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How Small HR Teams Can Punch Above Their Weight

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Small but mighty HR teams are under increasing pressure to perform with fewer and fewer resources. Typically, small budgets mean that functions like payroll, time and attendance, benefits administration, HR compliance, and more have to be done manually or with spreadsheets. This stifles smaller HR teams’ ability to consistently punch above their weight.

In a recent survey, GoCo found that 74% of HR professionals feel more pressure from senior leadership to hire and retain top talent amid The Great Resignation. 

And with the arrival of COVID-19, these pressures have only been exacerbated. HR teams must now also deal with the digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic. In fact, according to McKinsey, 85% of companies surveyed are increasing digitization during the pandemic. 

Large companies typically have access to ERP and enterprise-wide technology solutions, supported by large team headcounts. This equips them to handle rapidly evolving future-of-work considerations such as digital transformation or remote work policies. But what about small HR teams? How can they tackle the same issues that large HR teams face with significantly fewer resources? One answer is automation: Leveraging digital tech reshapes how small HR teams function.

Automation technology is increasingly being utilized by small businesses to power their HR functions and to deliver the prowess of a large HR team. 

Streamline HR Work for Efficiency 

When teams are small, it’s critical to optimize efficiencies and reduce errors. Often, small HR teams rely on highly tedious and time-consuming processes for benefits administration or payroll. They tackle complex functions using manual processes. More often than not, this leads to errors or simply monopolizes HR’s time with administrative work. This makes it difficult to tackle new pressing challenges facing HR leaders. Additionally, it becomes nearly impossible for them to take on strategic initiatives. 

Implementing automation technology streamlines core HR functions. Work can then be completed quickly and with significantly fewer errors. When HR practitioners have time to focus on caring for employees and supporting people functions, they provide much-needed value to their organizations. Automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks boosts the productivity of your HR team. An overlooked benefit of HR technology is that for small HR teams, the right tech can alleviate the need to check work or ensure the accuracy of reports. With fewer errors to fix and less paper-work to process or reconcile, small HR teams can flourish.

Staying Compliant

One of the most crucial responsibilities of HR teams is to ensure organizations, big and small, remain HR compliant — adhering to layers of government regulations and financial requirements. A business’s size does not exclude it from compliance requirements. And failure to comply can result in costly penalties at the state, local, and federal level.

Paperwork and manual processes are often the enemy of staying in compliance. Document-focused compliance processes will inevitably result in human error. Small HR teams can succeed at compliance work — but going digital is a crucial step in that journey.

There are many complex moving parts to HR compliance. Small HR teams have a lot to keep up with. Staying aware of constantly evolving and changing regulations when it comes to payroll, hiring, and benefits can feel daunting in one-person or small HR departments. This becomes only more complicated for companies that employ a mix of full-time, hourly, and freelance workers. Adding multiple regional or geographic locations adds further complexity. 

HR automation technology easily streamlines HR compliance and helps them punch above their weight. It improves accuracy and frees up HR to focus on emerging priorities such as employee well-being, hiring, and onboarding new employees.

Flexibility in Tech Is Key

Most small HR departments straddle the world of analog and digital — meaning even when they deploy tech solutions, they still rely on a mix of software, paper systems, and spreadsheets. It’s often a transition from paper to software to cloud-based systems. So, software that has the flexibility to align with how an HR department already operates eases the burden of learning and implementing a new system. Done right, technology can step in to automate certain HR processes to create efficiencies and then leave it up to each unique HR practitioner how they best want to track specific HR functions. 

One of the common obstacles in the way of HR departments that want to go fully digital is the lack of flexibility in many of the tech solutions out there. HR pros spend years, maybe even decades, perfecting processes like onboarding and offboarding. They don’t want technology that’s going to force them to change all of that. So it’s important to find tech that doesn’t force you to conform to a particular process. Rather, look for solutions that trust you to define your own workflow, and that are flexible enough to support that. 

And as small HR departments scale with the growth of their companies, so too must the technology. Platforms that only offer out-of-the-box solutions often have difficulty in scaling with a company’s growth. Flexible systems better match things like headcount growth and complex processes like running payroll in different geographies or supporting multiple EINs.

Optimize and Improve With Data 

When used strategically, HR automation technology is a powerful tool for small HR teams who want to have a big impact. It’s not enough to automate; there’s a growing expectation to leverage people data to make better business decisions. As more and more HR data is stored, modern HR systems can extract useful people insights. These insights drive outcomes such as reduced turnover, better onboarding, and increased productivity.

