Category Archives: HR

The B2T Revolution

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Employees (And Prospects) Are Consumers When it Comes to HR Technology

Mobile devices and apps are no longer the hot new craze. The B2C (Business-to-Consumer) sectors have taken care of that. Mobile devices have become an essential item for communication and internet access, and as Cisco reports, by the end of this year (in three weeks!) the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth. By 2017, it’s predicted there will be nearly 1.4 mobile devices per capita. We’re now seeing companies like Lenovo, the world’s largest PC maker, selling more mobile devices than PCs. And as you’re undoubtedly aware, smartphones are a huge part of this mobile device equation. The growth of smart phone usage in 2012 was 81% and has only increased since. We’re using our smartphones for MUCH more than phone-calls though. Downloading applications, checking email, accessing the internet, getting directions, making dinner reservations, paying for purchases and meeting Mr./Ms. Right are just a few examples of ways smart-phones and mobile devices are being used today by people all ages from all walks of life. The bottom line is people are living their lives on mobile. And as long as the product is intuitive, easy to use and fast, the potential for success on mobile devices is huge.

HR Technology applications are no exception. A 2013 Mobile Consumer Report from Nielsen found that 82% of U.S smartphone users browse the web on their smartphone, and 63% use smartphones for social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. According to Talent Management Headquarters, one billion (1,000,000,000) job searches are conducted on mobile devices each month! Mobile recruiting is well on its way to being the next big thing for talent acquisition. This makes sense when we consider that we can use mobile devices during short moments of down time, on a bus or during a lunch break.  As career sites and job postings become increasing mobile friendly, it’s likely that both passive and active job seekers will turn to their mobile devices before they turn to their desktop to hunt for jobs or job search related information.  And mobile recruiting offers organizations the benefit of exposure to job seekers who may not own or be frequent users of computers.

More importantly, with so many employees working from mobile devices, it has become increasingly critical for employers to provide HR information through vendors with easy to use, native mobile apps. Perhaps this is the new focus:  B2T – Business to Talent! Mobile HR applications offer employees (as well as HR managers) instantaneous interaction and engagement with HR Data like payroll and benefits information, recruiting/talent acquisition services, performance/goal management, and time and labor information – even more so than using a laptop or desktop. And in the day and age when all of us are used to instant access when we are living our non-work related lives, having these important processes and data easily accessible are becoming a must-have not a nice-to-have. In 2011, the ADP Research Institute looked at how mobile technology could make HR mobile solutions a game-changer. Respondents reported a significant benefit in using HR mobile solutions, citing improved workforce satisfaction, improved real time decision making, and improved workforce productivity. So the B2T revolution is here.

Mobile technology has revolutionized much in our lives and for HR leaders and employees there is more change to come. User friendly HR applications for mobile devices will prove an effective way to increase efficiency for managers and employees, just as the popularity of job searching on mobile devices will undoubtedly impact how we recruit. Communicating with talent – current and future – via mobile really could be a game changer for employers, employees, job seekers and HR technology providers.

The B2T bottom line:  employees are consumers. And they expect to have consumer-like experiences with the technology and software at work and about work. And if you aren’t providing it for them, they’ll likely use their smartphone to find another employer!

Mobile-Enabled Process Adoption

*This post is part of SilkRoad’s first annual #HRTechTrends Blog Carnival. A recap of all participants will be posted on SilkRoad Ink on December 20, 2013.

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Filed under #HRTechTrends, ADP Research Institute, Business to Talent, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, HR, HR Technology, Mobile Devices, SilkRoad, Talent Management Headquarters

Laws Require WorkFlex – Really?

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There’s been a lot of talk recently regarding flexible scheduling policies in organizations. All kinds of people have been writing about whether such policies are actually beneficial or harmful for businesses, as well as questioning if flexible scheduling polices are really essential or non-essential to things like employee engagement, well-being, and productivity.  Actually, I think these discussions miss the point and I don’t think any of these questions can be answered on such a broad scale. The potential for flexible scheduling policies to help or hinder an organization is dependent on a whole series of variables, making such questions decidedly organization specific and not answerable as a larger theme that applies to all organizations. What we can confirm about flexible scheduling policies however, is that they are a highly regarded benefit and broadly implemented by some organizations.  The graph below from Statista, detailing data from a 2013 Employee Benefits Report by SHRM, found that  in the U.S in 2013, 58% of employers offered the option of telecommuting to some of their employees and 4% planned on starting to offer telecommuting within the next year. This data gives us a rough idea of the implementation of flexible scheduling policies within the U.S, and with more than half of employers offering telecommuting options it’s obvious that this is an approach worth discussing.

