Tag Archives: China Gorman

October 23, 2012 · 4:30 am

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the C-Suite…

The Career Engagement Group from New Zealand recently conducted  an online survey of over 1,000 employed people ages 18-65.  The focus of the survey was to understand the career aspirations, agility and drivers of the current workforce across key demographics such as gender, age and career stage.

Maybe because the survey originated in New Zealand, some different questions were asked than the usual employee engagement surveys we see so routinely today.  It’s always good to get a different take on what’s important.

One of the subjects covered that seemed out of the ordinary was Leadership Aspiration.  Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I’ve ever been asked – in the many engagement and career development surveys I’ve taken – if I wanted to lead at the most senior level in an organization.  It’s a great question.  And the answers surprised me.  How about you?

Leadership Aspirations & Gender & Generations

  • Only 11% of all respondents want to lead at the most senior level in an organization.
  • Women report lower leadership aspirations than men – 15% of all males aspire to senior leadership positions, while only 9% of all females had similar aspirations.
  • Younger people have higher leadership aspirations overall.

Hmmm.  Only 11% of all respondents want to lead at the most senior level in an organization!  That surprises me.  A lot.  I would have loved to have seen the breakdown in responses by age group as well as gender.  Because I might have thought that the younger generations might be less interested in the stress and costs of leadership at the top than their older colleagues, but the results say otherwise according to the Career Engagement Group.

And women being less interested in leadership at the top than men?  That’s kind of a show stopper, don’t you think?  With more and more women entering the workforce around the world, this finding should be concerning.  Many industry-leading organizations are working hard to keep women in their organizations – maybe they should also be more encouraging about the value and rewards of life at the top.  According to this survey, there aren’t a lot of people — male or female –dreaming about being the CEO and making plans to get to the top.

When the demographics are already working against us (see my posts here and here) and the C-Suite is justifiably concerned about where the next generation of leaders is coming from, perhaps what’s needed is a marketing campaign to encourage workers to reach for the top.

What do you think?

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Filed under C-suite, Career Development, Career Planning, CEOs, China Gorman, Connecting Dots, Demographics, Engagement, HR Data, Leadership Aspiration, Talent development, Talent pipeline

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October 16, 2012 · 4:30 am

Building the HRM Technology Business Case

The highly anticipated CedarCrestone 2012-2013 HR Systems Survey White Paper, 15th Annual Edition was released at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago last week.

If you have any thought of adding HRM technology to your budget next year, the data in this report can be the foundation of your business case for the investment request.  Even if you aren’t going to ask for technology investment money for FY2013 this report will give you important data for managing your technology in new ways.

In analyzing the more than 1200 survey responses to identify key common practices, the CedarCrestone team (led by Lexi Martin) used these four independently validated key financial metrics to identify the highly successful organizations:

  • Revenue per employee:  Top performers is $681,903 vs. $352,576 for all others
  • Profit per employee:  Top performers is $317,508 vs. $131,157 for all others
  • Operating income growth (EBIT):  Top performers is 61% vs. 11% for all others
  • Return on Equity:  Top performers is 23% vs. 10%

Once the pool of top performing organizations was created, the analysis for common practices began and resulted in identifying the following Seven Practices of Top Performing Organizations:

  1. Top Performers have standardized processes and sophisticated change management processes.
  2. Top Performers are more likely to already have, or be planning a move to, a SaaS HRMS.
  3. Top Performers avoid extensive customizations of their HRMS.
  4. Top Performers have higher user adoption of employees, and manager self service, and shared services.
  5. Top Performers are more likely to have an integrated Talent Management system on the same platform as their HRMS solution.
  6. Top Performers have more sophisticated business intelligence solutions in place and more often put these tools in the hands of managers.
  7. Top Performers have more HR technologies in use and spent less on HR technology per employee.

The CedarCrestone 2012-2013 Survey White Paper goes into great detail about each of the seven best practices with quick characteristic overviews as well as deep data dives.  Well written and easily understood, this report is full of really useful information – whether you’re an HR department of one or one hundred.

The best practice that caught my eye was #7:  Top Performers have more HR technologies in use and spend less on HR technology per employee.