Small businesses and their HR teams can make better business decisions and improve employee experience with the reports that core HR technology generates. With technology, small HR teams can deliver high-impact, strategic work. Having better data covers compliance, better supports people, and empowers company leadership with key people insights. Small HR teams can be just as integral to business success as large HR teams — when they harness technology.

Photo: You X Ventures

Don’t Sacrifice Talent To Survive a Crisis

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Nobody needs to tell you that we’re in hard times. A pandemic is sweeping the nation, a trail of personal and economic devastation behind it, and frightening uncertainty ahead. Businesses are struggling to figure out the best path to survival. For many leaders, the impulse is, understandably, to lessen their organizations’ financial load with layoffs.

The good news is that eventually, through the efforts of courageous health care workers and our technology, we will defeat the virus, and life and work will return to a version of normal. And many economists predict that when this happens, our mothballed world economy will snap back to life, unleashing a wave of pent-up demand.

Will your company survive and be ready for this?

After all, consider what happened post 9/11. After the attacks, the world economy reeled, oil prices surged, and the stock markets plunged as the world braced for war in the Middle East. Many companies, fearful about the future, indulged in a layoff binge, slashing their workforce without thought to who their top talent was, or what current and future skills the organization might need to remain viable and recover with the economy.

But then the economy quickly rebounded, and the downturn turned out to be what economists call a “V-shaped recession.” The sharp decline in GDP was followed by an almost equally sharp increase in business activity. At this point, companies found that the talent they let go was desperately needed. They scrambled, and the result was a massive hiring binge to fill the gap that they themselves created.

The fact is that fundamentally, there was nothing significantly wrong with the underlying economics on September 11th, 2001. The economic downturn was not caused by normal business cycle considerations, the firing binge was followed by a scramble to replenish a depleted workforce.

Today, the pandemic is cutting a swath through what otherwise had been a robust economy, so the mistakes of 9/11 are a cautionary tale.

If you are among the business leaders queuing up the pink slips in reaction to this unprecedented crisis, I urge you to stop, take a breath, and think your next steps through — lest you sacrifice valuable employees in your rush for short-term relief.

While I understand some companies are in crisis and don’t have the luxury of time to pause for analysis, most do have the wherewithal, and I would argue, a duty to their workforce and, if public, their shareholders to proceed with wisdom and caution.

So instead of rushing to throw off what might feel like human ballast, consult with your HR executives to put together a strategic workplace plan, or crisis plan, by performing a three-dimensional review of your current workforce, considering more than headcount and cost. Instead of responding in panic only to the here and now, look ahead, 6 to 18 months in the future, and decide:

  • What skills your people have today and what your organization will need
  • How to ensure you have an adequate supply of these skills and where to deploy them
  • Your succession plan for key leaders

Upon sober reflection of these needs, you probably will find that you can keep most of your workforce in place, and you will be ready to make clear decisions based on your data and forecasts. Additionally, doing a strategic workforce crisis plan will set you up for the future by seeing how you can maximize the productivity of the workforce you have. From this plan you will be in position to drive higher performance and workforce engagement, creating what I call “PEIP capability,” where PEIP = People Engagement, Innovation and Performance.

PEIP is a strategic capability that not only creates higher performance, it creates a more engaged workplace, which naturally leads to greater productivity. Who doesn’t want to work in an organization that wants to optimize employees and work with their skills and their career aspirations? A workplace that tries to align people to what they do best? An engaged workplace is a fun place to work, but it is also a competitive advantage. Some of the highest performing companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Accenture, IBM, and SAP, have implemented PEIP strategies to create competitive advantage, and this is reflected in their people engagement scores as well as share-price performance.

PEIP can also help future-proof your organization. New smart technologies and AI perme.ating the workplace create another opportunity for the workforce and the organization to align the right people with the right skills to harness new technology. This creates a “turbo-charging” effect, driving more engagement, innovation, and productivity, as well as return on investment on IT spend.   

We are at the fork in the road — once again. It’s a scary time, but rife with opportunity for companies that respond with foresight. We can do as we have done for decades before and continue the hire/fire binge, or we can step back and be more strategic and thoughtful in addressing the current crisis, while at the same time positioning our businesses to thrive in the future — whatever it brings.

Photo: Drew Beamer

New Research Indicates Desire for Recognition, Feedback

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In the past several months, many companies have modified their performance programs. From streamlining their review processes to running more frequent pulse surveys, organizations around the world are seeking to make changes that will ultimately boost employee performance and productivity.