Statista SHRM Telecommuting 2013

We can clearly point to Marissa Mayer’s decision to ban telecommuting at Yahoo! (see my post here) as one of the major sparks in the recent discussions around flexible scheduling. Adding to the controversy is legislation that has passed in Vermont and now San Francisco, requiring certain organizations to seriously consider employee’s requests for a flexible work schedule. The most recent legislation around flexible scheduling passed just last month on October 8th 2013 in San Francisco. The Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance (FFWO) will become operative on January 1st 2014, and mandates that employers with twenty or more staff give employees in caregiver roles the right to request a predictable or flexible work schedule. To qualify an employee must have worked for the organization for more than six months, work at least eight hours a week on a regular basis, and be a caregiver for a child or children under the age of 18, a parent(s) over the age of 65, or a person(s) with a serious health condition in a family relationship with the employee. If an employee meets these standards they have the right to submit a request for a flexible schedule and their employer is required to meet with them within 21 days. The employer is required to respond to the request within 21 days of their meeting and if the employer denies a request they must explain the denial in a written response that sets out a bona fide business reason for the denial and provides the employee with notice of the right to request reconsideration.

Legislation like this raises a whole new set of questions around flexible scheduling policies. The San Francisco ordinance is positive in that it helps to protect employees against discrimination based on their caregiver status, however, at the same time, could you argue that legislation like this goes too far? Does it restrict an organization’s right to organize their business in the way they see fit, and most conducive to achieving goals? The FFWO could be positive in prompting employees that desire flexible scheduling policies to speak out – employees that may have previously felt afraid to voice such requests do to the bureaucracy of their organizations. But what will the effects be on organizations that have never implemented flexible scheduling policies? Will the ordinance cause a roadblock and additional internal conflict? These are some of the top questions that come to mind as I consider the implications of flexible scheduling legislation. What do you think?

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Filed under China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Employment Data, Great Place to Work, Great Place to Work Institute, HR, SHRM, Statista, Workflex

Deeply Disengaged

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DeeplyDisengaged-thumb-300x295-177582Last week a guest poster wrote an anonymous letter that was posted on the U.K. ExpertHR blog. This U.K HR professional is “at the end of their tether” and writes a very transparent and poignant piece about the reasons for their massive professional disengagement and personal sadness at their lot. The publishers suggested that others might respond with guidance for the writer and the responses were numerous and detailed. The post and its responses created a robust and fascinating discussion.

And everyone – except one responder – totally missed the point. Totally. The discussion focused on whether or not Deeply Disengaged should “stay and fight” or quit and find a more conducive employer. Ugh!

Deeply Disengaged says that their “work every day is focused around making the workplace a better place to be for employees… To me, ensuring people are at the centre of everything you do is fundamental to being successful in all other areas. It is the foundations on which everything must be based.”

But the bottom line of the post is this:  “The powers that be don’t value the work that I am doing.” The old (ugh) furniture lament. (See my post here if you aren’t familiar with the furniture lament.)

I’ll bet it’s true. I’ll bet the powers that be don’t value the work that Disengaged is doing because Disengaged don’t know the value of the work they’re doing.

So here’s the real, hard truth – for Deeply Disengaged and all the responders:  HR needs to be focused on making the organization more efficient and productive leveraging the organization’s most costly resource, people. HR’s work needs to start with the organization’s strategic and business plans and deliver solutions that enable the successful growth of the enterprise. In other words, HR needs to be focused on the business!

Deeply Disengaged lists a number of supposed outcomes from his/her work:

  • Feedback is now two-way and things are improving fast
  • Retention of employees has increased significantly
  • Retention of candidates in the recruitment process has increased
  • Speed of work output and completion has risen
  • I could talk and talk about the things I am doing and results that we have seen but you get the picture…

I have to take a step back and say, Really? You wrote some nice stuff there, but nothing quantifiable.

I have to take a step back and ask, how do you know your outcomes if you don’t (or can’t) quantify them. And if you can quantify them and you don’t talk about them, why would a business leader listen to you?

