Tag Archives: HR Credibility

May 28, 2013 · 4:30 am

Is HR Still in a Bad Mood?

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This was a popular post from last year at this time and I’m wondering if HR is still in a bad mood…

Results from The Fifth Annual Talent Management Study by Knowledge Infusion and Human Resource Executive® were published recently in HR Executive by Mike Brennan and some of the findings were surprising.

I didn’t find it surprising that 63% of the respondents report that they have trouble filling jobs and that they can’t find the right candidates. That’s been reported frequently.

It also doesn’t surprise me that more organizations than not will be increasing their investments in Learning/Development, Performance/Goal Management and Workforce Analytics/Planning services and technology. That’s obvious.

What really does surprise me is that 58% of HR executives believe that peer leaders in their organizations “do not buy into talent management.”

Lordy, I hope this isn’t the furniture conversation. And I’m willing to believe it isn’t because 83% of the respondents also believe that “many of our managers do not know how to manage people.” Additionally, 65% of the respondents believe that “many of our HR generalists/business partners are not equipped to consult with the organization on talent.”

Ouch. Either the HR respondents to this survey were all in a colossally bad mood, or they’re starting to look clear-eyed at their organizations and re-calibrate their challenges.

It’s clear that many organizations need to look at legacy systems and programs in the talent management arena (can you say annual performance review system?) and, according to this survey, they are. But focusing on leadership understanding and managerial effectiveness in talent management might be a strong first step.

It’s a great day for HR if the results of this survey mean a new focus on talent management effectiveness – at the top, in the middle, and most importantly, in HR.

But if it was just a systemic bad mood, we’re sunk. Because, in the words of one of my favorite movie characters in one of my favorite movies, “we have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.”

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Filed under American President, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, HR Credibility, HR Executive Magazine, HR Technology, Knowledge Infusion, Managerial Effectiveness, Talent Management

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April 2, 2013 · 4:30 am

Background Screening: Not So Fast

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Well, not so fast, my friend, as Lee Corso likes to say. A new survey results report from EmployeeScreenIQ, Employment Screening Practices & Trends: Not so fast, my friend (Lee Corso)The Era of Heightened Care and Diligence, brings up some important issues and is interesting on several fronts.

First, from a regulatory perspective, it would seem that employers aren’t paying a lot of attention to the relatively new EEOC guidance on criminal background checks that was released in April 2012.  According to the survey, of the almost 70% of respondents who said that their organizations have reviewed the EEOC guidance, only a little more than half of them have not made changes to their screening policies as a result. More interesting, though, is the 32% of respondents who either weren’t familiar with or haven’t reviewed the guidance. Huh.

Second, more than half the respondents report that only 15% or less of job candidates distort their resumes to the extent that they aren’t hired. This is surprising given the perception that distorting resume claims is the best way to be disqualified from employment opportunities. Surprisingly, these survey results may reflect that employers see resume distortion as a minor factor in the screening process. Huh.

EmployeeScreenIQ Resume Distortion Impact

Third, and most interesting to me, is the impact of the legal uncertainty for using social media as a source of background screening information. This uncertainty appears to have scared the you-know-what out of employers. Huh.

Actually, I’m not sure I believe the data here. Or rather, the survey questions may not have been posed to the right people.

EmployeeScreenIQ Social Networking Sites

Really? Only 36% of employers always or sometimes check social networking sites for background information? Huh. Here’s what I think is happening. Those corporate folks responsible for filling out surveys like this – in the recruiting function – know the legal quicksand that is forming around the use of social media for employment screening and are clear that their formal guidelines restrict the use of Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, blogs, etc. in this way. This doesn’t mean that hiring managers aren’t doing it anyway. In fact, I think it’s a fair bet that although many employers are specific in excluding social networking sites for candidate background screening, as reported in this report, hiring managers do it anyway. All. The. Time.

That’s why the next survey question’s answers seem highly suspect to me.

EmployeeScreenIQ Why Not Social

Don’t have time? Right.  Not relevant? Please.