Our company, Reflektive, sought to measure these changes with a performance management survey. In June we reached out to 445 HR professionals and business leaders, and 622 employees, to understand the current state of their performance programs. We compared these results to a similar survey we ran in 2018. Our 2020 Performance Management Benchmark Report uncovered meaningful performance management trends over the past two years, as well as insights into the current state of work.

Formal Processes of Performance Management Consistent Since 2018

A surprising observation was that the formal processes of performance management have not changed significantly over the last two years. Nearly half of reviews are run annually or less frequently. Forty-six percent of respondents use descriptive performance ratings, such as “meets expectations.” 

People Analytics Present Big Opportunity

The survey also found that only 50% of HR and business leaders are using people analytics to predict performance and turnover. What’s interesting is that most leaders believe that people analytics has become more important, however they’re still not utilizing this technology to inform strategic people decisions. This gap can really impact workforce planning, as organizations struggle to fill needs when employees depart.

Employees Desire More Communication and Transparency from Companies

The employee survey results revealed that workers seek more communication to stay informed and engaged at work. Nearly half of respondents desire more consistent communication from leadership, and 37% said more consistent communication was needed from colleagues. 

In a similar vein, we found that employees sought more transparency from their employers. Only 19% of employees believed that their organization was transparent about upward mobility. Twenty-one percent said their company was communicative about salary freezes, and the same percentage said that their org was transparent about potential pay cuts. Employees are cognizant of the pandemic’s economic toll, and would like their companies to be honest with them about the business impact.

Employees Seek More Feedback and Coaching for their Growth

Another interesting insight we uncovered was that employees want more from their performance programs. Specifically, they’re looking for increased coaching, dialogue and recognition from their managers. Since 2018, there’s been a 3.2X increase in the percentage of employees that desire recognition. We also observed a nearly 90% increase in the percentage of employees that desire formal feedback conversations monthly or more frequently.

A performance bright spot was the manager-employee relationship. Over 80% of employees surveyed said that they are having 1:1s with their managers. Additionally, 80% said that these meetings were productive. This data was really uplifting to me, since driving alignment and communication can be tricky when everyone is working remotely.

However, we did identify a major communication gap: only 20% of employees reported that they receive weekly feedback. So it appears that managers and employees are talking regularly about ongoing work and projects, but employees still aren’t receiving the coaching that they desire. This represents a huge opportunity for managers — they can benefit from training on how to ask important questions, and how to provide valuable feedback on a more regular basis. Performance management technology — including feedback prompts and 1:1 tools — can help drive productive coaching conversations too.

Getting Feedback Remains Challenging for Employees

One interesting discrepancy between leaders and employees was sentiment around initiating feedback conversations. Only 14% of HR professionals and business leaders felt that employees weren’t empowered to initiate feedback conversations. However, 30% of employees — or over 2X the percentage of leaders — felt that they weren’t empowered to request feedback. This discrepancy indicates that HR teams and leaders are overestimating employee comfort with feedback processes. Employee training on giving and receiving feedback, and an easy-to-use feedback tool, can help fill this gap.

Executives and Employees Remain Optimistic for the Future

While sentiment and outlooks are continuously evolving in 2020, both executives and employees remain optimistic about the future. Specifically, executives anticipate more investment in technology (35% of respondents) and more efforts to boost engagement and retain employees (29% of respondents). 

Employees anticipate that six months from now, it will be business as usual (34% of respondents). Additionally, 26% expect to have learned new skills, and 25% believe they’ll feel proud of their accomplishments. Despite the many headwinds that they’re facing, employees feel that they will come out of 2020 stronger and more prepared for the future.

As employees, HR teams, and executives navigate the ever-changing environment, agility and resilience will be crucial. The ability to work productively in different environments, and collaborate cross-functionally, will be highly valued. Companies that maintain engaged and productive workforces will be the success stories of 2020.

This post is sponsored by Reflektive.

Photo Timon Studler

To Access the Data Goldmine, Workforces Need to Be Data Literate

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We are in the midst of a data revolution. Businesses and organizations across all sectors collect, store and analyze huge amounts of information. However, they often struggle to realize data’s full potential. According to a recent report from Accenture, Closing the Data Value Gap, only 32% of business executives surveyed said that they’re able to create tangible and measurable value from data. 

Why? Because many companies struggle to fully utilize the capabilities of their entire workforces. 