I’m skeptical because in the entire post there was not one number. Not one. How can you talk about the value of the work you’re doing without numbers? Seat at the Table NotWithout percentages of increase or decrease, without dollars (or in this case, pounds)  saved, without numbers of days saved…

And that’s the challenge for HR – all over the world:

  • To leave behind “banging on about how these areas can hit the bottom line” and focus instead on providing clear, evidence-based business cases that are linked to the strategic plan.
  • To leave behind doing things “because I believe it can and will make a difference” and start doing things that the business requires and be able to prove it with data – including numbers.
  • To leave behind being “focused around making the workplace a better place to be for employees” and leading the effort to ensure the culture and values actually enable the achievement of the strategic plan.

I’ll bet that Deeply Disengaged is more of a business thinker than they know. If they really are working on improving business processes and outcomes the way they describe, they must know something about how business works, how business leaders speak, how business decisions are made and how resources are distributed. The question becomes, why aren’t they stepping up to the plate to act like a business leader with deep HR expertise rather than the disrespected HR functionary that the organization has to put up with?

It’s a troubling question. And frankly, it’s one of the reasons I started the Data Point Tuesday feature here at http://www.chinagorman.com. To provide data- and research-based sources that will help HR professionals move up from HR functionary to business leader with HR expertise.

I feel for Deeply Disengaged. Being disrespected is the pits. But quitting is not the answer – because the same thing will happen in the next job, and the next, and the next. Until the perception of HR professionals as functionaries changes to business leaders with HR expertise, this won’t go away. And the only way to change that perception is for HR professionals to start to behave like business people, to speak the language of business people, and to become comfortable with numbers, data and research. The only way for Deeply Disengaged’s experience to change is for them to start to behave like a business person.

It’s not easy – but it’s also not hard. Because I truly do believe that most HR people really can be business people — because they do know business. They just aren’t comfortable with that. Yet.

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Filed under Business Language, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, HR, HR Credibility, XpertHR

From the Archives: Job security is the #1 talent attraction magnet. Wait. What?

This was originally published on April 17, 2012.  It’s worth repeating…

In doing some research for a speech I’m giving, I came across The Talent Management and Rewards Imperative for 2012 from Towers Watson and WorldatWork.  It’s chock full of interesting data based on the 2011/2012 Towers Watson North American Talent Management and Rewards Survey and an unpublished Towers Watson 2011 survey of over 10,000 full-time employees in North America on topics such as total rewards, communication and other work-related issues.  Because I’ve been looking at data about the state of the talent pipeline (see Data Points #3, #5, #6), I thought this would be interesting reading.  Little did I know!

A couple of the data points that stood out to me challenge the “conventional wisdom.”  See what you think:

  • Only 11% of organizations have trouble retaining employees generally
  • Fully 68% of organizations identify high potentials, but only 28% inform those employees who have been identified.
  • Organizations underestimate the effect work-related stress and work/life balance have on employee retention, and do not recognized the significance of job security in attracting top talent.

Wait.  What?

It’s the last point that brought me up short.  Look at the chart below.

There are important disconnects between what employees report will attract them into a new job and what employers believe will be important in attracting talent into their organizations.  And if you look at the differing views between employers and high potential performers you’ll be even more surprised.

In all of the writing on this topic that I have seen in the last 18 months, no one else reports the significant importance of job security as part of an organization’s EVP (employee value proposition).  And look how it ranks as #1 for all employees as well as high-potential employees.  #1.

Not meaningful work.  Not alignment with the organization’s mission.  Job security.  Am I the only one surprised by this finding?

Look at the disconnect between the top 5 factors for all employees and employers’ top 5 factors.  Outside of base pay it’s a total mismatch!

On the high-potential performers side, outside of base pay and career development opportunity it’s a total mismatch!

It looks like we’re totally out to lunch when it comes to knowing what’s motivating in terms of EVP and the talent pipeline.  Out. To. Lunch.

In a world that observes the incredible talent acquisition strategies and investments at organizations like Zappos, PepsiCo, Rackspace and AT&T, we’re encouraged to believe that creating cultures of happiness and engagement are what it takes to delight customers and retain employees – high potential or otherwise.  And I chose those organizations because I know the ground-breaking work each is doing in terms of building their talent communities and the engagement of their workforce.  They truly are ground breaking.

It turns out talent attraction may be a bit more mundane than “creating a little weirdness.”

