Talent TrendWatchers

New Year’s Evolutions

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:37:00 GMT

So here we are at the start of a new year, slogging through the inevitable (and often tedious) year-in-review retrospectives and forecasts for 2012. But, let's be honest - how much do those forecasts really affect your life?

We get it - looking ahead requires perspective in terms of where we've been and what we've learned so far, and too often forecasters merely jump on the most recent bandwagon. We know from experience that sustained high performance is synonymous with, among other things, being ready for change - but having a degree of insight into what's around the corner doesn't hurt.

It's easy to predict that new challenges await all of us - but research and experience clearly shows that organizations best positioned to seize upon and leverage the strategic advantage of the next best practice, and that continue to foster a culture of innovation, are the successful organizations. So what does all that really mean - what should we in HR be thinking about and how can we support innovation and growth that will help kick our organizations into high gear in 2012?

Start by making a commitment to embracing the sometimes complex, but high-value strategic work recent human capital research has demonstrated is critical for success. Here's a rundown based on i4cp's 2011 research of just a few of the issues we think are important for organizational success in 2012 and beyond:

EBHR

One of our favorite quotes of 2011 came from the SVP of HR at one of our member companies. To paraphrase, he said "Historically, HR has done a horrible job of leveraging data to its advantage, certainly when compared with sales, marketing or other strategic functions." This sentiment sums up why the subject of Evidenced Based Human Resources (EBHR) has risen so dramatically in popularity.

John Gibbons, i4cp's VP of Research, defines EBHR as "Simply, the use of human capital analytics and scientific standards of causation to build a case for how people management practices drive operational and financial performance of the business." Many seasoned HR professionals are embracing evidenced-based decision-making and resisting the urge to avoid it because it's perceived to be too complicated, too costly, too critical or just another fad. More organizations are using evidenced-based approaches to measure and manage talent, and this practice is serving as a competitive advantage - not only in terms of how they compete for, engage and retain talent, but as a competitive lever for the organization as a whole. Employees are the most important asset in most organizations, and EBHR increases the financial contributions HR makes to business by effectively leveraging that asset.

Gibbons recommends two initial and simple steps for implementing EBHR: ensure the HR team understands the most important measures used in the enterprise and keep the first project(s) small. Bottom line, you don't need to tackle everything at once, but ignoring EBHR could be a fatal management mistake. If you missed it, check out John's webinar on EBHR for more information.

Performance management

It became somewhat popular in 2011 to suggest that eradicating the performance appraisal process is what should happen in order to improve the culture. Our research suggests something far different - top organizations more often perfect and leverage the PM process to gain a strategic advantage.

If that's the case, why does the term performance management evoke so much criticism? Why do so many of us, even the owners of PM, dread it as something to be tolerated at best? If your organization's approach to PM needs to be re-tooled, familiarize yourself with i4cp's Performance Management Playbook: Tools and Techniques for Managing Performance. This playbook addresses the fundamental programs and philosophies used by top companies, and expounds on the ideas organizations should consider in building a best-in-class PM program that is strategic, well-understood and expertly executed. It also examines some of the key findings from two i4cp surveys on the topic, and features real world strategies and approaches currently in practice in leading organizations worldwide.

For example, forced ranking and forced distribution has seen a significant decline in high-performing organizations. Why? Mainly because these systems are often "gamed" by managers rather than being applied properly and producing real results. That doesn't mean it isn't appropriate for some corporate cultures, but understanding what types of culture are right for these practices is critical to ensuring performance management success.

Contingent workers

The four-year, stomach churning roller coaster that has been the global economy has brought about a great deal of change in approaches to staffing and as a result, the demand for contingent workers has increased. Our research on the use of contingent workers found that now more than ever, there is a demand for agility as well as acumen on several fronts - workers and executives must be equipped with core competencies such as critical thinking, effective communication, creativity and innovation.

Organizations must be able to expand and contract the workforce as needed and knowing how to do that without losing efficiency and effectiveness is critical. This means striking that critical balance of deploying and managing contingent workers strategically while also keeping permanent employees engaged. This is much easier said than done, but our report, The State of the Contingent Workforce, which was featured in the Wall Street Journal, offers insights into road-tested strategies being employed by some of our members.

Embracing technology (when it makes sense)

Like the fallacy that humans use just a small percentage of our brain capacity (so not true!) leaving our full potential untapped, we seem to easily fall into the same line of erroneous thinking regarding new, innovative technology. Take the ubiquitous smartphone for example. In i4cp 's research in partnership with ASTD we found that just-in-time, always-in-context learning can save a company a tremendous amount of money while improving productivity.

But questions arose too - do content owners need to develop a mobile application for every piece of content they create? If so, does there need to be versions that run on iPhones®, Android®, BlackBerrys® and Windows® phones (among others)? What about tablets? Are there authoring or content creation tools that make this easy? How do we manage all of this - through our existing Learning Management System (LMS)? These and other issues are tackled in our research, and as is often the case, high-performing organizations take a different path than their low-performing counterparts.

Speaking up, even when the news isn't great

The very basic foundation of an effective HR strategy is a culture that supports all levels of employees in an organization. This is often achieved through effective, coherent internal communication. i4cp's research on communication, highlighted in our Effective Internal Communications Report, found that high-performing organizations know that internal communications must be strategic in addition to being tactical - they use internal communications to deliver higher level information, including policy changes, company successes, company financials and even pay-for-performance information, while lower performers view it as a vehicle for delivering emergency, crisis and safety information.

There are, of course, myriad issues and concerns beyond these that keep all of us up at night. While the uncertainty of what lies ahead is the one thing we all have in common, the ability to deal with our constantly evolving roles with confidence based on evidence, facts and research will help us sleep a little more soundly.

To all of our i4cp member organizations, thanks for a productive and profitable 2011 - we're looking forward to even higher performance in 2012.

Lorrie Lykins is i4cp's Managing Editor and Director of Research Services. She has been engaged in the study of human capital management since 2002 and has published widely to include authoring a chapter in the ASTD Leadership Handbook (2010) and publishing feature articles and editorials in various journals and magazines. Her work at i4cp has been featured in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She is an adjunct professor at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL.

Get Your Workforce Measurement Act Together

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:42:00 GMT

While leveraging the power of workforce measurement remains an aspiration for most organizations, i4cp member companies Toyota Financial Services and AIG (American International Group, Inc.) are two industry leaders proving that there are great outcomes waiting when workforce measurement initiatives are well-planned and thoughtfully implemented.

According to i4cp research, few companies are consistently measuring workforce matters, especially the factors that speak to internal movement and the quality of those moves. This, despite the fact that metrics have become the must-do mandate for most all organizational functions in this accountability-challenged and recession-scarred business world.

Insights offered by workforce measures and quality of movement metrics can be invaluable indicators of issues that affect both individual and organizational performance. They can send up red flags long in advance of the arrival of full-blown productivity killers, providing perspectives on such matters as:

Strategic workforce planning
Talent management
Succession planning
Development and advancement of high-potential talent and other targeted workforce segments
Retention of specific talent groups
Recruitment of top talent through demonstration of the employee value proposition

Still, only one in five organizations has a workforce measurement strategy in place to a high or very high extent. Even among higher-performers (based on profitability, revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and market share), it's only 22%. i4cp's Talent Management Measurement Pulse Survey, from which these insights came, defines a workforce measurement strategy as disciplined, cohesive efforts (versus ad hoc efforts) to gather and use employee-related metrics in the organization.

Although most organizations aren't using a wide array of workforce metrics - even higher-performers - they acknowledge that they should. The survey asked about some of the specific workforce measures companies use and the extent to which respondents thought they should be using them. Wide gaps were revealed:

Such large gaps in do/should responses - some more than 50 percentage points - suggest that there may be some pretty substantial obstacles preventing organizations from advancing beyond their current states and moving toward the workforce metrics capabilities they identify as should-haves. Identifying those stumbling blocks and providing potential solutions for them is the focus of i4cp's latest playbook: Internal Movement: Leveraging the Power of Workforce Measurement.

Some of the workforce measurement challenges explored in the playbook include organizations' lack of measurement strategies, ambiguous definitions of internal movement, problems accessing and sharing data, and difficulty linking workforce measurement with strategic considerations.

So how have HR metrics and workforce planning leaders at AIG and Toyota Financial Services cleared some of those workforce measurement hurdles? Challenges the two companies have effectively addressed revolve around data collection and validation, and the ability to provide workforce metrics that senior leaders can apply to strategic decision-making.

Vikas Malhotra, director of HR metrics and measurement for international insurance organization AIG shares his company's experience in establishing a workforce measurement strategy and offered a few recommendations from the front lines for organizations just beginning their journeys. One of his most innovative approaches to help with data collection and validation has been to recruit a global team to oversee "data governance, metrics governance and definitions" related to workforce measurement. "We have a virtual meeting every three weeks," he explains, adding that "it's been a great advantage to us, especially in getting buy-in from the various business units."