That’s why Qlik and Accenture commissioned  The Human Impact of Data Literacy. The 2020  global survey of over nine thousand workers found that businesses at the tipping point of their journey to become data-driven are investing heavily in data-ready skills to help enhance individual and organizational performance. 

The majority of workers surveyed said that they read and interpret data as part of their roles, and communicate with data, making data-driven decisions at least once a week. But only 25% of these employees believe they were fully prepared to use data effectively when entering their current role.  

There is much progress to be made. With technology developing far more quickly than the typical employee’s ability to harness data insights, some employees feel they do not have the right tools or support, and are starting to feel overwhelmed. The research found that just 21% of global workers are confident in their data literacy skills — the ability to read, understand, question and work with data. 

This can have significant consequences for their overall performance and, in turn, have an impact on the organization’s bottom line. 

Empowering workers to fulfill their potential

Organizations with a workforce fully invested in the effective use of data are already seeing a competitive advantage. According to the 2018 Data Literacy Index, they have benefitted from increased performance and a higher total enterprise value of between three and five percent, equating to US $500 million. In contrast, the Human Impact of Data Literacy study found that companies lose an average of more than five working days (43 hours) per employee each year due to procrastination and sick leave stemming from stress around information, data and technology issues. This ultimately would equate to billions in lost productivity around the globe.

In order to realize that opportunity, organizations need to unlock their people’s potential with five key steps:

  1. Set your data expectations.

Setting clear expectations means that everyone — whether in product development, marketing or business intelligence—understands what is expected of them. By clarifying how data is going to be used, employers can start to define how different roles across the organization will align with and contribute to overall business goals. 

To do that, organizations need to understand how their employees actually work with data and educate them on how data supports organizational goals. This empowers employees to see how their actions directly contribute to creating value for the business. 

  1. Map the way to achieve data goals.

The next step is to assess the state of data within the organization. That covers everything from measuring individual levels of data literacy, to understanding the availability and adoption of technology and tools and defining who needs access to what data. 

This has to be accurate – currently, there is a gap between what leaders think and what might actually be the case. Three-fourths (75%) of C-suite level respondents in our Human Impact report believe that all or most of their employees have the ability to work with data proficiently.  Even more (79%) believe that their employees have access to the tools they need to be productive. But middle managers and below are less optimistic: half feel that all or most employees have the right abilities, and the same number echo the sentiment when it comes to access.

  1. Arm your employees for data-driven working.

Organizations must provide employees with the tools, processes and methodologies that enable them to use data as required and meet business goals. This includes not only tools, but training and continued support to advance skill sets.

  1. Close the data literacy skills gap.

However, simply having the right tools is not enough. Workers need to be data-literate. No matter how accessible data is, employees need to be capable of understanding, questioning and taking the right action based on the insights delivered. This  improves their experience of and confidence in using data; employees who identify as data-literate were at least 50 percent more likely than their data-novice peers to say they feel empowered to make better decisions and trusted to make better decisions.

  1. Create a culture of co-evolution.

The way we access and use data is constantly evolving, and so must a workforce’s understanding and ability to use data — there is no fixed endpoint. That’s why businesses need to build a culture comfortable with this state of continual change. Regularly assessing abilities, skillsets, tools and overall requirements will help employees persistently gain skills in their data literacy and is a fundamental aspect of empowering them to use data effectively and appropriately. 

Your most powerful data tool? Your people.

As Sanjeev Vohra, group technology officer and global lead for Accenture’s Data Business Group, put it: “A workforce comfortable with data is a powerful asset; forward-thinking employers that prioritize their teams’ data literacy will reap the rewards.”

Education and empowerment will be the true determining success factors in the data-literate world. Technology may be creating data and giving workers the means to harness it, but organizations can only realize its full potential. by establishing and building understanding of what data can do, how it should be used, and who should be using it. 

This post is sponsored by Qlik.

4 Reasons You Need Data-Driven Recruiting

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Do you remember Blockbuster, Kodak, or even Nokia?

Let me guess. You haven’t heard these companies in quite some time.

These companies each lacked innovative and creative ideas because they were comfortable with their current status in the market.

We all know where these companies are today.

For Blockbuster, Kodak, and Nokia, this lack of urgency to innovate and update their systems ultimately led to their downfall.

This same concept goes for employer branding. If you are using old-fashioned recruitment processes, there is a high chance you will end up wasting your time and resources, interviewing unqualified candidates. This not only will negatively affect your brand sentiment and employee morale, but it will cost your company time, money, and resources.

HOWEVER!