I guarantee that hiring managers make the time because they think checking out “social” behavior is extremely relevant.

This report brings up some great questions for recruiters and hiring managers and shows the need, I think, for greater communication between these two groups. Staying on top of EEOC guidance is, of course, a critical part of HR’s regulatory and risk mitigation obligations. Evaluating the impact of resume distortion is part of the recruiters’ responsibility. And staying current on the evolving legal decisions in the employment/social media space is a critical new high impact area of contribution for the HR and recruiting functions.

One might not think that the arcane world of background screening would present such an interesting opportunity for HR pros. Think again.

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Filed under Background checks, Candidate Experience, China Gorman, Connecting Dots, Data Point Tuesday, EEOC, EmployeeScreenIQ, Employment Screening, HR Credibility, Talent Acquisition

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March 26, 2013 · 5:00 am

Is Talentism the New Capitalism?

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“Is talentism the new capitalism?”

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, thinks so and said as much as he opened this year’s event in Davos.

Mercer chose this quote to open the executive summary of its new report, Talent Rising:  High-impact Accelerators to Global Growth. It includes some great survey data from more than 1,250 HR and talent management executives in 65 countries around the world. It includes important and useful data about how organizations are or are not expanding their definition of capital to include talent.

Forever, it seems, organizations’ primary sources of value and competitive advantage have been financial in nature:  money, lands, buildings and machines – all the values carried on the balance sheet. Mercer’s observation that with human capital being the main determinant of success today, it is troubling that so many organizations leave the development of their talent “largely to external systems and forces, with resulting gaps in their talent portfolios.”

(One could also position that if, indeed, human capital is the main determinant of organization success today, then there should be an entry on the balance sheet to capture its importance. But that’s for another day.)

This report is a huge call to action – not just for HR, but for the entire C-suite. And it is a great roadmap for HR to initiate the discussion of talent as capital.

Central to this discussion is the definition of strategic workforce planning. We hear about this all the time in HR. And BCG, funded by the World Federation of Personnel Management Associations together with SHRM, has observed that there is low current capability worldwide in strategic workforce planning. Perhaps that’s because we know it when we see it, but we can’t really define it.

Mercer’s done a great job of defining strategic workforce planning and published a great infographic along with the Talent Rising executive summary.

Mercer Strategic Workforce Planning Infographic

This 7 step virtuous circle seems simple enough, but I think we all know that sometimes the most simple things are the hardest to achieve. And that certainly would be true for strategic workforce planning. Identifying accelerators on which to focus might help organizations begin to break the process down into manageable chunks.  Just knowing where to begin will undoubtedly help some make progress.

“Talentism is the new capitalism.” Well, maybe in 5-10 years. When HR is seen as a business function and not an overhead function.  And human capital is valued on the balance sheet.

We can dream, can’t we?

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Filed under Boston Consulting Group, C-suite, CEOs, China Gorman, Connecting Dots, HR Credibility, Human Capital, Mercer, SHRM, Strategic Workforce Planning, Talentism, World Economic Forum

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July 3, 2012 · 4:30 am

Is HR in a Bad Mood?

Results from The Fifth Annual Talent Management Study by Knowledge Infusion and Human Resource Executive® were published recently in HR Executive by Mike Brennan and some of the findings were surprising.

I didn’t find it surprising that 63% of the respondents report that they have trouble filling jobs and that they can’t find the right candidates. That’s been reported frequently.

It also doesn’t surprise me that more organizations than not will be increasing their investments in Learning/Development, Performance/Goal Management and Workforce Analytics/Planning services and technology. That’s obvious.

What really does surprise me is that 58% of HR executives believe that peer leaders in their organizations “do not buy into talent management.”

Lordy, I hope this isn’t the furniture conversation. And I’m willing to believe it isn’t because 83% of the respondents also believe that “many of our managers do not know how to manage people.” Additionally, 65% of the respondents believe that “many of our HR generalists/business partners are not equipped to consult with the organization on talent.”