Toyota Financial Services - an organization that offers financing plans and insurance products to Toyota and Lexus dealers and their customers - deftly illustrates the workforce measurement/strategic decision-making connection. Michael LeBrun, the company's manager of workforce planning & analysis, helped spearhead a proactive approach to propel Toyota Financial Services beyond the data issues that cause stumbling blocks for many companies. His department, along with four others, is building a data mart to provide workforce metrics for strategic decision-making.

"Our first step was setting some standards for data and reporting," LeBrun explains. "We communicated … that only formal sources of data were to be used." Monthly and quarterly reports on workforce metrics go to top management. Says LeBrun, "Our reports have become the authority on human capital numbers [enabling] our senior leadership to take a truly organizational view of the workforce and make more cohesive and strategic decisions about internal movement and other issues."

AIG and Toyota Financial Services demonstrate some of the very real ways that respected organizations are effectively leveraging the power of workforce measurement. More details about their initiatives, along with strategies to address the top challenges in workforce measurement are included in the i4cp Internal Movement Playbook: Leveraging the Power of Workforce Measurement.

Carol Morrison is a senior i4cp research analyst and the author of this Playbook. She has authored white papers, playbooks, reports, analyses and other publications on a variety of topics related to human capital, leadership and talent management. Feature articles by Carol can be found in Talent Management Magazine, Chief Learning Officer, HR Executive and in other leading print and online media. She may be reached at Carol.Morrison@i4cp.com.

The Average Shelf Life of the American Worker

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:36:00 GMT

I rummaged through my pantry the other day in search of canned goods to donate to a local food drive, and - sad testament to my inventory control skill - pulled out a can of green beans that expired in 2009. No, I didn't donate it, I tossed it. But it occurred to me that this wastefulness could have been avoided had I paid closer attention to what I had.

I bring up the expired green beans because of a white paper on time-to-full productivity (aka time-to-optimal productivity) I recently authored that entailed a review of i4cp's Time-to-Optimal Productivity Survey. The more I considered the results of that survey, the more it seemed to me that what it really examines are two concepts that define the "shelf life" of the average employee: time-to-optimal productivity and maximum time-in-position - the bookends of employee peak performance, if you will.

i4cp's research into talent management metrics found that as few as 10% - and only as many as16% of business leaders - report that their companies use time-to-optimal productivity (TTOP) to a high or very high extent. The range comes from the fact that we asked about it in two separate surveys and received slightly different responses in each. As the white paper explains, TTOP can have multiple meanings. I refer to the time a worker needs to master the skills required to perform his/her job at a fully productive level - an important concept in driving both individual and organizational productivity.

When asked to estimate the time-to-optimal productivity of an average employee in their organizations, 75% of survey participants indicated ranges falling between 12 months and two years' time. More than four in 10 said they don't estimate or calculate TTOP for any positions in their firms. Those who do are most likely to focus on entry-level, sales and call center jobs. The largest percentages told us that they apply TTOP data to make termination decisions (about one in four of those who use the metric at all). A slightly lower proportion told us they use it to help gauge quality of hire.

At the other end of the performance life cycle is maximum time-in-position (MTIP), which i4cp defines as the amount of time an employee can remain in a position before productivity begins to diminish - again, a metric that can figure into strategies to maximize employee and company productivity. Although two-thirds of respondents told i4cp they don't use this concept, and only 6% say they use it to a high or very high extent, more than a third said that employees in their organizations "often remain in positions after their productivity has begun to wane."

For business leaders, MTIP begs the question: how long is too long? At what point do we conclude that an employee has reached a tipping point in terms of their efficacy in a particular job? When asked their estimate of maximum time-in-position for an average worker, a clear majority of the survey respondents agreed that 10 years is the most that can be hoped for. From a continuum of less than one year to more than 16 years, the greatest proportion - 41% - of respondents chose the five-to-10-year range. (It's relevant to point out that ranges for both MTIP and TTOP can vary greatly based on the type of job involved. For instance, it's easy to see that measures applicable to an entry-level retail sales job could differ markedly from those related to an air-traffic-control position.)

Survey respondents who estimate or calculate MTIP most often apply the metric to professional positions, followed by executive roles. Companies say they use performance appraisals and managers' feedback to determine when employees have reached MTIP, and they use that knowledge to support succession planning efforts and training program development.

All this leads me to wonder: If it takes two years to get an average employee up to optimal performance, and that worker peaks between five and 10 years, then shelf-life would probably be something like three to eight years in a given position, right?

What all of this suggests is that tracking TTOP and MTIP has powerful implications for business leaders - there is indeed much to be learned from measuring such concepts. If performance is really important to business leaders - and interest in i4cp's work in profiling the practices of high-performing organizations confirms that it is - then these little-used metrics have solid roles to play in strategies for improving organizational performance and competitive advantage.

Collecting the information needed to calculate TTOP and MTIP requires closer attention to multiple talent management, workforce planning and organizational effectiveness components. Further, it calls on talent managers to look at both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of those components. Sourcing, recruitment, selection, orientation, onboarding and learning figure into the mix of activities needed to get new employees hired and up to speed. Performance management systems, engagement practices, supervisory skills, retention programs, internal movement systems and other efforts may influence both metrics. By the time a talent manager traces employees through all these organizational touch points, he or she will have had many opportunities to see which of those activities are being done effectively and where improvements are likely to make a real difference.

The bottom line here is that if an organization doesn't know beans about the time it takes to bring new hires - or internal moves - to peak productivity and the length of time they're likely to sustain their performance, time and money may be consistently wasted by missing valuable opportunities to increase the effectiveness of employees and the overall performance of your organization.

What's the average shelf life of your employees?

New i4cp tools and scorecards available

For help in defining and collecting data relevant to calculating TTOP and MTIP, i4cp has developed several interactive tools, available exclusively to corporate members:

Senior Research Analyst Carol Morrison has authored white papers, playbooks, reports, analyses and other publications on a variety of topics related to human capital, leadership and talent management. Feature articles by Carol can be found in Talent Management Magazine, Chief Learning Officer, HR Executive and in other leading print and online media.

Pay for Performance: Show Me the Money

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:46:00 GMT

Michael Vick, quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles, recently signed what is being referred to as a "$100 million, six-year contract." Not bad for a guy just two years out of prison. If that dollar figure seems astronomical and too good to be true, that's probably because it is. Vick will most likely earn far less than the headlines suggest. So where does the $100 million figure come from?

Pay for performance.

You see, Mr. Vick has the potential to earn up to $100 million dollars over the course of the next six years, but some pretty extraordinary things are going to have to happen for that to occur. In reality, only about $36 million of that $100 million figure is guaranteed (yes, "only" is used rather loosely here, but you get the idea). Vick and the Eagles need to hit some pretty lofty performance goals for him to achieve the total payout. That includes a couple of Super Bowl wins (organizational performance, anyone?).

Sports are full of examples of pay for performance. The amount of money a golfer receives for playing a tournament is directly related to how he or she finishes. It could be millions, or it could be nothing. It's the ultimate in forced ranking. Team sports often include bonuses for achieving certain playoff or championship wins.

How about your organization? Do your superstars (your franchise players, if you will) stand to earn more rewards if they go above and beyond? Are your incentive rewards tied at all to overall organizational performance?

i4cp's Tying Pay to Performance study found that 91% of respondent organizations do, in fact, tie pay to performance. That's an increase from the 78% that said the same in i4cp's 2009 iteration of the study. However, just because most companies say they're using pay for performance doesn't mean they're using it effectively.

Pay for performance in high-performance organizations

As outlined in i4cp's newest study - now available exclusively to members - high-performance organizations maintain a stronger link between pay and performance, and they approach that link more strategically and effectively.

High-performing organizations primarily use a pay for performance strategy to recognize and reward their high-performing employees, while low-performing organizations are more likely to say they use pay for performance to help achieve corporate goals. High-performing organizations are also more likely to reward their top performers with higher bonuses and larger merit increases.

And high-performance organizations recognize that goals and objectives used to set performance scales must be things employees actually have some control over. They also realize that continuous feedback adds further visibility to the way in which individual performance is tied to overall organizational goal attainment. People need visibility into how they make a difference, and the direct line from employee performance to corporate goals is not always easy to see.

Tying pay incentives to specific goals that are aligned with corporate goals can definitely help overall organizational performance. Most companies seem to understand this. The trick, however, is to set goals that are truly aligned with organizational performance to ensure that employees are focused on objectives that simultaneously benefit them and the company.

In other words, tying pay to performance to help achieve corporate goals is great, but the link needs to be more granular and personalized to recognize the exceptional contributions coming from higher-performing and other highly valued employees.

A balancing act

Pay for performance is a precarious balancing act. Aligning corporate, team and individual goals is not as easy as it sounds. There is also a real danger of alienating or disengaging the heart of the workforce who may not be superstars, but who make the entire machine run. Michael Vick may get the glory and the big contract, but it's the other players on the field - the offensive line, the receivers - who help him succeed. If Vick makes the plays, the team wins. If the team wins, everybody has a chance at earning extra incentives. Both need a reason to bring their "A" game.