It is not too late to make a change. Yes, 2019 is coming to an end, but the shift to implementing data-driven recruiting is still reasonably fresh in the market. Using data on candidates to create recruitment strategies has proven to make the entire hiring process from start to finish remarkably smoother, cost-efficient, and more accurate than the traditional methods.

So let’s get into the juicy details.

What is Data-Driven Recruiting?

Data-driven recruitment is the process of optimizing the candidate’s journey from awareness to consideration by leveraging data on the candidates you want to recruit.

This data-driven recruitment process could take the form of external or internal data collected on candidates. While many Fortune 500 Companies have an abundance of internal data available on their candidate process, that doesn’t necessarily mean they know how to make strategic decisions that will yield better results. When we apply a data-driven mindset to recruiting, identifying which campaigns and channels are producing the best hires becomes much more manageable.

But even if you could understand which channels or campaigns the good hires came from, how would you optimize them? How would you know what content to continue producing on that channel year after year?

As candidates are changing, so is the data! By analyzing that data, you get to know more about your candidates and which ones, in the end, become your employees. Having that data is an essential strategic asset in your recruitment process.

To help you fully understand the benefits of using a data-driven recruiting, we’ve compiled a list of 4 benefits of implementing a data-driven recruitment strategy.

1. Improve Quality of Candidates Applying

The hiring process can become very tedious and overwhelming when you have to handle 100 ́s of job applicants for one position. But what if you could remove the unqualified candidates from the list?

By tailoring your talent communication strategies on all your career channels with data collected on candidates, you can improve your chances of attracting the right candidate the first time around by targeting their needs and preferences.

There is no need for an outside staffing and recruiting agency when you have all the information on what the candidates want. Curating your talent communication strategies on your career channels to appeal to your desired candidates will drastically improve your chances of hiring the right candidate over and over again.

Hiring the very best employees time and time again will significantly improve your company’s performance, both short-term and long-term.

As an employer, if you can understand which channels your desired candidates look for career-related information, then you can create a strategy that guides the very best candidates down your funnel. Data-driven recruiting can make that happen.

Within the HR sector, we also see the rise of ambassador marketing programs. Using your network to find new employees has many benefits. People find job postings from their network more trustworthy, which, in turn, has a positive impact on the number of applications a company receives from their job posting.

2. Reduce New Hire Cost

With the right set of data, you will be able to optimize your best hires by channel. A study by LinkedIn has shown that companies with a stronger brand see a 43% decrease in hiring cost.

To start to reduce new hire costs, focus only on the variables and channels that lead to the best hires. On the flip side, you also need to eliminate as much waste or churn as possible throughout the process.

Once you have collected data on candidates and your hiring process, the next step is to identify which channels are producing the best hires — focusing your recruiting efforts on these channels. By trimming the fat in your traditional hiring process, you will be able to save money on the channels that are not producing quality hires.

After you determine which channels your ideal candidates are on, it is crucial to create customized content that is attractive to them. By providing content that candidates value the most, you will be able to guide and prioritize what changes you need to make on your channels. And, more importantly, how you can position yourself as an employer in the marketplace. If you prioritize and tailor your content to your ideal candidate, you will increase your chances of hiring the right candidate the first time around and ultimately decrease long term costs associated with bad hires.

3. Decrease Hiring Time

From the moment a candidate recognizes your company as a potential employer to the point when they finally click the apply button, is called the candidate’s journey. To optimize your candidate journey, maintain a smooth and time-efficient hiring process.

Candidate Funnel
Awareness – Social Media Channels/Review Platforms
Interest – Career Opportunities/Work Culture
Consideration – Career Website/Offer to Candidate
Application – Mobile/ATS/Applying Online

Once you have defined your funnel, it’s vital to have the right measuring systems in place. Using a data-driven approach in your hiring process will allow your team to create a candidate funnel that optimizes the needs and preferences of your desired candidate during each stage.

Communicating clearly with your ideal candidate allows them to work their way through the funnel more quickly.

Your content from throughout the candidate journey should tell a story that resonates with qualified candidates and leads them further down the funnel. In doing so, hiring the right candidate will occur much quicker.

4. Improved Candidate Experience

Attracting and converting your desired candidate requires a flawless candidate’s experience.

It’s not only important for a company to create the ultimate employee experience, but also a fantastic experience for your recruits. Even those who don’t make the cut should still be treated as if they were one of your employees from the start.

Going back to the candidate funnel of awareness, interest, consideration, and application, there are many steps you can take in each part of the funnel to ensure that candidates have a positive experience.