It turns out that some of the basics like job security and base pay still hold huge sway in our workforce.  And I think this is good news.  It gives” regular” employers doing good work and being good to their employees a fighting chance to keep their employees and attract the talent they’ll need going forward.

Basic blocking and tackling.  Basic management competence.  Basic HR.  Can’t get away from them if you want your organization to succeed.

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Filed under AT&T, Business Success, Career Planning, China Gorman, Culture, Engagement, HR, Talent Management, Talent pipeline

ROI of People Focused Organizations

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The holy grail in HR is providing hard, compelling data-based evidence for the ROI of investing in people.  With this data, HR is in the strategic driver’s seat of the budgeting process.  Without this data, HR is resigned to the furniture conversation.

Want some new people investment ROI data from a source that even your CEO would pay attention to?  How about The Boston Consulting Group (BCG)?  They’re a big time global business strategy consulting firm that your CEO respects.

For the third time since 2008, BCG has partnered with the World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA) to publish its Creating People Advantage report.  The most current, published in October, is Creating People Advantage 2012: Mastering HR Challenges in a Two-Speed World.

The findings are the result of BCG’s analysis of responses to an online survey that polled 4,288 executives from companies throughout  a number of industries, 102 countries, and six major global regions.  Additionally, 63 HR and other executives from high profile companies all around the world were interviewed.  The survey and interviews covered 22 HR topics and the report includes interesting case studies from companies like L’Oreal, Samsung, and Daimler Trucks.

It’s a fascinating – and very readable – report and the findings won’t surprise you.  In fact, the top three critical topics for HR leaders around the world remained the same as in BCG’s 2010 global survey:

  • Managing talent
  • Improving leadership development
  • Strategic workforce planning

The data are compelling and the comparisons between countries and regions of the world really are interesting.

The big bonus, though, is the report that is appended at the conclusion, From Capability to Profitability: Realizing the Value of People Management. It’s loaded with economic data that compares the HR practices of high-performing companies against those of lower-performing ones in critical areas, including talent management, leadership development, and performance management and rewards.

The bottom line is that companies that demonstrated proficiency in the 22 key HR areas experienced revenue growth that was up to 3.5 times higher and profit margins that were 2.1 times higher than those of less capable companies.  And guess what those increases did to their share prices?

BCG 2012 People Companies Outperform the Market Average

Think your CEO and CFO are interested in higher revenue and profit growth rates?  Think the board might be interested in higher share price growth rates?  Think they might be willing to invest in practices that would accomplish those outcomes?  Yep, me too.

The budget season has long passed, and you’re locked in to the 2013 operating plan.  But take a look at the 22 key HR practices in your organization that this report covers and start a file that will hold the data to build the people investment plan for 2014. It takes some time to gather the foundational data to build your investment business cases.

Start now.  Start tracking the data.  Start setting the benchmarks. Start thinking in business cases.

And quit talking about furniture.

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Filed under Boston Consulting Group, Business Case, CEOs, China Gorman, Connecting Dots, HR, HR Data, Human Capital ROI, ROI, WFPMA

If They Want Cake…

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I was reading the results of the recent Making Smart Benefit Choices survey of workers by Mercer and was struck by the confluence of societal issues that are impacting the choices workers are making today.  The key insights from the survey results are these:

  • Workers desire benefits with a decidedly short-term benefit over those with longer-term value
  • Employers need to ramp up their workforce education efforts regarding balancing short- and long-term benefit choices

Employers are not Marie Antoinette.  “Let them eat cake” cannot be an appropriate response when surveys show that cake would be a more popular benefit than, say, fruit or broccoli.  (Mayor  Bloomberg’s foray into the regulation of food options notwithstanding.)

So in the age of disappearing and underfunded defined pension plans and the very real specter of a bankrupt Social Security system in the US (and similar situations in most developed nations), what are the responsibilities of employers to their employees when considering changes in benefit plans?  How much should employers take into account their employees’ preferences for short-term gain over long-term value?

It’s interesting to note this survey’s results.  In part, respondents were asked about their preferences in a trade-off (conjoint) analysis that allowed Mercer to rank 13 core benefits.  A salary increase of $500 was used as the benchmark variable against which to measure how benefits are valued by workers.  Here is the chart with the results:

Mercer Making Smart Benefit Choices 2

I’m fascinated that after a $500 salary increase, the next choice is one week of paid time off.  This certainly synchs with the data that SHRM and the Families and Work Institute are publishing that more flexibility over time is becoming a cultural imperative – and the financial value of a week off is greater than $500 if you’re making more than $26,000 per year.

