Aggregating your Talents Profiles yields big results within organizations

I read an interesting article from SHRM's HR magazine, in the technology section, that talks directly to the use of online talent portals within organizations that allow HR partners to align their workforce workforce more efficiently and allow for employees to manage their careers.

In this article, Mercer Consulting's Kim Seals states "If I can get my talent profiles right, then I have a great source of information about the people in our business and how to move them around to fill key jobs." Mercer's Human Capital Connect is their human capital management consulting practice that is powered by the Peopleclick Authoria talent management platform.

So, what is the value of employee talent profiles? They pull pertinent employee data collected from the employees to help management and the employees find where talent can be used most effectively across organizational silos.  An example would be a professional services firm, like a consulting or engineering company, that needs to staff projects with employees who have the critical skills suitable to a particular project's requirements.  Spanning the organization and finding those with the proper language requirements, needed certifications or past prior experience leads to quick bid responses, the composition of the best project team, and higher customer satisfaction levels.

In addition, eemployee's are now interested in taking control of their own profiles, their careers and hence, their talent profile provides this visibility to corporate talent leaders and by the way...can be selfishly used to promote achievements.

Talent profiles can be easily built from an integrated employee self-service portal that serves as a foundation for an organizations entire talent value chain including recruiting, on boarding, alignment, development, performance, compensation and career management.

Just my thoughts on the subject purred by a recent article I read.

Mercer Consulting discusses the Advantages of SaaS

I was thumbing through the latest edition of HR Technology magazine and found a report from the Human Capital Connect consulting team at Mercer Consulting. It is a great article that talks about the delivery platform known as Software as a Service or SaaS.


Many companies are facing their technology decisions with knowingly limited IT resources and at the same time are being forced to maximize the rollout of enterprise software. Herego, the SaaS platform requires serious consideration when both these factors are evident.

First, what is SaaS? Many applications that claim to be a Software as a Service delivery model...when in fact, they are really an on-demand ASP hosted model that still require time and effort to maintain and upgrade. SaaS eliminates that requirements and provides for a high capability to ensure business process improvement.

Why consider SaaS in your HCM evaluation:

-It shifts the IT burden to the vendor
-Data security is indeed robust and secure on a global basis
-No customer is on an older release
-Upgrades are delivered without pain or cost
-Incorporated best practices from the largest customers benefit the smaller
-Business processes will continually improve

An unbelievable benefit - The average SaaS customer will have a system that is 26.5% better in three years but at the same price.

If you require additional information or support on the benefits of an integrated talent management SaaS platform, please connect with me at 516-484-1231.

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