Awareness:

Social media has become one of the most important ways to attract and nurture candidates. It has changed recruitment for good. To provide guidance in the jungle of channels and where you should focus your efforts, utilizing data and external surveys will assist in making these strategic decisions. By delivering content that showcases your workplace and what being an employee at your company is like, you will give candidates a definite feeling of acceptance and desire to be there.

Interest:

To properly get a candidate interested, they have to see something they like about the company. By tailoring your strategies to the candidates’ needs/preferences, you are thereby providing appealing content that would spark further curiosity in applying to your company.

Consideration:

The Career Website is the heart of the candidate experience, where you can showcase your organization and really stand out. It’s often the place where decisions for or against an application are taken, and where making an impeccable offer should occur. In this stage, you should hold nothing back about your company and play all your cards.

Application:

The application process is crucial, from a job ad to application submission. What causes dropouts and is your ATS provider keeping up with the latest developments are the questions to be asking. Staying updated and current is vital to finalizing the application process. No one wants to apply to a company that looks outdated, boring, and slow.

Still not convinced?

Whatever your company recruiting methods are, the age of data-driven recruiting is already here, and it’s not going anywhere.

Remember, when I mentioned Blockbuster, Kodak, and Nokia? Don’t be them. Be better, and stay on the offense!

Companies will only continue to evolve the hiring process by finding new and innovative ways to hire qualified candidates more efficiently, thus making it harder for companies who lack this to survive. There are plenty of different strategies you could derive from using data on candidates. Remember, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Leadership: Adapting to Today’s Harsh Realities

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The world in which we live is going through fundamental shifts – simultaneous changes that are literally turning everything, as we know it, on its head. Leaders of today and tomorrow are challenged with addressing these aspects to drive the business forward.

From the influence of technology, to a struggling world economy veiled in high unemployment, protectionism and a depleting middle class, most of us are at odds with these concurrent shifts in events that are disrupting our livelihoods and expectations of career paths.

We must overcome our fear of fundamental shifts and learn how to adapt to the new reality. One could not have fathomed the news of robots and computers displacing highly skilled workers in the near term. But that is today’s harsh reality.

Large corporations simply are not ready. While consumer behavior and expectations continue to evolve, the businesses have not kept pace. Companies have experienced a deterioration of control, despite knowing the eventual need for upheaving the precious infrastructure of the organization.

In the next decade, leadership will take many sharp turns in the journey.  These current trends will challenge organizational leadership.

  • Globalization has opened the borders and has given rise to emerging markets with an evolving middle class. Pressure from global competition is quickly elevating more nimble companies to the forefront while those within the Fortune 500, mired in traditional practices and legacy structures are falling to the wayside: Blockbuster, Borders, Eastman Kodak, among others. More companies are or will be integrating automation capabilities to streamline process, improve productivity and increase speed and accuracy in communication within the organization and to all customer touch points.

For leaders, the need to adapt to market speed will be tantamount to managing the real-time complexities of the market pulse, customer tendencies, competitive pressures and brand position.

  • The Rise of the Millennials gives credence to a generation who has, by far, experienced a mercurial existence compared to their older counterparts. With their natural affinity to tech adoption, plus their unpredictable job prospects, this future generation of leaders will influence the way corporations function, how the workplace is governed and how business practices are developed.

Tomorrow’s leaders will shake the foundation of today’s business with a zeal to drive significant revision in response to the expectation of continuous market disorder. The complacency, which is common among many of today’s leaders, will cease to exist.

  • Data will be more pervasive than ever and artificial intelligence and machine learning science will be interwoven into all areas of the organization to capture meaningful insights that will improve decision-making capabilities.

Leadership will be challenged when they are confronted with the opportunity to share their datasets with partners, vendors and even competitors to create an open source environment that will yield an improved contextual understanding of markets and customers, but will also allow for a much different market dynamic.

  • The Gig Economy will become more pronounced as companies begin to flatten their structures to make way for increased efficiency across the organization. And while many of these processes will be automated, the demand for acute skills across many verticals will create a more defined need for specific outputs on a task basis or as Google terms, “work-for-hire as the new normal”.

For leaders, they will be tasked with creating a black book of contingency or flexible workers but will be challenged to retain top talent under these conditions.

  • Growing Economic Uncertainty will also expose a workforce population caught in the grips of technological change, and are left unprepared to evolve with the demands of the time. The groundswell towards Universal Basic Income will make it necessary to give a boost to an economy in uncertain times. On the other end of the spectrum, the impetus of technology which gives strength to efficiencies, will make many things more affordable, which should help keep the economic wheel turning.