But given the state of retirement benefits, Social Security, and the general lack of preparedness of the workforce for retirement, the short term focus of the respondents is arresting.

But then again, we live in a business world that measures organization success quarter by quarter, rather than year by year or through business cycles.  We live in a political world that brings the economy to “fiscal cliffs” with some regularity.  We live in a society that appears to value now in ways that leave us unprepared for tomorrow.

So I guess it really shouldn’t surprise us that workers focus on now rather than tomorrow even though an additional $500 402(k) increase would have much greater value over time.  What’s an employer to do in all good conscience?  Give more paid time off or ensure a little more retirement stability?  Give more paid time off or reduce employees’ share of health care costs?

This is a tough one with which HR and Benefits leaders in organizations of all sizes are wrestling.  Employers surely want benefits packages that attract and retain their best and brightest talent.  Employers surely want their employees to be better prepared for an uncertain financial future.  It seems as if these may be in conflict, based on this survey’s results.  So how to decide?

“Let them eat cake” is one way to go:  continue the focus on now and leave the future to the business and policy and political leaders of the future.

I think I’d rather use some of today’s resources to educate my workforce so that they’re making truly educated choices.  I think I’d rather use some of today’s influence to begin to leave behind the now focus for a future focus that might ensure a little more sustainability all around.

While I love cake – especially the chocolate kind – I think that employers have a responsibility to the economy and to the future as well as to the workforce.  What about you?  Are you a cake or a broccoli professional?

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Filed under China Gorman, Connecting Dots, Employee Benefits, Families and Work Institute, HR, Mercer, PTO, SHRM, Sustainability, Workflex

The 40 Hour Workweek is Alive and Well…

…said no one recently anywhere in the world.

I know this will come as a shock to business people everywhere – especially those in Human Resources. But here’s the data from Hogan Assessments:

Virtually everyone (92.5%) who works a full time job around the world works more than 40 hours per week.

Virtually everyone (92.1%) who works a full time job around the world regularly works outside of normal business hours.

Nearly half (47.7%) of workers work more than 50 hours per week.

And 15.3% of people work more than 60 hours per week.

I blame technology, smart phones and social media.  How about you?  How many hours a week do you work?

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Filed under China Gorman, Connecting Dots, Hogan Assessments, HR, HR Data

Is HR Mad for Social?

What a week!

Monday and Tuesday in the U.K. at TruLondon; Wednesday in Dublin at the Kelly OCG Talent Strategy Summit; and Thursday and Friday in Amsterdam at the HR Tech Europe Conference. Hanging with HR Professionals from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America. Focused on the challenge of increasing the productivity and efficiency of organizations by managing talent better. A global challenge, surely.

The talk at TruLondon was focused on making talent acquisition smarter, more social (because that’s how talent operates today), and more effective. (You can read my take on the conference here.)

The conversation in Dublin was more general, but the use of social technologies was a central thread.

And social was front and center throughout HR Tech Europe – whether it was in keynotes by thought leaders like Thomas Otter, Naomi Bloom, Peter Hinssen  or Josh Bersin, the iHR competition where 6 emerging tech based HR solutions companies vied for the coveted “best new HR tech company,” or as many as 10 (out of 52) breakout sessions that had “social” in their titles.

It made me wonder: is HR mad for social? Every conversation I had in London, Dublin and Amsterdam touched on social – either in discussing conference content or in casual, more personal conversations.  A sample of things overheard:

  • “What a stitch: I just got endorsed for my BBQ skills on LinkedIn.” (not me)
  • “The Twitter stream was rocking during Josh Bersin‘s presentation.”
  • Naomi Bloom said “building/sustaining/deploying social networks to achieve business outcomes, and the business networks of workforce members, are foundational.”
  • Thomas Otter said “mobile devices and social networks are changing the way we work.”
  • “The nexus of Big Data and HR and social will take us to a whole new level of strategic impact.”
  • “Talent Acquisition and Learning and Development are outliers in the world of HR when it comes to early adoption – especially in the social and mobile arenas.”

Frankly, I knew for sure that HR is mad for social at HR Tech Europe when a session leader, a senior HR leader from a French firm, used an image of a kitten with the following caption: “please adopt me.” (HR + kittens = done deal.)

