Street research analysts. Analysts are a hybrid of researchers and pundits; they study public companies and write recommendations about whether to buy or sell their stocks.
So what happened? Groysberg reports, “Star equity analysts who switched employers paid a high price for jumping ship. Overall, their job performance plunged sharply and continued to suffer for at least five years after moving to a new firm.” Worse, switching firms doubled the chance that an analyst would fall off the rankings entirely (32% versus 16%).
Go ahead, be a picky recruiter. It’s a buyer’s market for most jobs these days so your company can afford to bide its time and hire the right person. But here’s the rub: It’s unlikely that, once you’ve made your new hires, you’ll honestly be able to tell how good they are.
That’s because most companies do not measure quality of hire to any great extent. They may have six sigma programs that reduce defects to 3.4 parts per million but when it comes to their hiring, they’re often flying blind.
The performance gap here is huge. Our recent study on Talent Management Measurement found that a paltry 16% of respondents said their organizations measure quality of hire to a high or very high extent. But that’s not because these professionals don’t know any better – fully three quarters believe that their organizations should be measuring quality of hire to a high or very high extent.
So, why is there an enormous disparity between what organizations know they should do versus what’s actually being done?
There’s a new metric in town when it comes to determining executive pay – at some companies at least. Now, in addition to earnings per share and stock prices, some executives are earning incentive pay based on a series of sustainability measures.
The trend is a bit more common in Europe than it is in the U.S., with the Dutch leading the way. Chemical company Akzo Nobel, life sciences group DSM and mail operator TNT all have at least a small portion of executive pay tied to environmental improvements. According to Monique Pennings, who is part of the Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Development group at financial giant ING, corporate responsibility and sustainable business practices are part of their core business. Now, many firms say this, but ING seems to be put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. Sustainability is being integrated into the personal accountability and performance objectives of senior management. Pennings says that performance objectives will be increasingly tied to non-financial drivers.
How much will pay be tied to these drivers? For 2010, at least 40% of the total variable compensation for members of the executive board will be based on non-financial performance indicators. Some of those indicators include diversity in the workforce, employee engagement, development of sustainable products and community investment. Pennings says that ING has a “long-term aspiration to belong to the sector leaders in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.”
It’s amazing how timeless characteristics like leadership are.
One thing I like doing (geek alert) when I get a few minutes, is to look through the Google Book catalog. There are some amazing gems in there, and that’s where I find little things like info on how to do onboarding from a company manual in the early 1900’s and the book preface that inspired this post.
I took the short segment from the book and tweaked it to speak to leadership issues today. After you read it (remember that it was written before the 1920s and some of the language reflects that), I’ll tell you what the original purpose was.
Check it out
The necessity and vast importance of study [in leadership] is made apparent in the light of the significance which Napoleon attached to the mental quality of leadership,–”The morale is to the physical as three to one.” Mental and physical training and instruction in tactical leadership were present to an excellent degree. It seems to have been assumed, however, that giving a man an education in these and in the routine administration work of a business organization fitted him to be a leader. The result was that the young manager was obliged to learn many things by hard experience and through trial and error; there was not the desired uniformity in matters of personal leadership.
For some reason, I have been up later and later. Not being able to get to sleep. Not for the wrong reasons. Not for worries or issues with the day. Not problems with work, contracts or developing ideas. I have been up late lately simply because my mind has been filled with ideas. A few of those ideas are about HR (I know, I am a dork). Been spending a lot of time thinking of solutions to issues that we create ourselves and differentiating them from what the environmental barriers are presented for us to face and conquer.
The topic on my mind now is “Why can HR not be considered as important as Marketing, Sales and/or Operations?” These are areas that have been traditionally looked at as revenue generators for the business. While HR helps in, what I call, the 3 D’s – Direction, Delivery and Development of talent and business strategies; the business does not give the function as much weight as the others. Why even ask the question. This is a big question. It is a question that should be asked and followed with steps and actions put in place to address, improve and change the typical business perception.
A recent survey from Kelly Services found that more than half of all Americans surveyed believe they would be more productive if they had greater interest in the companies that employ them, through benefits such as profit sharing. In previous posts, we’ve established the many benefits pay for performance programs provide when they are done well, but this survey helps to clarify who pay for performance matters to and why.
The survey found 25 percent of workers are currently in an arrangement where some of their pay is tied to performance targets. Gen X (aged 30-47) employees are much more likely to be receiving performance-based pay than Gen Y (aged 18-29) or those in the Baby Boomer generation (aged 48-65). Men are also more frequently in performance pay plans than women.
But the one thing that I’m a bit unsure of is its premise that, for businesses to take advantage of these opportunities, they will have to “empower employees” to react at a moment’s notice.
Most of us probably remember empowerment. It was a big business catchword in the 90’s. The idea was to empower employees to make their own decisions as long as they benefited the customer. Most companies heralded it as a customer service savior that would put decision-making in the hands of front line staff. All to the delight of their patrons while freeing up management for, um . . . well . . . let’s just say more important things.
A classic example of how empowerment works would go like this: guest stays in a big fancy hotel. At checkout, the guest notices that they had been charged $4 for a Snickers from the minibar. Guest tells front desk clerk they didn’t eat a Snickers and the clerk, without requiring approval from management, would take the $4 charge off the account. Guest leaves happy to return often and repeatedly.
A recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times about Chicago Police Sgt. Jeffrey Allen’s lawsuit against the city of Chicago piqued my interest — not because he was suing the city of Chicago, but because he was suing due to the fact that he hadn’t gotten compensated for the off-duty time he spent working on his Blackberry.
