War for Talent...there wasnt one for awhile, but now it's back!

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article on the latest craze showing that all employers are in for a big shock on this rebound, the 'war for talent' it's finally happening.  The first tell-tale sign is the number of new job postings which stand at 4.7 million compared to 2.7 million only one year ago.  So employers ask, so what, the unemployment rate is going down, the economy is still not creating more jobs than it losses and no one is spending money shopping.

Well, this portends a new paradigm: employees ARE going shopping, the better ones that is.  They are looking for new jobs while they work, talking about better pay, better total rewards and opportunities for advancement.  The theory makes sense because those who were more fortunate have been sitting on their hands for the last few years, slugging through it, holding down their fort and keeping the paychecks depositing into the bank.  Now that the pent up demand for skilled workers is evident - many companies can't even fill their most coveted open reqs with the right people - employees are looking at making that move.

So how do employers deal with this?  Talent acquisition tools and talent management tools that attract and engage employees are a must.  Companies must allow employees the opportunity to manage their longer term careers and establish personal roadmaps from the time of hire.  Acquisition tools must manage candidates for the longer-term, building up a potential job bench and not just look to fill yesterday new req.  Talent management must allow employees the chance to develop and expand their scope and skills.  Skill building for today's business strategy is just as important as building those skills to address tomorrow's newer strategic direction.

Interested to hear thought from those hiring managers?  Maybe, this should be a leading indicator...

One Page Talent Management- is there really such a thing?

Recently read the book with the same title, written by Marc Effron and Miriam Ort.

Their concept at the core is simple. All organizations take a process (in their case, they are analyzing talent processes), dissect the process, redesign it, place it up on a system and then build all kind of rules around the process. What the final result is, is an overly complex, unwieldy set of tools that try to anticipate every variation and hence add to the pain and headache for employees who need to comply with the new process.

So, their mantra is a simple three steps:
- start with the science of the intent
- eliminate complexity, add value
- create transparency and accountability

For each of these, they describe their methodology and thought process and how to apply these to every talent management process. For example, adding value, how do you simply do that? Adding value means making it easier to use, eliminating redundancies, obviously inferior choices, so that the process will be used the correct way and yield actionable results.

Eliminate complexity, let's look at SMART goals. They suggest that 5 steps to creating a SMART goal is wasteful, they do it in 3! Specific, important and Measurable are all that matters.

Using the science in a 360 assessment, creates accountability. Too many questions from too many people require a science degree to interpret the results. They say, why not just ask each rater to recommend what the person should do more of (positive reinforcement) and what that person should do less of (changing out of bad behaviors)...makes sense, but I never saw anyone do it that way.

Finally, I'll talk to how they look at competencies. We all know that there are 20,30,40+ competencies out there that really define 90% of the knowledge worker's universe. So if all my people are competent in 'buiness acumen' but all of my competitors are as well, so what. So if all my people are competent in 'sales execution' and all my competitors are as well, so what. You get the picture. What they say is they you need to define what behaviors in YOUR company make up the culture, make things work and provide for the competitive advantage that your competitor doesn't have and cannot replicate.

Take GE- their behavioral anchors were: imagination, expertise, inclusiveness, clear thinking and external focus. They didn't get these from a book.  They used these to build their competency model which framed the behaviors that new hires needed to be successful and that their competitors could not replicate. But it was so much simpler that the FYI 67 competency model that makes everyone the same as everyone else.

read the book, it's fun and different.

Kirkpatrick model turned upside down...? Level 4 to 1

Interesting article in November's edition of CLO magazine (www.clomedia.com) by Donald Kirkpatrick's son, Jim and his wife, on how the Kirkpatrick evaluation model which seems to have turned upside down like everything else in this crazy world.

It use to be that you would conduct a Level 1 evaluation survey on the training that you provided in order to gauge people's reaction to the event. Then follow up with level 2 to check their knowledge, then level 3 evaluation to determine what they have retained and finally a level 4 survey to poll the actual results that were produced as an output...logical, yes?

Well, their new theory is: when thinking about the entire training process, let's start with the expected results, quantify them (the level expected output) and then drill in reverse down the food chain. So, once you have the intended results that are expected to be achieved, then determine (Level 3) what behaviors you want the people to exhibit that will produce those results. Drill down again and determine what information or knowledge (level 2) you will have to impart to them to get the intended behaviors. Finally, determine Level 1, what training do you need to develop and in what modality should it be delivered in order to get their positive reaction or commitment.

It's upside down, but it makes perfect sense!

A success story from my customer

Client's objective, build a global system to manage learning and skills across the enterprise. Client= Global solutions provider

Jeannette didn't know what she was in for when the company handed her the keys to the LMS. She started with 7000 folks, working as a part-time Super Admin. Over the next 12-18 months, she inherited another 15000 people across the globe, and BTW, they through Competency Assessments into her bucket TOO!

The company has build out a global team of power users, each managing a particular business unit or region of the globe, all of them have defined secutiry roles and permisssion within their group...how nice that the system allows all 12 of them to work together yet separately. Each is managing their own programs, curricula, and learning catalogs. All of the courses bubble up to create one global catalog that, according to the CEO, will allow the businesses to share knowledge and cross train. Isn't this what an LMS is suppose to do???