I don’t think that focusing on social technologies to help support HR in making bigger impacts in talent management challenges is a bad thing. We just have to ensure that we are being data-based and  strategic and not just focusing on the next new shiny object. We must ensure that any new solution we introduce into our organizations does 3 things:

  • Strengthens the relationships between employees and their managers, employees and customers, and employees and senior leadership
  • Is based on, collects and produces actionable data
  • Links with the talent strategy – which is rooted in the business strategy

Unless the myriad of solutions coming to the HR/Talent marketplace with social features can do those three things, they may well be just shiny objects mewling like kittens to be adopted.

Unless the myriad of solutions coming to the HR/Talent marketplace with social features can do those three things, they’ll do nothing to increase HR’s ability to lead the necessary strategic  workforce and talent planning actions.

Unless the myriad of solutions coming to the HR/Talent marketplace with social features can do those three things, HR won’t be able to fund them, much less implement them.

The discussions in London, Dublin and Amsterdam were engaging – whether in casual conversation or from behind the podium – and will lead the way for increasing HR’s impact on business performance and growth. And that’s just where HR needs to play:  improving business performance through the greater productivity of talent.  If that isn’t the focus, then social becomes a distraction and a waste of time, energy and money.

Then we won’t be mad for social – we’ll be mad at social. And rightfully so.

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Filed under China Gorman, Conferences, Connecting Dots, HR, HR Conferences, HR Technology Conference, Kelly OCG, Social Technology, Talent Management, Technology, Tru Events

Best-in-Class Engagement Metrics

The Aberdeen Group just published a fascinating report, The Rules of Employee Engagement:  Communicating, Collaborating and Aligning with the Business, that looks at what best-in-class organizations are doing about engagement and why they’re doing it.  Author Madeline Laurano takes a pretty deep dive into the subject and her analysis reveals some pretty intriguing conclusions.  What hooked me from the start were the three metrics for performance criteria to distinguish best-in-class companies for employee engagement:

  • 71% of employees exceeded performance expectations, compared to 14% of Laggard organizations
  • 85% of 1st choice candidates accepted an offer, compared to 8% of Laggards
  • 72% of employees rated themselves highly engaged, compared to 9% of employees of Laggard organizations

Most of the statistics we see about the value of engagement focus on tying engagement scores to financial outcomes.  No question:  we need that.  Data about the outcomes of engagement are helpful in building business cases for investing in the employee experience.

But tying other types of outcomes to higher engagement scores can also be helpful – like the number of 1st choice candidates accepting employment offers.  If a talent shortage truly is the number 1 concern of CEOs and their boards around the world, as the latest Lloyd’s Risk Survey suggests, then strategies that effectively raise the likelihood of securing the top talent you go after should be of interest. And it makes sense that A+ talent likes to affiliate with other A+ talent.

And connecting the dots between engagement outcomes and high levels of individual employee performance also makes sense.  I’ve long wondered at the value of trumpeting the engagement scores of every employee — when we all know that it’s the most effective employees’ opinions we care most about.  Linking employee performance and engagement scores makes a great deal of sense to me.

Take a look at the report.  I think you’ll find the data extremely useful.

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Filed under Business Case, Business Success, China Gorman, Connecting Dots, Economist Intelligence Unit, Engagement, HR, HR Data, Lloyd's, Performance Feedback

HR Stakeholders

I was doing some research for a keynote speech I’ll be giving and I took another look at the SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guideline on CSR.  I wrote about it here, and was reading it again, thinking “Gee this is great stuff.”  (Stuff, being a highly technical term that data geeks use a lot.)

I came across this graphic of the stakeholders HR professionals need to connect with when designing and promoting CSR approaches and programs within their organizations.   As I reviewed it, I thought it was a good reminder of the breadth of the stakeholders that HR needs to factor into all of its work – whether it’s CSR, talent acquisition, talent management, benefits administration, strategic planning, learning and development – or yes, even the planning of the annual company picnic.

As I looked over the graphic, the only missing stakeholder group that I noted was the Board of Directors – but I’m pretty sure the authors include them the Owners-Shareholders group.  With the growing regulation of business and the focus on board oversight, I’d call them out as a separate group.  What do you think? Would you add any other distinct groups?

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Filed under China Gorman, Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, HR, HR Data, HR Stakeholders, SHRM Foundation