I'm not suggesting structuring every employee's incentive plans around goals that have almost no possibility of being achieved. A professional athlete only being assured of a third of a multi-million dollar contract may get them motivated, but try pulling that with someone earning $45,000 a year and see what effect it has on performance (or for that matter retention).

Ultimately, organizations need a pay for performance system that's customized to their individual workforce and incentive program needs. No matter what mix of individual, team and organizational objectives are chosen, however, they must drive behaviors that positively impact performance in a way that result in organizational goal attainment.

For instance, at i4cp member company Amway, the company utilizes a mix of annual bonuses and merit pay to reward performance. Merit increases are influenced by competency rating scores, whereas bonuses are determined by the employee's objective ratings as compared to the performance of their peers.

Tying pay to performance effectively is not an easy thing to do. But identifying a system that works for the organization, that rewards highly valued employees while simultaneously encouraging the masses to remain focused on corporate goals, is critical to achieving high performance.

So while Amway's pay for performance system works for them, it may not be as effective somewhere else. It's unlikely that the Eagles will adopt it anytime soon, and Amway employees can give a sigh of relief that they won't have to achieve two Super Bowl wins before meeting their own performance goals.

David Wentworth has been a senior research analyst for the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) since 2005. He has published several reports and articles on various human capital subjects with an emphasis on workforce technology. He also apologizes for adding to the unending mass of football-themed articles as the NFL season nears kickoff. Anyone who would like to berate him for being a lifelong Patriots fan can reach him here.

Beware the Shiny Objects

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:00:00 GMT

When I was in college I had a friend who paid for most of her graduate school tuition by working part-time at the fine jewelry counter at Sears. I once commented to her that it must be difficult making decent money selling diamond rings at a store better known for its kitchen appliances, table saws and Toughskins™ jeans. Her response was simple. She said, "John, never underestimate the inclination of people to be attracted to shiny objects."

The attraction to things that are shiny, loud or controversial is a natural human weakness. It's the same reason we slow down at traffic accidents. That's why, amidst the past two weeks' news headlines of political brinksmanship in Washington, the debt ceiling countdown, credit rating downgrades and verbal slaps on the wrist from China, a series of perhaps equally important stories were released with little notice or fanfare. And with the distraction of all the other shiny objects of journalism, they nearly didn't catch my attention either. Consider the following reports all released in the past two weeks:

On July 26, The Conference Board released its latest Consumer Confidence Index, which showed a modest increase in overall consumer confidence. However, more significant were Americans' responses to a single item within the index that asks whether or not they believe that jobs are "hard to get." While the responses were mostly negative, they represented the highest scores on that question since November, 2009. (It should be noted that this specific question is an exceptionally strong lead indicator of movement in the nation's overall unemployment rate.)
This past Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 117,000 new jobs were added to the economy in July, seemingly reversing the jobs slump that we've seen since early in the spring.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that more than two million people actually voluntarily quit their jobs in order to accept better ones during the month of May. And, according to the Department of Labor, this is a 35% increase over the lowest level of voluntary resignations in this recession posted back in January, 2010. In other words, while unemployment rates might still be high, there are more and more opportunities for talented people to advance - by leaving their jobs.

Together, these reports may still appear to be little more than a "diamond in the rough" when it comes to optimism about the employment component of the economic recovery. On the other hand, it does demonstrate that multiple research organizations are now reporting that employees are not only more optimistic about future job prospects, they are actually finding them, and in two million cases in May alone, left their current employers to take them.

Interestingly, this trend was predicted by i4cp with our The Critical Human Capital Issues of 2011 report released back in January. According to our annual survey, high-performing companies were already squarely focused on issues related to potential turnover, with both succession planning and knowledge retention among their top five priorities. Comparatively, these issues did not appear at all amid the top five priorities of lower-performing companies.

Is this a coincidence? Not likely. As I noted in our January 19 TrendWatcher, Peter Drucker once said, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." High-performing companies have a way of recognizing what constitutes near-term "shiny objects" versus longer term challenges and opportunities. They told us that turnover was going to be an issue in 2011 and sure enough, turnover is now in fact emerging as a tangible issue.

Does this mean that unemployment rates are about to plummet and job creation begin to soar? Not necessarily. Obviously, there are many social and economic factors that influence job creation - not the least of which are the uncertainties currently plaguing Wall Street. But just as retirement planners tell us to focus on long-term approaches to investing, employers should focus on the longer-term economic trends and understand the inevitable impact that these trends have on retention and turnover.

While I don't want to trivialize the news that has dominated the headlines over the past few weeks - indeed, debt ceilings, the credit worthiness of the U.S. and the ideologically driven paralysis that has gripped the political discourse of the country are certainly nothing to be taken lightly - it's also important to understand that there are longer-term trends that, while perhaps less flashy, are just as important for employers to focus upon.

My friend successfully made it through graduate school and, in fact, made a small nest egg that helped her furnish her first apartment (albeit, from Ikea) by selling fine jewelry at Sears. And, while the current headlines may be boosting news channel ratings and selling newspapers, it is important to remember that you came into the store for a reason - and to remind yourself not to get distracted by all of the shiny objects.

John Gibbons is the Vice President and General Manager of Research and Development at i4cp. He has been a human resources practitioner, researcher and thought leader in human capital strategy for more than 20 years. His work has been featured in hundreds of publications and news outlets around the world including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, CEO Magazine, CNBC, CNN and National Public Radio (NPR).

The Name of the Integrated Talent Management Game

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:23:00 GMT

You may have missed this when it happened - that's okay, I'm sure most people reading this did. There's now a human capital software company called "Lumesse." I have no idea how to pronounce it (and I searched hard on their website), but I think it rhymes with "new mess." The point is, it's not a new company. Lumesse, formerly known as StepStone Solutions, said in their press release that "...the new brand is the first step in making Lumesse an increasingly high-profile, global player in the fast-growth talent management sector."

I can't wait to hear what the second step will be.

This one may have also slipped by you last month: "PeopleFluent" emerged on the talent management software scene. This company isn't new either; it was formerly called PeopleClickAuthoria (if you're thinking that they must have been going for the world record for most syllables in a single company name, you're not alone). PeopleFluent's message is that the new brand "sets out to establish a new identity that better reflects the customer-inspired vision it conceived and began to build more than a year ago." I'd have to agree. But then again I think I'd have agreed that "Charlie" would have been a better identity, too.

All of this renaming, of course, is in the name of being the biggest name in the game of the most overused HR category name: Integrated Talent Management.

Any way you name it, most practitioners find this confusing. And I'm not just talking about vendor name changes; I mean the whole category of Integrated Talent Management.

While so many companies know that talent is critical to competitiveness, managing it as a comprehensive strategy is still rare. It's not like this idea is new - remember the "war for talent" concept that was introduced nearly 15 years ago? - but it's seemingly taking FOREVER for companies to integrate the various silos that typically exist in HR departments around the world.

Surprisingly, with all of this renaming going on, in many companies the name "talent management" is often misused, or at least misunderstood. Several think of it as just another term for succession planning and executive development. While almost every research study i4cp has done on this subject clearly shows that truly integrated talent management is linked to high-performance organizations, and functions such as performance management are most often integrated with learning and development, it's frustrating that we don't have lots of examples of companies doing this in the market.

So what do you do when a subject frustrates you? Put a book together about it, of course. With long-time friend and co-editor Pat Galagan, I recently finished The Executive Guide to Integrated Talent Management, a book designed to provide clarity to a muddy subject. And while success stories aren't abundant, we were fortunate to find several, and have top executives from those companies lend their expertise and their stories to this book.

These organizations are clearly using integrated talent management to improve upon their strengths. For example, at 3M - where innovation is the lifeblood of the organization - there's a strong focus on engaging people and encouraging them to stretch in the context of holistic people management. At Edwards Lifesciences, where CEO Michael Mussallem drives a culture of execution and accountability, SVP of HR Rob Reindl showcases how talent management focuses strongly on succession planning to put at least two candidates in line for every key job. And at GE, the mecca of leadership development in our time, the emphasis on "judgment capacity" is arrived at through industry-leading practices such as leaders teaching leaders and action learning as part of a comprehensive talent system. From Hertz's focus on rewarding knowledge transfer, to Cisco's linkage of performance plans to the CEO's vision, and Agilent's embrace of evidence-based HR, we can see the variety and complexity of talent management practices in today's corporations.

But Pat and I didn't stop at just a few good corporate examples. We also picked the brains of several industry gurus, such as Tom Rath, Peter Cappelli, Dave Ulrich, Marshall Goldsmith, Noel Tichy, Bev Kaye, John Sullivan, Jon Ingham and Ed Lawler. Each of these luminaries wrote chapters, sharing their own views, which were developed over years of working with many organizations. To a person, they describe truly integrated talent management as a critical future component of high-performing organizations. As Dave Ulrich succinctly points out, "Talent differentiates, drives productivity, determines customer service, and increases intangible shareholder value. Talent matters. Talent is too important to be left to uncoordinated events."