Regardless of the application category, Top Performers have more technology in place than the others.  We place each respondent in a technology application adoption quartile:  62% of Top Performers are in the top quarter of application adoption vs. 35% of the other publicly traded organizations; the categories of BI (Business Intelligence) and social applications both had 20%+ differences in adoption  between Top Performers and non-top performers.  And all of that technology still comes at a 12% lower cost per employee! 

It may seem  counter-intuitive that more technology means less cost, or that more technology means less humane-ness.  But what’s more humane than the organizational stability that comes with success?  What’s more humane than a highly profitable business that’s able to invest in talent?  What’s more humane than the organizational growth and longevity that higher levels of productivity produce?

Download the CedarCrestone report here, get a cup of coffee and spend an hour on the data and conclusions.  You won’t be sorry because these dots connect.

It’s budget season. You need the business case to invest in HRM technology and this report will give you most of the firepower you’ll need.  You could be a hero at this time next year!

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Filed under Business Case, CedarCrestone, China Gorman, Connecting Dots, EBIT, HR Analytics, HR Data, HR Technology, HR Technology Conference, HRM Technology

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September 25, 2012 · 4:30 am

The Language of Business

Visier, named one of the “2012 Awesome New Technologies for HR” by Bill Kutik, the founding conference co-chair of the upcoming HR Technology Conference in Chicago, is changing the face of HR analytics.  And by changing the face, I mean, putting a beautiful, incredibly interactive and astonishingly useful face on the workforce data collected by the many and disparate systems inside organizations.

All vendors in the HCM space commission research and surveys by credible third party organizations and write what they hope are useful white papers to ensure an educated prospect and customer base.  These white papers, while clearly biased, have some powerful data and insights that any HR practitioner – generalist, specialist or leader – can use to educate themselves.  Trolling through the Resources tabs of HCM solutions providers when you have some downtime can be worthwhile.

As I was browsing through the white papers at the Visier site, I came upon some great stuff.  Since Visier is in the workforce analytics business the subject matter is all tied to workforce analytics.  And they’ve got some great survey and research data for you.  But in this survey report, 2012 Survey of Employers:  Workforce Analytics Practices, Preferences & Plans, tucked in at the very end, was a chart showing what more than 150 U.S.-based employers (presumably through the voice of HR professionals taking the survey) thought their top workforce concerns were for 2012:

This is the first survey that I’ve read in which performance was ranked as the top workforce concern of HR professionals.  These top concerns lists are everywhere and none of them rank performance at the top.

  • Llloyd’s annual Risk Index (most recent 2011) lists Talent and Skills Shortages as Risk #2 (Loss of Customers is Risk #1)
  • Deloitte’s 2012 Human Capital Trends lists Growth as #1
  • The HR Policy Association (most recent list is 2011) lists Executive Development and Succession at the top of CHRO concerns
  • The WFPMA &  Boston Consulting Group survey (most recent is 2010) of global HR leaders lists Managing Talent as the most critical global HR issue
  • Human Resource Executive’s annual “What’s Keeping You Up Now” survey (most recent is September 2011) lists “Ensuring employees remain engaged and productive” as #1 (note that the 4th concern in the Visier survey was engagement.  Performance and engagement are not the same thing.)

I’m happy to see a survey of HR professionals identifying workforce performance as their top concern because performance is about business.  Performance is quantifiable.  Performance isn’t touchy feely.  Performance is not the language of professionals who chose HR because they “like to work with people.”  Performance is the language of professionals who are comfortable with measurements, analytics, data, accountability, business success.  In short, performance is the language of business people.  And I cheer when HR people speak the language of business rather than the language of HR.

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Filed under Analytics, Business Language, Business Success, China Gorman, HR Analytics, HR Conferences, HR Technology, Performance, Visier

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September 18, 2012 · 4:30 am

Hiring is Broken

SmartRecruiters, a two-year old recruitment platform for social enterprises, published the findings of a survey of 1,100 online adults on today’s hiring process.