As we’ve mentioned before on The Hiring Site, access to mobile devices are changing the way people work — employees are working from their smart phones while driving, on the train, or in the grocery line — and even if they don’t want to be working during all hours and from all places, bosses often expect them to. Some workers, particularly of the younger Millenials generation, are even sleeping next to their smartphones for fear of missing out on a single minute of Internet action.
And now, with this lawsuit, a new question comes to the forefront; a question that we’ve been building up to as the use of smart phones in workers’ every day lives has rapidly increased: Should workers be compensated for the work they do on company-owned mobile devices during non-work hours?
To compensate or not to compensate?
When I was in university, I used to absolutely love studying and writing papers. Wait! Before you throw me into the nerd dumpster, hear me out. Okay, the actual work involved with cramming mind-numbing textbook information into my head, or making sure every sentence I typed was properly referenced, quoted, footnoted and endnoted was extremely tedious indeed. But, as endless as some of those homework nights seemed to be, I was genuinely happy to be there. The reason? I had inadvertently constructed a workplace so comfortable, so conducive to both concentration and creativity, that I thoroughly enjoyed hibernating there for hours on end. I say inadvertently, because back then I was relatively clueless when it came to workplace mood-enhancement techniques, and it was only years later that I discovered the value in the things I did.
Meaning and purpose. It’s critical to employee engagement and productivity and it’s also what everyone wants in their work. Last week, the informal (highly un-scientific) poll on the GloboBlog showed that 53% of people are happiest at work when they know their work has contributed to a meaningful goal. Another 40% are happiest when someone appreciates their work – another form of showing meaning. (It’s also interesting to note that not a single person said they’re happiest at work when they get paid.)Critical to meaning and purpose is having a sense of alignment — understanding your company’s objectives and values so well, you know the work you do contributes to those objectives and the values are in agreement with your own personal ones.
So what’s the problem? Ann Bares wrote about it well on her Compensation Force blog, based on recent Hewitt research.
“The large majority (73%) indicate that goals are somewhat aligned, that corporate goals are communicated and then left to local managers to translate. So for most employees, it all rests on effective coaching and direction from the local manager. … And how’s that working for us?”
When it comes to news about American Muslims in the workplace, the focus is often centered on issues of discrimination, harassment, or misunderstandings related to Muslims’ religious beliefs and practices. Very little seems to be written about how to create an environment of inclusion beyond basic workplace accommodation.
For employers, the importance of understanding the laws specific to religious accommodation and being in compliance with those guidelines goes without saying. But viewing such compliance as simply a means to mitigate the risk of potential charges of discriminatory practices is rather short-sighted in today’s global environment. What’s needed is a deeper understanding of the multi-faith workforce, which can become a valuable strategy in attracting and retaining diverse talent.
With an estimated six to 10 million Muslims living in the U.S., it is likely that you employ, manage, or work with a Muslim. It’s even more likely that your Muslim co-workers are not taking part in your company’s 401(k) opportunities, which often make up a considerable portion of an employee’s total rewards package. What to do (or not do) about employer investment opportunities is one of the most common challenges and sources of frustration facing Muslims working in the U.S. and other Western countries.
Picture the scene: You’re the HR manager at company XYZ. An employee calls to schedule time to speak with you about an issue. The employee arrives and begins to explain that he feels his career is stalled. He was hired as a xxx (could be any level employee) and he tells you he has skills that are not being utilized. He is able to give specific examples of times his supervisor has not recognized his abilities. He is now unchallenged, disengaged, and ready to leave your company.
Does this sound familiar? Well, if you’ve worked in HR for any length of time, I’m certain you have had this conversation and likely, more than once. The problem is that once an employee reaches the point of coming to HR, it is often too late. Why do companies do this, and what can HR do to help managers shape the culture so that they do not lose valuable employees? The key is getting employees connected.
To start with the “why” of it all, we need to go all the way to the beginning of the employee life cycle. Sourcing/hiring. Many companies have a reactionary style of hiring. Managers wait until there is an unexpected resignation and a position opens that they need filled “yesterday or sooner”. The recruiter of HR manager must scramble to write a job description, get it posted, and begin looking at potential candidates. This knee-jerk reaction to hiring does not lend itself to finding employees who truly have the qualities and skills that will make them most successful in the position.
“Connection Fact” #1: Companies need to have a well thought out recruiting strategy to be most effective in hiring people with skills that closely match those required in the position. When skills match position requirements, employees are more likely to be engaged in the work.
As the economy recovers and companies are examining all areas of the business under an efficiency lens, HR is no exception. There are many blogs, articles and keynotes on the topic of what will HR 2.0 look like. You hear answers from it should be “blown up” to it should “not even exist” and all iterations in between.I read a really good article by Dave Zielinksi in August 2010 HR Magazine entitled, “Building a Better HR Team.” Zielinksi discusses Google’s “three-thirds” HR staffing model. Below is the premise for Google’s model:
1) 1/3 of the HR team have HR background s and bring expertise in employee relations along with other specialist expertise like benefits and compensation.
2) 1/3 of the HR team has little or no HR background and come from strategic consulting firms or internally from Google’s sales and engineering departments. These individuals are embedded in the business as consultants.
3) 1/3 of the HR team are the quant jocks. They are statisticians, PhD’s in finance and organizational psychology. Their jib is organizational analytics especially the predictive kind.
Not all organizations have Google’s resources and the ability to have PhD’s on staff, but the theory behind this model is one that I love. Here is why:
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