Hopefully the book sheds some light on coordination of disparate HR silos, which is the first thing companies should do before even thinking about technology vendors. While I believe technology ultimately plays a big part in successful integration in order for critical data to be shared across functions, if you aren't organized before putting a system in place you will simply have expensive non-coordination. Even among the companies that have achieved a good level of integration, there are many examples of over-promising and under-delivering from well known suppliers.

The bottom line? Few companies are truly there when it comes to integrating talent management. Some are close, but most have yet to realize the true potential of a fully integrated TM system. Those that have are typically higher-performing organizations overall. True integrated talent management is a comprehensive approach that leads to and sustains higher organizational performance and workforce productivity.

No matter what you name it.

Kevin is the CEO and founder of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp). Kevin has been a leader in the human capital field for the last two decades, and was previously the founder and president of SumTotal Systems. Kevin is currently on the board of directors for KnowledgeAdvisors, a human capital analytics firm, and serves on the advisory board for Intrepid, a Seattle-based provider of outsourced workplace productivity solutions, and Longworth Ventures, a Boston-area venture capital firm. Kevin is a frequent author and international keynote speaker on talent management and using human capital strategically in organizations and recently released a new book, titled The Executive Guide to Integrated Talent Management, published by ASTD Press.

Mobile Learning: Anywhere, Anytime

Fri, 06 May 2011 08:33:00 GMT

While we humans have a fascinating history of innovation, we sometimes seem to be at a loss when it comes to immediately realizing the potential of any given technological breakthrough. Instead, we use new technology to mimic whatever was done before. Case in point, when television was invented, we filmed plays with a single stationary camera. It took some time before the ideas of multiple cameras, different angles and the concept of editing came into play.

The learning function is not immune to this self-limiting mindset. When e-learning first came around, we tried to figure out how to present a classroom experience on a computer. Early virtual learning experiments simply recreated physical classrooms with virtual desks, virtual chairs and a virtual podium. A similar pattern has emerged with mobile learning, which to date has held back the obvious opportunities this important medium holds for corporate learners.

As a concept, mobile learning has been around for several years; some companies began delivering information in text format to employees on mobile devices nearly a decade ago. Today, the confluence of device technology, operating systems, content platforms, GPS and Web access - among other factors - has reengaged the minds of the learning community. Morning subway commutes can become mini-classrooms; waiting for appointments can be turned into instant tutoring sessions.

Truth be told, many users would probably admit that they don't use their smartphones for much more than texting, Web surfing, checking e-mail and the occasional actual phone call. More sophisticated users, however, know it is now possible to deliver media rich, interactive learning content to almost any smartphone. This represents an entirely new delivery channel for corporate learning professionals.

But that potential will be missed if we go the route of original TV programming and spend our time trying to cram an entire leadership development course onto a phone. Professional learning developers understand that the design is the biggest differentiator between mobile learning success and failure. More importantly, they understand that mobile learning is a strategic key to connecting multiple learning modalities. It is the link between learning and performance support; the tie between formal and informal learning.

Perhaps the most significant potential of mobile learning is the ability to achieve what many performance support advocates believe has long been the learning profession's Mount Everest; as MIT professor and artificial intelligence pioneer Seymour Papert said, "You can't teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it."

Imagine a technician in the field trying to diagnose an equipment problem. A quick scan of the part's barcode with the phone's camera, and a troubleshooting guide is displayed. Just-in-time, always-in-context learning can save a company a tremendous amount of money while improving productivity.

Another often-cited scenario: a salesperson is in the field trying to close a difficult sale. Just prior to the meeting, a tutorial walks the salesperson through the consultative sales steps necessary to seal the deal. Taking advantage of the salesperson's physical location, his GPS-enabled device gives him key up-to-date information on the company as he's entering the office building. While in the meeting, instead of having to memorize all of the pricing and inventory information, a quick tap on the touch screen brings up the latest information, updated to the second. It's easy to imagine many other useful applications, but today imagining isn't necessary - many of these applications are in use by organizations already.

Mobile learning is not without issues, though, most of which boil down to very tactical, practical application and the ever-present challenge of garnering the support of senior leaders.

Do content owners now need to develop a mobile application for every piece of content they create? If so, does there need to be versions that can run on iPhones, an Android device, BlackBerrys and Windows phones? What about tablets? Are there authoring or content creation tools that make this easy? How do we manage all of this - through our existing Learning Management System (LMS)?

As part of a study i4cp conducted with the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), we found that these tactical issues have delayed mobile learning from truly taking off. But the lack of support of senior leaders and the lack of available budget are two of the most often cited obstacles to mobile learning implementation, according to study participants.

This is unfortunate, because the study also highlights a very important correlation: high-performing companies are much more likely to have adopted mobile learning than low-performing companies. This correlation is something that all learning professionals should take note of. But like many new technologies, the tipping point for widespread adoption will likely come only when "a killer app" emerges for mobile learning.

Whatever that killer app is, it will undoubtedly be all about adapting the approach to delivering contextualized chunks of immediate learning to people when and where they need it most. For busy workers everywhere, this will open an entire new world for devices that were originally only designed for us to talk to each other.

i4cp's 4-Part Recommendation:

Try to remain agnostic. At this stage of the game, unless your organization is willing to provide employees with one device and platform, it may be best to approach mobile learning from a Web-based delivery perspective.
Pilot programs. It is not necessary to develop a complete and polished mobile learning initiative right away. Start with small experiments. It is the only way to figure out what works without wasting time and resources.
It has to make sense. Ask "Do we need to deliver this on a mobile device?" If there is no obvious benefit to delivering a piece of learning this way, it's not worth the effort.
No fear. Mobile computing is not a flash-in-the-pan fad. It has become an acceptable and preferred method of accessing information for high-performing companies. Organizations need to embrace this and find ways to leverage the technology. Address internal barriers such as security and network concerns.

David Wentworth has been a senior research analyst for the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) since 2005. He has published several reports and articles on various human capital subjects with an emphasis on workforce technology. He has contributed to several reports published by ASTD, including authoring The Value of Evaluation: Making Training Evaluations More Effective, The Rise of Social Media: Enhancing Collaboration and Productivity Across Generations, and Instructional Systems Design Today and in the Future. Wentworth's work has also appeared in Compensation & Benefits Review and T+D Magazine.

Manage Performance, Don't Mangle It

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:33:00 GMT

How did we get to a point where the term performance management instills fear and dread at its mere utterance? Employees tend to loathe the process, which is commonly perceived to be little more than a vapid popularity contest that does nothing to recognize their work, yet determines their pay for the next year. Managers see it as a huge time suck that culminates in a series of uncomfortable conversations and confrontations they would rather not endure.

At its core, the concept of managing performance makes complete sense. Any organization worth working for wants to ensure that its employees are focusing on the right things, achieving strategic goals and improving their performance. All of these factors directly affect organizational performance. Giving employees feedback on how they are doing helps them improve, offers managers insight into their teams and provides leadership with an overview of the talent they have at their disposal.

So what happened?

Somewhere along the way, the idea of managing performance was twisted and contorted into the process of performance management. The desire for measurable data and practical efficiencies squeezed most of the human element out of the process. Instead of understanding why a person is performing the way they are, it became much more important to assign them a number or a label that satisfied a reporting requirement.

Part of the blame can be laid at the feet of the pay-for-performance culture. Don't misunderstand me - pay-for-performance is a powerful tool, and our own research points to the fact that adequately rewarding top performers is a good strategy. However, once merit increases became tied to the appraisal process, it created a bond that seemingly cannot be broken.

At the recent kick-off meeting for i4cp's Performance Management Exchange, members of the group were asked about the primary drivers for performance management at their organizations. The members cited many aspirational goals for PM, including improving performance, identifying development opportunities and aligning individual goals with organizational goals.

One thing that was not included, however, was determining pay raises. Yet, if you ask the employees at these or any other organization the same question, the majority will tell you that the appraisal process is for determining merit increases. Period.

Something needs to be done to fix that disconnect and ensure that employees understand the true nature and intent of managing performance. Employees need to have a clear vision as to the role performance management plays in the organization and this clarity needs to become ingrained in the culture. Once this happens, employees can become willing participants in the performance management process rather than reluctant victims who perceive themselves as being forced to participate in something that's being done to them.

Are you facilitating this understanding? Does your company have some type of mission statement for performance management? Do your employees know what it is? It seems as though performance management may suffer from an image problem, and desperately needs a marketing makeover. If your organization doesn't have a communication strategy in place regarding performance management, it's well worth considering putting one together.