The findings are:

a)      Fascinating

b)      Not terribly surprising if you’re paying attention

c)       The stuff of nightmares

d)      All of the above

If you chose “d” you are correct.  Here’s the data:

  • Finding the right candidate takes too long:  55% of respondents involved in hiring at their company reported that filling a vacant position typically takes longer than 60 days, and 43% reported that open positions aren’t filled within their required timeframe
  • Employers settle for good enough:  almost half of respondents involved in hiring report settling for a candidate that was just “good enough” because finding the right candidate took too long
  • Most people are unhappy with hiring:  more than 60% of respondents, job-seekers and employers said that their experience with the hiring process has been less than positive
  • Inefficient hiring impacts more than HR:  70% of people surveyed indicated that their company includes at least three employees in each hiring decision
  • Candidates give up before applying:  almost half – 46% — of respondents have chosen not to apply for a job they are interested in due to an application process that was “too lengthy or complicated”
  • Candidates expect a more mobile, more social experience:  nearly half – 47% — of people surveyed said they would be more likely to apply for a job if they could apply with their online social profile (such as LinkedIn or Facebook) rather than with a resume and cover letter, and 57% would be interested in applying from their mobile device if that option existed

This is one of those areas of talent management — like performance management — where everyone, all the stakeholders, knows that the current systems don’t work.  And they don’t work with a vengeance.  But getting it to the top of the “to do” list for action never seems to happen.

With more than 15 million Americans looking for work (and another several million who have given up), taking more than 60 days to fill positions seems ludicrous.

With more than 15 million Americans looking for work (and another several million who have given up), employers settling for good enough because their systems are cumbersome and selection is hard and there are lots of candidates shortchanges the business and ensures a workforce that won’t deliver on the organization’s goals and strategies.

With more than 15 million Americans looking for work (and another several million who have given up), having more than 60% of the processes’ participants report a less than positive experience means we’re demotivating all the stakeholders to do this well.

With more than 15 million Americans looking for work (and another several million who have given up), involving 3 or more people in the hiring process might not be such a bad idea.  But when it takes months to arrange interviews instead of hours we’re missing the most valuable talent.  Guaranteed.

With more than 15 million Americans looking for work (and another several million who have given up), using processes that dis-incent participation – even when there’s a job at the other end – shows that we don’t value the candidate pool or the candidate experience.  No matter how much we bemoan the lack of talent that meets our needs (see my posts here and here), using systems that intimidate, confuse and scare applicants is simply crazy.

With more than 15 million Americans looking for work (and another several million who have given up), using pre-existing data like profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook can only improve the efficiency of the process.

And it’s not that recruiters aren’t working hard.  And it’s not that job seekers aren’t doing their best to connect and market their abilities. It’s that we haven’t prioritized this as a “must fix.”  Leveraging technology to match supply and demand is a no-brainer.  And emerging businesses like SmartRecuiters, HireVue, RiseSmart, Pinstripe, Acertiv, Achievers – and all the other innovative tech-based solutions out there – have elegant, easy-to-use, cost effective applications that can start to solve these issues.  And start to solve them NOW!

So yeah: hiring is broken.  And yeah, fixing it could be really easy.

The real question is:  why haven’t we moved hiring to the top of the to-do list?  Hiring will continue to be the stuff of nightmares until we decide to fix it.  It might be that simple.

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Filed under Annual Performance Reviews, Candidate Experience, China Gorman, Hiring, Hiring Difficulty, Performance Management, SmartRecruiters, Talent Acquisition

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September 11, 2012 · 4:30 am

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

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September 4, 2012 · 4:30 am

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

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August 28, 2012 · 4:30 am

Low Employment vs. High Unemployment Around the World

As we prepare to attract, develop and retain skilled workers around the world, who works and who doesn’t work is interesting to me.  So I thought I’d share the following charts that I ran across in a collection of statistics published by the International Labor Comparisons Division of the BLS.  The first shows a comparison of the employment population ratios (proportion of the working-age population that is employed) by sex in 16 countries, adjusted to U.S. concepts.

According to the BLS definitions, employment includes all people who:

  1. worked at least 1 hour as paid employees, working in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked at least 15 hours as unpaid workers in a family-operated enterprise, and
  2. all those who did not work but had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent due to vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management disputes, job training, or other family or personal reasons, regardless of whether they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs.