This is, by far, a significant hurdle that will consume business as they battle the elements that will attempt to hinder performance.

I have hesitated to mention Climate Change, This, in itself, will have its catastrophic impacts in the next 30 years. Government, research and corporate investments will prioritize spending to mitigate its effects but as we’ve seen thus far, unless various governments are willing to recognize its eventual impacts, let alone its existence, the efforts of the changing business landscape becomes a moot point.  

Leadership in the coming decade will be unlike what we’ve witnessed in the last 30 years. The simultaneous shifts in economy, technology, consumption, employment, environment and politics necessitate a mindset that not only seeks to sustain organizations, but also push for a fervent, more social-conscious mentality.

 

Photo Credit: Fundamental Advisory Flickr via Compfight cc

#WorkTrends Recap: Building a Business Case for Company Culture

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Numerous studies have confirmed that employees’ satisfaction with company culture is correlated with positive business outcomes, such as customer satisfaction, productivity and performance. Executives tend to be overly optimistic about the state of their company culture and employee engagement. Therefore, to make the case for investing in culture, you have to help executives understand your true company culture. To do this, data is your best friend.

On this week’s #WorkTrends, Host Meghan M. Biro was joined by special guest Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ. We discussed how to layer business data (customer success, retention, operating profits, etc.) with culture data in order to make the case for company culture.

Here are a few key points Greg shared:

  • Culture is everyone’s responsibility
  • You cannot build a high-performance company if you don’t build a high-performance culture
  • Part of making a business case for company culture is accurately defining your culture

Missed the show? You can listen to the #WorkTrends podcast on our BlogTalk Radio channel here: bit.ly/2cQ8NkK

You can also check out the highlights of the conversation from our Storify here:

Didn’t make it to this week’s #WorkTrends show? Don’t worry, you can tune in and participate in the podcast and chat with us every Wednesday from 1-2pm ET (10-11am PT). Next week, on Sept 28, host Meghan M. Biro will be joined by Steve Boese to discuss the things you need to know about HR Tech.

The TalentCulture #WorkTrends conversation continues every day across several social media channels. Stay up-to-date by following the #WorkTrends Twitter stream; pop into our LinkedIn group to interact with other members; or check out our Google+ community. Engage with us any time on our social networks, or stay current with trending World of Work topics on our website or through our weekly email newsletter.

Photo Credit: tipsparaempresarios via Compfight cc

#WorkTrends Preview: Building a Business Case for Company Culture

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Numerous studies have confirmed that employee satisfaction with company culture is positively correlated with business outcomes, such as customer satisfaction, productivity and performance. Executives tend to be overly optimistic about the state of their company culture and employee engagement. Therefore, to make the case for investing in culture, you have to help executives understand your company culture. To do this, data is your best friend.

On next week’s #WorkTrends, join Host Meghan M. Biro and our special guest, Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ, as we discuss how to layer business data (customer success, retention, operating profits, etc.) with culture data. The result will be to reveal the cultural drivers of key business metrics.

Building a Business Case for Company Culture

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Tune in to our LIVE online podcast Wednesday, Sept 21 — 1 pm ET / 10 am PT

Join TalentCulture #WorkTrends Host Meghan M. Biro and guest Greg Besner of CultureIQ as they discuss how to layer business data with culture data.

#WorkTrends on Twitter — Wednesday, Sept 21 — 1:30 pm ET / 10:30 am PT

Immediately following the podcast, the team invites the TalentCulture community over to the #WorkTrends Twitter stream to continue the discussion. We encourage everyone with a Twitter account to participate as we gather for a live chat, focused on these related questions:

Q1. What causes culture to be misconstrued inside of the organization? #WorkTrends (Tweet this question)

Q2. How can employees encourage and support efforts to focus on a positive work culture? #WorkTrends (Tweet this question)

Q3. What are the connections between cultural drivers and business metrics? #WorkTrends (Tweet this question)

Don’t want to wait until next Wednesday to join the conversation? You don’t have to. We invite you to check out the #WorkTrends Twitter feed, our TalentCulture World of Work Community LinkedIn group, and in our TalentCulture G+ community. Share your questions, ideas and opinions with our awesome community any time. See you there!