As part of an effort to redefine performance management, i4cp has released the first in a series of Performance Management Playbooks. The playbook was developed using an analysis of two separate surveys on performance management with an eye on strategies and policies that are correlated with high market performance. We also spoke with several organizations, including i4cp members, and got their perspectives on what does and doesn't work. Those perspectives and insights are included in the playbook and we hope you find it both inspiring and instructive.

i4cp's 4-Part Recommendation:

Encourage continual, year-round feedback. This can help keep the appraisal process from becoming a one-time, year-end burden. Continuous feedback keeps employees engaged in the process and preempts difficult - and perhaps confrontational - discussions at appraisal time.
Focus on what matters. Don't expend all of your precious time and resources determining whether to use a five- or seven-point scale. Don't look at high completion rates as the hallmark of a world-class PM process. These things aren't correlated with high market performance. Some of the things that are correlated include providing ongoing feedback, creating developmental plans and goal-setting.
Calibration is your friend. Use calibration sessions to demystify the process. One of the most common employee complaints is that PM seems like a mysterious magical black box and what comes out is senseless and arbitrary. A transparent calibration session can ensure that managers are being honest and fair.
Address and resolve poor performance. Simply rewarding high performers and ignoring low performers will not suffice. Similarly, culling the bottom 20% and replacing them would be a costly endeavor. Instead, identify the factors leading to the poor performance. Perhaps there are development opportunities that could help or conflict issues that can be resolved. Given the proper direction, a low performer can often become a high performer. If termination or similar actions are necessary, those decisions are made easier by examining all of the possibilities first.

Three Steps to Help Managers Give a Damn about HR Metrics

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 09:40:00 GMT

"Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe."

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Hocus Pocus, 1990)

This may seem an unkind quote, but the sentiment for those of us in the human resources profession is clear - we need to get over ourselves.

For years HR thought leaders have been touting the use of metrics to elevate the profession, prove the value of the function or "earn a seat at the table" - a phrase that makes Jay Jamrog, i4cp SVP of Research, twitch at the mere utterance.

So in response to the call for more measurement, organizations have half-heartedly created roles with titles such as HR analytics/metrics manager, HR business analyst or (a personal favorite) employee insights specialist. If "half-heartedly" sounds harsh or judgmental as a descriptor for these efforts, let's look at some facts derived from multiple i4cp studies:

Most organizations don't measure human capital impact metrics to a high extent (HR Metrics Survey, March 2009).
- The ROI of training - only 29%
- Employee to productivity output ratios - only 28%
- Quality of attrition - only 27%
Fewer than a quarter of companies (24%) make human capital decisions based on data (Predictive Human Capital Analytics Survey, April 2010).
Only 20% of organizations say they have a workforce measurement strategy to a high degree (Talent Management Measurement Survey, April 2010).

But I don't want to rehash a previous TrendWatcher, "The Crummy State of Talent Management Metrics (and What to Do About It)." What I want to share are insights on what we've learned about management, not necessarily leaders, and how they perceive human capital metrics.

Don't bring a sword to a gun fight.

Remember the famous scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the intimidating bad guy shows up, skillfully wielding a very large scimitar? And what does Indiana Jones do? With a don't-bring-a-sword-to-a-gun-fight sigh, he shoots the bad guy and goes back to the work at hand. In this analogy, you, my human resources compatriot - whether a strategic business partner, HR analytics director or even the head of HR - play the role of the dead guy. Why? Indys' face says it as clearly as any manager in your organization could: "I just don't have time for this."

Many HR practitioners hold the mistaken belief that wielding a slew of reports and pointing out minute distinctions between employee populations will garner respect and credibility. But, like the ill-fated baddy mentioned above, this faith in the efficacy of the tools of your trade is often misplaced.

Here is the base rationale for not bringing every metric in your arsenal when meeting with managers - it frustrates them. Either they believe you have valuable information that's hidden in reams of data or they believe you're all bang and no bullet, having no insights that actually impact them. Under either scenario there's a sense you are wasting their valuable time.

It's okay to give them a vacuum (or toaster or blender).

If you want to avoid a major pitfall when dealing with managers, keep this advice in mind: It's okay to present them with something simple and practical.

You see, unlike in sitcoms where the husband gets in trouble for giving practical household items in lieu of spectacular and romantic gifts, managers appreciate HR metrics that are useful and, more importantly, that they can act upon.

In a recent i4cp webinar, Quality of Attrition: Management's "Favorite" People Measurement, we revealed an important lesson about how managers interact with human capital metrics. Generally, managers don't understand (or believe) the majority of metrics HR provides to demonstrate the function's impact on achieving business goals. When asked directly what managers care about, the top two answers were "important positions" and "valuable people." In HR speak that translates to "critical roles" and "regrettable terminations." If prompted, managers agreed that high performers and/or high potentials were also "probably important."

What was most fascinating (but a little crushing) was that managers did not connect their input into the performance management process with the retention and engagement of important positions and valuable employees. In their minds, the performance management process was unrelated and primarily a mechanism for annual compensation awards.

Based on interviews and input from a working group of i4cp members, the Talent Management Accelerator, i4cp developed the Quality of Attrition Scorecard, an interactive tool that focuses on a few measures that managers feel are aligned to their operations, that are within their sphere of influence and that they can define parameters for to influence how the measures are calculated.

This tool taps into one of the real secrets of effective human capital metrics communication: What management values will not be defined and found in your HRIS system. To them, real value is unique to the function, influenced by the corporate culture and highly personalized by management. When HR shows up with data generated solely by the HRIS system, a system designed for HR processes, it is immediately considered suspect.

Say it in a language they can understand.

Here's another reason that managers disregard so many of the people measures HR produces: We don't deliver the information in their language. What most HR organizations do is the equivalent of proudly producing an equipment manual for a broken machine in Chinese, simply because the machine was manufactured in China.

A fatal mistake in many workforce scorecards and reports is taking labels directly from the HRIS system that are meaningless to management and are even confusing to the majority of the HR function.

In i4cp's Quality of Attrition Scorecard tool, the labels and the definitions are completely customizable. The tool is intended as a mechanism for partnering with management to create meaningful metrics - with the process being as important as the results. After all, there's nothing like creating a common language for a practical application tool to open the lines of communication and build acceptance.

This approach also helps in providing people data that references a manager's specific workforce segment, which is almost always more effective than utilizing third party benchmarks. To tell a manager that 20% of their workforce is in "important roles" but that only 12% of the attrition in their unit was from these roles (which is very good) - or, conversely, that 35% of attrition was from "important roles" - has more meaning than arbitrary targets or benchmarks that are defined by outsiders.

While often an overused adage, "less is more" is definitely a truism for effectively communicating workforce metrics with managers. This doesn't mean you can stop measuring the plethora of other human capital measurements - quite the contrary. These measures are still important to the HR function to gain insight into the workforce and to have appropriate data for key decisions. The mistake HR often makes is bringing everything to the table to demonstrate how smart or competent they are when, in reality, it undermines their credibility. Having the right data at the right time is the stuff of HR heroes.

Mary Ann Downey is i4cp's Human Capital Management Practice Leader. She has a practitioner background working in multiple functions for large global organizations such as Caterpillar, General Motors and ING. At i4cp she works closely with our member-driven working groups and has published and collaborated on a number of reports, articles and practical application tools. Mary Ann has presented to many professional organizations and conferences and is a licensed attorney.

The Contingent Worker Debate

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:46:00 GMT

This edition of i4cp's Trendwatcher is a departure from our traditional format. Rather than presenting the perspective of an individual, we're having some fun and taking two diametrically opposed viewpoints on the same important topic - contingent workers. As you read, keep in mind that our intent for both sides of the argument is to be provocative, with the goal of sparking conversation and new thinking on the topic. We hope you enjoy this experiment.

John: "Contingency Plans are Plan A, not Plan B"

Let's face it, the reality of the greater use of contingent workers is not only here to stay, but, in fact, has been growing steadily for decades. Business leaders understand that they need to keep costs low, remain nimble to changes in the marketplace and keep up on the hottest skills without having to invest literally millions of dollars each year in developing their employees.

Our State of the Contingent Workforce Report - which you yourself wrote, Lorrie - shows that high-performing companies not only use contingent workers more often, they also use them more strategically than low performers. Specifically, by using contingent workers, they can immediately infuse their businesses with the key high-level skill sets that are vital now, not a year or more from now using traditional learning and recruiting routes. It's kind of like buying the latest Smartphone with the idea that, by the time it becomes obsolete, you'll already be upgrading to the new model.

And, if you think that high-performing companies use employees simply as disposable commodities, you'd be wrong. High-performing leaders actually keep contingent employees in their jobs longer than low performers. Why? It's because they don't use contingent workers as simply a short-term way of saving some cash. Smart managers know that building a workforce composed of a critical mass of contingent workers is not just a short-term fix to financial tight spots or budget cuts. Instead, contingent workers represent a way of building a smart, up-to-date, yet nimble base of vital talent.

And contingency is not just great for businesses - it's terrific for employees too. Nearly a decade ago Daniel Pink espoused the advantage of contingency for the so-called Free Agent Nation. Contingent work arrangements allow skilled employees to not only choose who they work for, but also give them the latitude to actually negotiate their specific work assignments, their work settings ... and even their bosses. This is especially great news for Generation Y, the most technologically savvy - yet dissatisfied - segment of the U.S. workforce. What better way to get to do the work that you love, get paid what your skills are worth in the free market, and - most importantly - have the flexibility to move somewhere else when you become bored or the boss becomes a pain in the ass?