(Actually, I don’t know which is more interesting, the definition of employment above or the chart that follows…)

It’s interesting to note the differences in employment percentages  between men and women. Turkey (40.7),  Mexico (33.4), the Republic of Korea (22.4) and Japan (22) all have differences of 20 points or more between the sexes’ employment rates, and Italy (19.5) is right there as well.  Those are big gaps.

But add this to the mix:  there doesn’t appear to be a strong correlation between these low employment rates of women and the overall national unemployment rates.  See the chart below:

It intuitively makes sense that South Africa with the lowest percentage of women employed in the workforce would also have the highest overall unemployment rate.  However the relationship between these two data points isn’t as consistent as we might assume across other countries.

Look at the data for Mexico, Japan and Korea.  They all report low employment rates for women and low overall unemployment rates.  Not so intuitive.

That’s what I enjoy about people related statistics.  Just when you think you’ve figured it out, the data throw you curve ball.

What do you think the story is here?  Is it fair to try to find a pattern in data like this?  What conclusions can you draw from this?

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Filed under Bureau of Labor Statistics, China Gorman, Connecting Dots, Demographics, Employment Data, HR Data, U.S. Department of Labor, Unemployment, Unemployment Rate

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August 21, 2012 · 4:30 am

Surprise! Telecommuting Isn’t So Great for Employees…

The June Monthly Labor Review published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor) had an interesting article about the surprising impacts of telecommuting in the U.S. workforce.  Surprising because the data analysis show that telecommuting hasn’t taken hold to any strong degree in the U.S.  And where it has taken hold, the impact isn’t positive:   from an employee perspective, the data suggest that the impact of telecommuting is negative from a work/life integration view!

Wait.  What? Isn’t telecommuting the perk that allows employees more flexibility and balance between work and personal life?  Well, no.  The data suggest not so much.

The Hard Truth About Telecommuting, by Noonan and Glass, says:  “telecommuting appears, instead, to have become instrumental in the general expansion of work hours, facilitating workers’ needs for additional work time beyond the standard workweek and/or the ability of employers to increase or intensify work demands among their salaried employees.”

The average number of hours worked per week from home by telecommuters is small.  And hasn’t been growing to any great degree since the mid-1990’s.  What is interesting is that most of telecommuting hours are overtime hours – they aren’t replacing office hours, they appear to be growing overtime hours.  So while more and more employers tout their “work-flex” telecommuting policies, the percentage of workers who telecommute isn’t growing.

Also surprising, is that younger workers are not telecommuting any more often than more mature workers and parents aren’t telecommuting more than the population as a whole!

The big value of telecommuting, according to this report, appears to accrue to a very few higher level professional employees.  For the rest, it actually appears to encourage longer work weeks.  As the report surmises, being available to telecommute may actually allow employers to increase expectation for work availability during evenings and weekends encouraging longer workdays and workweeks – the exact opposite of the intent.

It might be interesting to take a look at your organization’s use of telecommuting and determine whether this “flexible” approach is creating more or less stress, more or the same hours, more or the same productivity – and if it’s being utilized effectively.  In other words, is it an ineffective perk that feels good to offer and merely looks great on the “best” lists or is it a productivity and engagement tool that is actually producing value for your workforce?

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Filed under Bureau of Labor Statistics, China Gorman, Engagement, HR Data, Monthly Labor Review, Telecommuting, U.S. Department of Labor

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July 31, 2012 · 5:00 am

Getting leave management wrong has consequences — and they aren’t what you think!

Leave management is one of those tactical HR functions that we’re required by law to get right.  With more than 300 state, local and federal laws/regulations with which to comply, U.S. employers have to stay on top of an ever-changing morass of guidelines that impact their employees in very personal ways.  It’s not just about vacation or PTO.

Workforce Management has published trend survey data on this topic and even though the subject of tracking employee time off is pretty tedious, the issues surrounding it are business critical.  The 2011 trend survey, published in early 2012 and sponsored by WorkForce Software, is amazingly interesting. I know, surprising, right?