Ouch. Either the HR respondents to this survey were all in a colossally bad mood, or they’re starting to look clear-eyed at their organizations and re-calibrate their challenges.

It’s clear that many organizations need to look at legacy systems and programs in the talent management arena (can you say annual performance review system?) and, according to this survey, they are. But focusing on leadership understanding and managerial effectiveness in talent management might be a strong first step.

It’s a great day for HR if the results of this survey mean a new focus on talent management effectiveness – at the top, in the middle, and most importantly, in HR.

But if it was just a systemic bad mood, we’re sunk. Because, in the words of one of my favorite movie characters in one of my favorite movies, “we have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.”

7 Comments

Filed under American President, China Gorman, HR, HR Credibility, HR Executive Magazine, HR Technology, Knowledge Infusion, Managerial Effectiveness, Talent Management

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June 5, 2012 · 5:00 am

The CEO – HR Disconnect: Understandable? Yes. Defensible? No.

The furniture conversation (see my post on that subject here) that HR is so fond of having is, at its heart, a lament about HR not having strategic business credibility. I don’t buy that HR lacks strategic business credibility. I do buy that HR isn’t communicating mission critical data to the C-suite and that creates a credibility challenge.

New data will be published shortly by Achievers that highlights the disconnect between what HR and CEOs believe about key elements of employee engagement in their organizations:   feedback, managerial communication and recognition.  And it’s pretty eye-opening!

When we designed a survey to evaluate how employees rate the current state of these workplace dynamics in their organizations and whether CEOs and HR professionals are in touch with what employees want, we found an added dimension in comparing the differences between the perceptions of CEOs and HR professionals.

  • For example, when we asked CEOs and HR professionals whether they agreed that their employees believe that their organization inspires them to do their best work every day, 61% of CEOs strongly agreed or agreed, while only 31% of HR professionals strongly agreed or agreed.
  • When we asked CEOs and HR professionals whether they agreed that their employees rated their organization culture as positive, strong and motivating, 67% of CEOs strongly agreed or agreed and 37% of HR professionals strongly agreed or agreed.

Wait.  It gets worse.

  • When we asked employees if they agreed that the feedback they received from their managers was constructive and useful, 79% of CEOs believed that their employees would strongly agree or agree while only 33% of HR professionals believed that their employees would strongly agree or agree.
  • When we asked employees how frequently they received feedback from their manager, 56% of CEOs believed that employees would report receiving feedback immediately or on-the-spot.  HR professionals?  11% believed that employees would report receiving feedback immediately or on-the-spot.

These are just four examples in the survey that show the continental divide between how CEOs and HR professionals evaluate crucial aspects of their employees’ engagement.  With these results that underscore the CEO – HR disconnect, we could hypothesize that CEOs have a more optimistic view of their workforce because any time they interact with employees, employees are on their best behavior – trying to impress the boss.  HR, on the other hand, frequently interacts with employees when they are not at their best:  exit interviews, investigations, disciplinary situations, etc.  It’s understandable that HR might have a more pessimistic view of their employee population.

Absent data to the contrary, why shouldn’t CEOs be optimistic? If there were issues, surely, they might think,  HR would share the data.  But when the employee engagement data is consistently less positive than CEOs’ perceptions, it”s clear that CEOs aren’t getting data that informs them of the reality of their workforce. And who has this data?  Well, that would be HR.

So why isn’t this data – and their ramifications – being shared with the C-suite? For HR to understand the workforce and know what is working and what isn’t clearly isn’t enough.  Communicating mission critical data and serving up cost effective solutions are HR’s opportunity. Heck.  Most would say that’s HR’s job!  For certain, they are the ticket to strategic business credibility.

If we needed tangible proof of the CEO – HR disconnect, this survey’s results confirm it.  You’ll be able to download it on June 12 from the Achievers website.

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Filed under Achievers, C-suite, CEOs, HR, HR Credibility

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