No, Lorrie, contingency is not a bad thing. Not only is it here to stay, it's a great idea for everyone involved.

Lorrie: "Get Your Contingent Act Together Already!"

John, your points are well taken, but the truth is that far too many organizations don't have a handle on contingent workers. They don't know how many contingent workers they are using at any given time, how many staffing firms they're sourcing from or what their spend is.

Add to that the fact that there is too much turf-warring and internal power struggling over the whole issue of who ultimately owns the process and is accountable for outcomes and you have the perfect recipe for a big fat mess rather than a strategic approach to meeting changing needs. Sure, contingent workers are the right choice for some organizations and circumstances, but not always.

You say that contingent workers are not viewed by companies as disposable commodities, but in using temporary workers or contractors to come in and perform certain functions aren't we making some fulltime employees feel disposable? Some firms I interviewed during the course of this study admitted that the morale of their employees has been affected by the presence of contractors who are brought in to work on challenging or creative projects while the FTEs keep the engine of the organization chugging along. So while your super-creative contractors may come in and produce something really cool, does it balance the sometimes detrimental impact on your core workforce?

Your argument that the increased use of contingent workers is "great news for Generation Y, the most technologically savvy - yet dissatisfied - segment of the U.S. workforce," does not hold water for me. It sounds like yet another bit of HR posturing to pacify Gen Y who, as you say, welcome having the flexibility to move somewhere else "when they become bored or the boss becomes a pain in the ass." I say: Grow up, kids. Welcome to the real world. Everyone gets bored with their jobs from time-to-time and sometimes that boredom leads to making a change but it can also lead to an opportunity to be innovative or entrepreneurial. Quit whining and get busy.

What's next, John? Organizations fully staffed by employees who are completely unengaged with anything but their own career trajectory and the next assignment in the next company? And what are the implications in terms of the loss of institutional knowledge, the strain on the culture and engagement?

Sure, contingent workers may cost less, but what's the cost in the long run? The reality is that many organizations will have better outcomes in certain areas by hiring and investing in the development of fulltime employees rather than repeatedly falling back on using contingent workers and, in a way, staying on a carousel that goes around and around but never really makes progress or arrives anywhere.

The current market allows us an opportunity to recruit high-potential talent like never before, but I think some organizations are loathe to break out of the complacency the recession sunk us in to. Sure, calling a staffing firm to fill openings is easy. Finding new employees who are the right fit for your organization takes work and developing an internal pipeline takes time and money. But it's worth it.

John Gibbons is the Vice President and General Manager of Research and Development at i4cp. He has been a human resources practitioner, researcher and thought leader in human capital strategy for more than 20 years. His work has been featured in hundreds of publications and news outlets around the world including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, CEO Magazine, CNBC, CNN and National Public Radio (NPR).

Lorrie Lykins, i4cp's Managing Editor and Director of Research Services, has been involved in human capital research for a decade and has authored numerous white papers and articles on subjects ranging from corporate volunteerism to, yes, the contingent workforce. She is an adjunct professor at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL, a contributing author to the ASTD Leadership Handbook (2010) and has been published in numerous journals, magazines and newspapers.

Do People Drive Business? You Bet Your Assets.

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:10:00 GMT

Is it just me?

I can't tell you the number of times I've sat in a presentation delivered by a senior executive who invariably uses a phrase that really gets under my skin. As the speaker begins to extol the importance of innovation and talent I can feel it coming. As they continue on to talk about the importance of having engaged and dedicated employees I look around the room and see faces beginning to light up - in particular those of my colleagues in Human Resources. Finally, as the speaker reaches the crescendo of praise for the workforce, I have actually found myself gripping the edge of my conference room chair as those inevitable words are uttered:

"People are this company's most valuable asset."

Don't get me wrong. I agree with them. In fact, I have dedicated my career to pursuing the notion that people add value to their companies. I also believe that a large part of my responsibility as an HR professional - and as a business leader in general - is to demonstrate just how important they really are. My problem with the phrase lies in the fact that we HR professionals collectively have not done an especially good job at demonstrating that value in a meaningful way.

Let's be honest: Can we - let alone our CEO or CFO - confidently demonstrate the true financial value that exceptionally talented and motivated people provide to our company as opposed to employees of average talent or motivation?

Most of us can't, and in fact, many of us don't know how to begin.

Fortunately, Evidence-Based Human Resources, a movement that has been little more than a whisper in intellectual circles and among geeky HR analytics types (I include myself in this category) for the past few years, has begun to mature and become engrained in how high-performing companies are managing themselves. And evidence-based approaches are extending beyond simply the use of HR metrics and human capital analytics to inform how these companies are approaching their overall human capital strategies in general.

So what is Evidence-Based Human Resources? EBHR simply is the use of human capital analytics and scientific standards of causation to build a case for how people management practices drive operational and financial performance of the business.

While it sounds sophisticated - and admittedly, there are some very smart practitioners who are applying EBHR in very sophisticated ways - the concepts are fairly simple. There are two things that you should know to really understand what EBHR is all about: First, measure what matters. Many organizations approach HR metrics the same way the classic befuddled drunk looks for his lost keys under a street light (even though he's pretty sure he lost them a few blocks away) - simply because the light is better. We measure what's easy. In an effort to demonstrate that our functions add value to the company, we spend a lot of time measuring things like time to fill positions, turnover rates or evaluation scores from participants in training programs. While these measures are a nice start, they don't capture whether or not the new hires are actually performing well, if turnover rates in certain positions are more closely related to profitability of the company than turnover in other positions, or if training programs are actually changing the long-term success of business units whose managers participated in them.

The second concept is a little more complicated, but nothing we weren't all taught in high school chemistry class ... then promptly forgot because we all went into HR. If you reach deep into your dusty memory of science you will remember that there is a clear and simple three-part test for demonstrating that one thing actually causes a second thing to happen. And, isn't that what we are trying to do in our efforts to demonstrate the value of talent and managing talent well? As a refresher, those three parts are:

Correlation - simply put, when one thing happens, the other does too. (This also works in reverse - when one thing doesn't happen, neither does the other.)
Temporal Relationship - this is just a scientific term meaning that the first thing happened before the other thing happened.
Control for Other Variables - this means that you've made an effort to control for other explanations for why you came up with the outcome you got.

Finally, it's important to understand that, while the application of evidence-based approaches may involve data and analytics, number crunching isn't what's at the core of EBHR itself. Evidence-Based HR is about knowing your business and what measures are used by stakeholders to determine its operational and financial success. It's also about learning (or re-learning) a disciplined way of demonstrating facts and applying critical thinking to make the case for HR. HR has always had an important message to communicate regarding the value of people. EBHR simply allows HR practitioners to tell that story in a manner that is just as compelling to the people sitting in a boardroom as those being told by our peers in marketing or finance.

I firmly believe that people are valuable and that their efforts and contributions drive business performance. I also think that if you are reading this, chances are you believe that too. With evidence-based approaches to building talent strategies and testing our assumptions about what works and what doesn't work, I believe that we collectively can come closer to demonstrating that value.

In other words ... it isn't just me.

John Gibbons is the Vice President and General Manager of Research and Development at i4cp. He has been a human resources practitioner, researcher, and thought leader in human capital strategy for more than 20 years. His work has been featured in hundreds of publications and news outlets around the world including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, CEO Magazine, CNBC, CNN, and National Public Radio (NPR).

The Top 10 Talent Trends of 2010

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 10:48:00 GMT

It's been a long but very good year for i4cp - an enormous amount of research on corporate performance was done and many terrific corporate members joined our network. It's impossible to sum it all up in one TrendWatcher but I'm going to hit on a few of the research highlights and lessons learned as we prepare to embark on a new year:

Get performance management right. We know some performance-management skeptics hate to hear it, but the research shows that PM is the cornerstone of integrated talent management. That is, it is more highly integrated with the other components of integrated talent management than any other components. Moreover, high-market performers are 20% more likely to integrate PM into their talent management systems than are low performers. So, build your business case and deal with any weaknesses in your PM system.
Don't assume your managers know what they're doing. When it comes to performance management, they often don't. In fact, less than a fifth of organizations have leaders who, as a whole, are either highly or very highly skilled at conducting performance reviews. High-performing organizations know this and are much more likely to train their managers in this area.
Stop stalling on social media. A lot of organizations are burying their heads in the sand when it comes to social media because it's so seemingly complex, chaotic and insecure. But social media, especially in the area of learning, can pay dividends and, perhaps even more to the point, the massive demographic cohort known as the Millennials is generally much more likely than other generations to use these technologies, both at home and at work. So, prepare to use these technologies to make them - and other employees - more productive.
Build your diversity business case the right way. There are a lot of good reasons to create a more diverse workforce, but high-performing organizations are more likely than other organizations to base the business case for diversity on the need to reflect their customer base and community demographics. Whereas 26% of high performers identify this as the primary business case for diversity, just 10% of low performers do. High performers are also twice as likely to say they pursue diversity to attract top talent.
Don't throw emotional dimwits into your high-potential pipeline. Higher-performing, larger organizations are more likely than other companies to focus emotional intelligence (EI) initiatives on leadership and high-potential development than on areas such as communication. What's more, about two-thirds of high-performing organizations apply the EI concept to their executive-level leaders, yet fewer than half of low-performing organizations do so.
End the long era of lackluster leadership. The single greatest human capital failure of the last 20 years is the inability of organizations to excel at leadership development. In 2010, three-quarters of respondents to an i4cp study said developing leaders is a highly important issue, but less than a quarter said their company is highly effective in this area. This wildly disproportionate ratio makes leadership development the most critical human-capital issue of the year. And yet, i4cp has been tracking major issues for over two decades and has found that leadership is consistently at or near the top of any such rankings. In other words, it's never adequately addressed. Time to fix it. Look for a major i4cp analysis on leadership competencies in 2011.
Move HR far beyond efficiency. "Efficiency is a given in today's world," says Jay Jamrog, i4cp's Senior VP of Research. HR needs to be able to boost the performance of the whole organization. For example, study respondents from high-market performing organizations were about 30% more likely than their counterparts from low-performing companies to report that HR "drives change management" to a great or very great extent.
Just measure it. Companies that excel at talent management are nearly twice as likely to use workforce metrics strategies to a high or very high extent. Yet, the vast majority of firms are still mediocre or worse at workforce measurement. In fact, a paltry one-fifth of all study participants said that their organizations have such a strategy to a high or very high extent. (Please take a moment to envision the late, great Peter Drucker sadly shaking his head at the state of talent management circa 2010.)
Think global, act global. In 2010, we were all about global talent issues. Everybody repeats, "Think global, act local." There's some wisdom there, but companies also need to act globally, putting into place initiatives that make sense from the perspective of today's worldwide marketplace. For example, when respondents were asked about the degree to which their global leadership development programs change from region to region, about half of larger, high-performing global organization said this occurs to only a slight degree or not at all. None said their programs change from region to region to a very high degree, and 42% said they vary to a moderate degree. Bottom line: when it comes to localizing leadership development, less is more.
Don't just retain knowledge, retain networks. Yes, knowledge retention is critical and will become even more so in 2011 if the economy improves and voluntary turnover rises. It's hard enough to lose the unique knowledge of talented employees, but it can be even harder to lose their internal and external networks of colleagues, clients, experts and innovators. Our new Knowledge Retention Playbook notes, "The value of a single employee's network of internal and external relationships should not be underestimated. Unfortunately, the likelihood of preserving and transferring even a part of the dynamics of those relationships and collaborations often is slim at best." Yet, in today's networked economy - where relationships often equal money and performance - companies should be thinking about ways of capturing and preserving valuable networks.

I wish we had more space here - there are so many more research trends to discuss. But these are a good capstone for 2010 and a nice foundation for 2011. Our excellent i4cp research team is looking forward to more great discoveries in the new year.

Schmooze Your Way to Knowledge Retention

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:06:00 GMT

Anyone who's ever attended a professional conference knows that the happy hour/networking/schmooozathon session can be an opportunity to hear enthralling business folklore you ordinarily would not hear anywhere else. This corporate version of cowboys trading stories around the campfire offers listeners a chance to pick up valuable insight, ideas and education, not to mention new material to add to our own repertoires. It comes to us in the forms of witty anecdotes and quips, and tales from the trenches that we can customize and repeat as if they are our own at the next conference, or toss into a presentation, client call or team meeting.

The beautiful thing about traditional conference networking sessions is that they are relaxed and usually take place in a fairly confined area, perfect for absorbing tidbits of knowledge and experience without even being directly involved in the conversation. All you have to do is sidle up to the hors d'oeuvre table and linger over the chicken satay in order to pick up some juicy nuggets of wisdom from seasoned professionals. This sort of informal (tacit) learning and knowledge transfer is a favorite of mine - I sometimes even take notes (unobtrusively, of course), by feigning interest in something on my BlackBerry.

Incorporating a little bit of that happy hour/networking mojo into your organization's culture might be an excellent element to add to your knowledge preservation and transfer efforts. And if your organization has not done much in terms of thinking about how to mitigate or prevent knowledge loss at all, don't panic because you're not alone.

Lack of time, accountability, resources, and support from management are commonly cited factors that preclude many organizations from embarking on a knowledge retention and transfer plan according to a 2009 study of 426 organizations conducted by i4cp in partnership with the Center for Effective Organizations (CEO) and HR People & Strategy (HRPS). The idea of initiating some sort of knowledge transfer and retention program may seem daunting and even intimidating, but it really doesn't have to be. And beginning to foster a culture that conveys knowledge as a practical matter of going about the day-to-day operations of the business doesn't need to be complicated. If it's designed and approached in a way that fits with your organization's existing culture, it can be fairly simple and even fun. In fact, starting simply and inexpensively is probably a smarter way to go for many organizations - one example of this is beginning informal knowledge transfer through storytelling.

The practice of passing along your organization's knowledge, history and folklore in an informal or formalized way (or a combination of the two) can achieve much more beyond preserving a track record of why and how you accomplished what you did; it can build bridges for better communication, fuel innovation and boost productivity. It can also prevent needless squandering of resources, which brings to mind a business-lore tale that's a favorite of mine. The story has been making the rounds for several years and I've heard various versions of the same basic premise: a group of engineers/mechanics/scientists (or fill in the profession of your choice here) could not figure out how to resolve a serious equipment failure/safety problem/design flaw (or fill in the problem of your choice here). They wrestled around with the conundrum for quite some time but made no real progress and then one day one of the team members went bowling/fishing/out for beers (or fill in the activity of your choice here) with a recently retired colleague and mentioned the pickle. The recently retired colleague casually replied that the same issue had come up a few years before and that it had been easily resolved by doing X,Y,Z. The moral of the story, of course, is that if your organization is not invested in knowledge transfer and retention, the odds are pretty good that someone somewhere in your organization is at this very moment needlessly reinventing the wheel.

i4cp 's new Knowledge Retention Playbook: Tools and Techniques for Preserving Knowledge offers suggestions for knowledge retention beginners that include establishing recurring storytelling roundtables to pass along organizational memory and the history of "how things get done." These informal discussions can describe decision-making processes and lessons that have been learned.

Organizations can create communities of practice that foster the exchange of information among co-workers from the top down, and vice versa. If individuals seem hesitant to function as storytellers, invite the team to present in a panel discussion forum. Communities of practice can be virtual or face-to-face, and they can allow workers who perform the same tasks to "meet" and share experiences and best practices or questions about processes and procedures. Communities may meet on a regular basis, or they may get together spontaneously as the need arises. The group typically has a leader or facilitator who is a more experienced employee. These communities are particularly useful when similar tasks are performed at different locations.

Whatever stage your organization may be in in terms of actively preserving and conveying knowledge, now's a good time to revisit what you have been doing and consider broadening your efforts with informal activities that foster knowledge transfer. If your organization has no KR initiatives in place, there's no time like the present to get started.

i4cp's 4-Part Recommendation:

Champion the cause. Support for KR should begin with senior-level support and evangelizing, allocation of resources, and clear ownership, along with concise and consistent messaging that KR is important and worthy of a formal management strategy.
Designate a leader. Organizations that are farther along in the KR process should consider establishing a knowledge management office responsible for overseeing the execution of KR and ensuring that it is fully integrated into day-to-day functions companywide. A chief knowledge officer (CKO) should be tasked with developing standards and practices, supported by an internal or external advisory council, that will foster consistent knowledge sharing and practices and build a knowledge-sharing culture.
Figure out what you have (or don't). Organizations need to identify what is critical knowledge, where it resides, and how to capture, preserve and communicate it. This begins with identification of key positions and functions in the organization and the skills associated with them. Determinations should be made about the time required to develop talent in those key functions and positions. Do not assume key positions and competencies have already been identified during previous reductions in force, or that these efforts minimized the impact of knowledge loss. Some may assert that knowledge resides within one area or another and that business unit leaders possess the most critical information; while others may insist that key knowledge resides in the C-suite, IT, or HR. In fact, key knowledge resides in every area and at every level of the organization, and not necessarily in what may have been previously identified as "key roles."
Start small - but start. There is no one right way to approach formalizing KR. With few exceptions, most organizations will need to create a multi-faceted approach to building institutional memory that consists of something more than one-way communication with newer/junior employees acting as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge by colleagues/teachers. KR initiatives must be dynamic and flexible if they are to achieve efficacy over the long run. This can be accomplished with the creative application of tools and approaches such as cross-training, leveraging technology and establishing communities of practice. Organizations should begin with small pilots with a few teams. The key is to get started.

Get Your Onboarding Act Together, Pronto

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:45:40 GMT

Admit it. Your organization has probably become complacent about recruitment and retention in recent years. Yes, you've had your reasons. It's been the worse job market in generations and compared to the go-go 1990s, it's been easy to attract good people or retain the ones you've got.