For example, unless you’re the one responsible for ensuring compliance with all applicable laws/regulations, did you know that 40% of employers report an error rate of 3 or more unearned leave days per 100 employees per pay period? That’s pretty big from a payroll expense perspective.  And what do you do when you find out? Clawback the unearned time? And how do you do that? Take time out of next year’s leave pool? Ouch.

That’s why I found it really interesting that when the survey asked employers what the greatest negative impact of non-compliance was, Employee Morale was far and away the biggest impact. Regardless of the employer’s size.

Here’s why this makes sense to me:  I learned early in my leadership career that you have to get employees’ compensation right. You have to pay them the right amount; you have to pay them on time; and you have to manage their time off accurately. You can’t screw up any of these and not impact morale. And if you screw up any or all of these up more than once you’re sunk.

And so it really isn’t surprising that more than litigation fines/costs and brand equity/reputation, employee morale is HR’s biggest concern in ensuring compliance in managing time off. I don’t think this concern is driven by the old “touchy-feely” rap that HR used to get. This is cold, hard reasoning about the cost to the engagement and retention of employees if the organization can’t get the basic building blocks of paying people correctly right.

So reducing the error rate isn’t just about reducing payroll dollar mistakes, it’s about productivity and morale. There’s more interesting data in this report. You can download it here.

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Filed under China Gorman, Connecting Dots, Engagement, HR Data, Leave Management, PTO, Talent Management, Workforce Management, WorkForce Software

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July 10, 2012 · 5:00 am

Data Analytics: Too Sophisticated for HR?

Mercer and WorldatWork have collaborated again on a survey and report about current total rewards/compensation trends in metrics and analytics.  The focus of the research was to understand what types of analytics are currently being conducted and what technologies are being used to conduct them.

It’s an interesting report – especially from the vantage point of what it says about the relationship between HR and data and HR and analytics.  The survey was fielded in February, 2012 to compensation leaders who are WorldatWork members (the dataset held 560 scrubbed responses , a final 10.9% response rate), so they all have more than a passing knowledge of the total rewards function.

The big takeaways of the survey data are that:

  • Rather than use sophisticated analytical approaches like projections, simulations and predictive modeling to support decision making, organizations are more likely to use ongoing reports and benchmarking from internal and external peer groups.
  • Survey respondents report lack of access to and confidence in data regarding education competencies/capabilities and training investments – critical to workforce analytics.
  • Compensation professionals may be falling behind their colleagues in other HR functional areas in their adoption of more sophisticated analytics methodologies.

The report discusses why adoption of more powerful analytics is low despite 67% of respondents indicating adequate skill levels to engage in higher level analytics and almost half (47%) having 1 -2 FTEs tasked with HR-related analytics.  More important, 75% of the respondents reported that C-suite executives in their organizations have asked for workforce projections, simulations or predictive modeling.

Mercer and WorldatWork point out that while respondents report that some data is not available or of poor quality, 75% of respondents say their organizations are working to improve the consistency of their data. Paradoxically, 52% are unclear where responsibility for data integrity lies.

I found it interesting that the researchers suggest that “unavailable” data may result from a lack of interest in the data rather than an ability to access it.  A compelling point.

From the responses outlined in the exhibit above, one could readily agree with the researchers that critical workforce information about education, competencies, prior work experience and investments in training aren’t top of mind for compensation professionals. It could easily be that compensation professionals believe these datasets and their analysis more naturally belong to other HR functions:  learning/development and talent management/acquisition.

The writers argue that rewards/compensation professionals have a preoccupation with the behavioral side of rewards and overlook the “asset side” – the impact of rewards on the ability of the organization to acquire appropriate talent.

The bottom line for the researchers is to encourage rewards/compensation professionals to begin to think more expansively – and use higher levels of analytics – on the role of rewards in driving human capital development and business success and focus a little less on salary competitiveness and pay-performance sensitivity as performance drivers.

A very interesting report and very useful data as you begin to plan your 2013 budget.  Stepping up your workforce analytics sophistication could be a game changer for your organization.

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Filed under C-suite, China Gorman, Employee Benefits, Engagement, HR Analytics, HR Data, HR Technology, Mercer, Rewards & Recognition, Talent Management, Total Rewards, WorldatWork

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