Then they built out SME's across the globe for peformance issues, leadership issues, L&D concerns, compliance rollouts, just like your typical governance model is suppose to be. They even have one person dedicated to 'change adoption' and another to 'continuous improvement'.

Oh, and Jeannette is the global Level One support person for 20,000 people. She told me that on an average day, she receives all of ....20 tickets in her InBox, and wait, 2/3's of them are forgotten passwords! She quickly dispenses with these. And she is waiting for 'someone' to revise her log in page to include the nefarious 'forgotten passsword' and secret question' links that were left out of their original design, but we won't go into his story! So when someone asks you if the system is intuitive and easy to manage without lots of training and support....here is the proof point.

Best Practices on How to Connect with C level Execs

Interesting article I came across, it was written as a collaborative effort by an Executive Council focused on CIO's, but really, the same principles apply to anyone sitting in the C-Suite.

The survey drew results from over 250 executives across the US. Here is the advice they had to help them minimize the clutter and provide more relevant interactions:

- research your call lists to determine that you are even calling the right person. Too often vm's and emails are directed at the wrong executives, wasting their time and more importantly, your efforts. Cross reference one source agst the other to verify.
- don't sctipt or broadcast your messages across the dial. Select topics of interest and provide relevant links in your emails to allow for further information gathering or education. Use your technology tracking tools to gauge the recipient's interest in what you have sent, then follow up where appropriate.
- your prospect is not sitting around waiting for a cold call...do research on the company, the person, their business, then call with a specific value proposition based upon something that connects you with them (check the blogs, analysts reports, CEO presentations).
-match the prospect's expected need with that company's size, vision, budget, timeframe, business cycle, mid-market or enterprise, etc. Don't even make an offer to the C-suite that seems unreasonable, unrealistic or improbable for them to consider purchasing today or ever.
- key talking points, if you do get through, are the total cost of ownership (TCO), the ability to execute, the ROI of the project/solution.
- be cognizant of getting trapped in spam filters, everyone uses them, everyone has different rules, and most people don't ever check the stuff that gets caught. So, even if you do everything right, relying on one modality may not get your message through even if the Exec wants it.
- learn to work with the EA's (executive assistants), yes, those gatekeepers. Many execs rely upon them to execute, manage their calendars, screen calls, listen for the buzz words, make connections. Sometimes they can be your best friend or your...

Remember, executives are buyers and fierce recommendors, who do need to acquire knowledge and be educated just like anyone else...or they delegate it and allow others to gather that information for them!

article can be downloaded at:
http://council.cio.com/content.html?trt=6

Is your software tool a true SaaS or a 1/2 Saas?

Here is a great article that talks about software applications that claim to be a Software as a Service delivery model...when in fact, they are really an on-demand ASP hosted model. Kind of hard to tell from a layman's perspective, but from a technical level, it's black and white.
Do you have only one version?
Do you have all of your customer on the most current and only version of your product?
Do you provide quarterly upgrades that are delivered seamlessly to customers?
Do you have a unique database for each customer so that they can monitor their own security roles and permissions?
and on and on. If they say it's On-demand...then demand to understand if it is truly a SaaS solution!
read it here at:

http://www.shrm.org/Publications/hrmagazine/Pages/default.aspx

The Kirkpatrick Model: some facts on the past, present and future

It started in 1959 when Don Kirkpatrick wrote a series of four articles, each related to one subject at a time: he categorized them into reaction, learning, behavior, and results.

His first article was on reactions to learning (level 1). Then, he wrote about the learning itself and to what degree did the participates acquire the intended knowledge, skills and attitudes based on their participation in the learning event (level 2). Next, he wrote about behavior, to what degree did participants apply what they learned when they got back to their jobs. Finally, he wrote about results, to what degree were targeted results reached as a result of the learning event.

People in the industry talked about these four levels for decades. Did you know, it wasn't until 1993 that he institutionalized the four levels within a published book.

The model is not really changing today, but the way it is being used moving forward is a bit like reverse engineering. Formally, the typical learning model started with learning objectives, build on that and eventually the results were measured down the line months later. Changes were then made in the learning objectives based upon the results received. But, the feedback loop was quite long and took many iterations to improve, this is being called the chain of evidence.

Now, the chain of evidence is being reverse engineered. The final results or the goal achievement is modeled first. The model is socialized within the executive team and a concensus is reached. This becomes the development of the Level 4. Next, Level 3 is built, the behaviors to be exhibited based upon the results that are to be achieved. From there, the learning events are created that will teach those exhibited behaviors, Level two. Finally, the reactions are planned that the participants expect from the event, level one. I guess they are calling this the Reverse Kirkpatrick Model. The feedback loop is certainly shorter, although the development time is more complex.

One anecdotal tidbit I came across: every presentation that Don does in any venue is still done with the use of an overhead projector! Now he tells his audiences that "You are looking at a new piece of equipment, a special technology". Most believe him cause they never have seen anything like it.