Get ready to say goodbye to all that. Despite the gloomy unemployment numbers in the U.S., there's a sea change underway. Consider the following:

Private-sector payroll employment rose by 159,000 in October. Since December 2009, employment in the private sector has risen by 1.1 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Temporary jobs, which are a leading economic indicator, are up. Temporary help services have added 451,000 jobs since September 2009.
Online job postings hit a two-year high in October. There were 4,409,800 vacancies advertised in October, according to The Conference Board.
Mass layoffs are down compared to a year ago. In the third quarter of 2009, for example, there were 2,034 mass layoff events, compared to 1,297 in the third quarter of 2010.

Okay, none of these factors alone suggest a private-sector hiring frenzy, but together they represent a trend well worth watching. And add to that some of the findings from a soon-to-be published study i4cp conducted on employee learning and career development. We found that a scant 6.5% of respondents said they were highly confident that the knowledge and skills of their current employees would meet the needs of future business initiatives.

In other words, watch out! You've got some critical talent acquisition decisions to make, and it's not too soon to start planning for them. The U.S. labor market is still a buyer's market but it won't last.

This is especially true for managerial jobs. Our research shows that high market performing organizations are actually more likely than low-performing organizations to say they have a very difficult time hiring people capable of filling managerial positions. Why? Because high-performing organizations tend to have higher expectations for managers and leaders than do other organizations.

Given these trends, it makes sense that i4cp is seeing an uptick in member interest in certain staffing practices, such as competitive recruitment strategies, competencies, assessments, job shadowing and onboarding. Let's focus on onboarding, a particularly relevant function for this stage of an economic recovery.

While onboarding has always been considered an instrumental practice in the recruitment continuum, its role in the careful, cautious hiring of new talent in a recovering economy is downright critical. Organizations are highly selective right now, choosing only the very best people they can find. These are investments they want to protect, and onboarding is one way to accomplish that.

Onboarding is a term that was originally geared toward the orientation and acculturation of high-level leaders. These days, the term is increasingly aimed at most new employees, not just managers. I think of it as "orientation on steroids" because it tends to last a lot longer than that first day or week and is tracked in much more rigorous ways. It's about speeding up and increasing the quality of the assimilation and accommodation of new recruits - or of employees taking on new positions.

There's considerable information out there about the advantages associated with onboarding. In a recent webinar titled Accelerating Employee Productivity Through Onboarding, Claire St. Louis, VP of HR at i4cp member-company United Water, noted that turnover costs are 120%-200% of an employee's salary. Onboarding can take a bite out of these costs because new employees who complete a structured onboarding program are 58% more likely to be with the organization after three years.

To take advantage of such benefits, United Water has created a program that includes a number of features, including a Web-based onboarding tour, a standard orientation script, a mentor or buddy system, and connection-creation events such as the United Water Discovery Day.

Referring to United Water's Web-based onboarding tour, St. Louis states, "What it enables new hires to do is to take a virtual tour of our company before the first day of work and accomplish three main things." Those include forms management (such as new-hire paperwork), task management (including the introduction to key employee policies) and socialization (which helps new employees to better understand organizational missions, values and culture).

Partly through a combination of onboarding and engagement programs, United Water was able to boost the favorable ratings of orientation by new employees by 21% as well as boost overall job satisfaction.

i4cp's 4-Part Recommendation:

Implement or improve your onboarding program, starting with a well laid-out plan. Map out your onboarding process so you have a feel for how well it can handle a larger pipeline of new recruits. Look for bottlenecks and for ways to improve efficiency without losing quality. For example, one way to increase bandwidth is by featuring a Web-based onboarding tour, sometimes combined with automated systems that encompass items ranging from task management to socialization. Although this is no substitute for personal guidance from a knowledgeable coworker, Web-based systems can be a terrific complement to such guidance.
Use mentoring, job shadowing, peer coaching or other person-to-person components. These can be key not only to helping new employees understand the job more quickly but to understanding the all-important corporate culture. It is often other employees who can best help employees develop and excel within the organization.
Train your managers to onboard more effectively. Not all managers fully understand the need for high-quality onboarding or the costs of turnover. Therefore, it makes sense to train managers not only in how to onboard employees but in understanding the goals of the program, the expected benefits, and the current costs they're trying to limit. It may also make sense to rate managers' performance in terms of how well they onboard new employees.
Measure the impact. Tracking retention rates is key, of course, to determining the success of these programs. But other metrics are also important, including feedback on and satisfaction with the onboarding program itself, time-to-full-productivity and quality-of-hire. Other possible metrics include time to training completion, time to receiving equipment, and completion rates for checklists and tasks. This information should help the organization gauge the success of onboarding and allow it to make further improvements as needed.

Fostering Intrapreneurship: Think Like a VC, Act Like an Entrepreneur

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:44:00 GMT

All corporations have the challenge of trying to infuse an entrepreneurial spirit into their workforces. As the theory goes, when employees act like entrepreneurs, they put themselves in the mindset of business owners with a bias for action, which results in good decisions and good outcomes.

The practice, however, is more difficult than the theory. To get employees to act like entrepreneurs, companies have often taken a structural approach. For example, Google and Microsoft organize into small units of 50 to 100 employees to maintain a sense of entrepreneurial spirit and eliminate bureaucracy. The trade-off is that small groups can create silos across units, leading to duplication of efforts and a squelching of synergy. But if a company chooses to organize in large functional groups to achieve maximum efficiency and scale, it risks creating behemoth departments that crush the natural entrepreneurial spirit that exists within its employees.

After a career as both an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist, I have concluded that creating an entrepreneurial spirit within the corporation is only half the battle. I have seen too many situations where acting like an entrepreneur was not a business panacea: unbridled, unfocused entrepreneurial energy can easily be squandered and misdirected. In my last eight years as a VC, I developed an appreciation for the attitude and vantage point that VCs have when sifting through business proposals and allocating scarce capital to the best opportunities.

Through these two career experiences, I have come to realize that the true question corporations need to ask is: How do I get my employees to think like VCs but act like entrepreneurs? In other words: What's the best way to impose the challenge of complex, competing priorities on employees who must, in effect, be adroit at living with split personalities? This new frame of mind requires the corporate manager to extract the best from both worlds - entrepreneurs with a bias for action and VCs with a bias for analysis. Elements of both are required.

The Mind of the Venture Capitalist

The VC industry is a small, arcane field that isn't well known to many outside of the mere hundreds of professionals who practice it every day. So let me explain a bit more what I mean when I promote this way of thinking for the corporate manager.

VCs are trained to survey and network with smart people to find the best ideas out there (what's known in industry parlance as deal flow). Therefore, corporate managers should be encouraged to spend time networking with outside experts who can expose them to a broader range of ideas than what might emerge from within the walls of their corporation. Once they've attracted numerous wacky and credible ideas to transform their business, managers need to follow the VC model of being a cynic, challenging every assumption and having a sensitive "BS" detector that allows them to dismiss the majority of suggestions as unworthy of further consideration.

Lesson One: Be a notorious skeptic who swiftly rejects hundreds of these generated ideas, setting a high bar before something is deemed worthy of attention.

It is tricky to encourage a lot of new ideas without pandering to the sources of the ideas. If the ideas are not worth pursuing, managers need to feel comfortable (and supported by their chain of command) not wasting time on them, even if the most senior executives or most important customers provide ideas.

Lesson Two: Choose situations in which the team or company has a distinct advantage against competitors; where you can leverage your resources, expertise, and relationships to create value.

The Mind of the Entrepreneur

Once the big ideas are chosen, there needs to be a shift in emphasis to the entrepreneurial frame of mind, one that is focused on implementation. This requires you to select people as carefully as you've selected ideas. Great entrepreneurs don't settle for working with whoever is available. Instead, they take the attitude that their mission is to be inspiring enough to attract the best and brightest, and they don't waste time with B teams.

Lesson Three: Attract world-class talent.

There's a pattern of young entrepreneurs achieving greatness in areas where their older, wiser colleagues were scared away because they "knew better." At a time when IBM and Compaq were dominating the emerging PC market, who would have thought to challenge them with a new direct-to-consumer business model but a kid named Michael Dell selling computers out of his dorm room at the University of Texas? Corporations need to allow their managers to be naive enough to not "know better."

Lesson Four: Attack the opportunities and don't be afraid to be wrong - just don't stand still.

For managers to truly foster innovation within the corporation, they need to take the best of both of these perspectives - the VC and the entrepreneur - and apply them in their own environment.

Jack Welch had a similar mindset when it came to balancing competing priorities. "You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term," he states flatly. "Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is."

I argue the same is true for instilling a similar entrepreneurial/analytical approach in the minds of corporate managers. There are those that are able to sit back and analyze what idea is the best one, while others who are good at acting with the raw, unbridled enthusiasm of an entrepreneur. The best managers will do both. And the best corporations will help them figure out how.

Jeffrey Bussgang is a board member of i4cp and general partner with Flybridge Capital Partners, a venture capital firm in Boston. He was previously co-founder and president of Upromise. He is author of Mastering the VC Game and can be followed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bussgang.