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#WorkTrends Recap: Data Drives Millennial Hiring

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Recruitment data’s importance is continuing to grow for strategic workforce planning, specifically when considering the growing number of young workers joining the labor pool. With millennials becoming the majority of today’s applicants, and expected to make up 75 percent of the workforce by 2025, it’s clear that businesses need to attract young talent to survive.

Susan Vitale, Chief Marketing Officer of iCIMS joined the #WorkTrends show this week to discuss how to use hiring data insights to design an excellent candidate experience, the key to recruiting millennials.

Here are a few key points Susan shared:

  • There is a major disconnect between millennial’s expectations and reality of the job market
  • Millennials expect to be courted and gravitate to companies who match the expectation
  • The candidate experience is a good indication of company culture

You can listen to the #WorkTrends podcast on our BlogTalk Radio channel here.

You can also check out the highlights of the conversation from our Storify here:

Missed this week’s #WorkTrends show? Don’t worry, you can tune in and participate in the chat with us every Wednesday from 1-2pm ET (10-11am PT). Next Wednesday, June 15, we will be joined by Elissa O’Brien, Vice President of SHRM Membership, and Alex Alonso, Senior Vice President of Knowledge Development for SHRM to discuss the importance of networking and relationship-building.

The TalentCulture #WorkTrends conversation continues every day across several social media channels. Stay up-to-date by following the #WorkTrends Twitter stream; pop into our LinkedIn group to interact with other members; or check out our Google+ community. Engage with us any time on our social networks, or stay current with trending World of Work topics on our website or through our weekly email newsletter.

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#WorkTrends Preview: Data Drives Millennial Hiring

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Recruitment data’s importance is continuing to grow for strategic workforce planning, specifically when considering the growing number of young workers joining the labor pool. With millennials becoming the majority of today’s applicants, and expected to make up 75 percent of the workforce by 2025, it’s clear that businesses need to attract young talent to survive.

The key to bringing them in is to use hiring data insights to design an excellent candidate experience; which, for younger applicants, means an optimized mobile portal and social media-linked application processes and an authentic employer brand to pull it all together.

Join #WorkTrends next week to learn more about how to use data to drive millennial hiring from iCIMS Chief Marketing Officer Susan Vitale.

Data Drives Millennial Hiring

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Tune in to our LIVE online podcast Wednesday, June 8 — 1 pm ET / 10 am PT

Join TalentCulture #WorkTrends Host Meghan Biro and guest Susan Vitale as they discuss millennial hiring and recruitment data.

#WorkTrends on Twitter — Wednesday, June 8 — 1:30 pm ET / 10:30 am PT

Immediately following the podcast, the team invites the TalentCulture community over to the #WorkTrends Twitter stream to continue the discussion. We encourage everyone with a Twitter account to participate as we gather for a live chat, focused on these related questions:

Q1. Why is the candidate experience so important to young talent? #WorkTrends (Tweet the question)

Q2. How does recruitment data play a role in your workforce planning strategy? #WorkTrends (Tweet the question)

Q3. What should new graduates know before embarking on a job search? #WorkTrends (Tweet the question)

Don’t want to wait until next Wednesday to join the conversation? You don’t have to. We invite you to check out the #WorkTrends Twitter feed, our TalentCulture World of Work Community, LinkedIn group, and in our TalentCulture G+ community. Feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions. See you there!

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Four Essential Best Practices for HR in 2016

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Welcome to 2016! Although it’s already March, it’s not too late to cover a few best practices for human resources professionals, as well as how to analyze information about your current employees and help develop strong teams, once people are on board. So, without further ado, here are four best practices for HR professionals for the new year.

Diversity & Innovation

A recent Forbes article by Adam Hartung points out the importance of diversity and the need for HR to make a concerted effort to recruit outside the company—if only to gain a new and different perspective of the usual order of business. Innovation only comes as a result of change, and change is not possible without somebody being willing to rock the proverbial boat. In other words, you need to be willing to take a risk and hire someone from outside the inner sanctum, so to speak, to have the chance to gain knowledge and insight from someone with a different perspective.

Also, never underestimate the value of empathy and emotional intelligence, in relating to colleagues, job candidates, and new employees. You’ll need to base your hiring decisions on more than just skills, qualifications, and experience. As Gabrielle Garon emphasizes in a recent TalentCulture article, your expertise as an HR professional should include the ability to relate to employees as people, rather than merely team members or experts in their field. Relating to employees as people requires the capacity to look beyond what’s on paper and initial impressions, and to ask the right questions

HR, IT, & Data Analytics

The Talent Analytics blog provides a very helpful Beginner’s Guide to Predictive Workforce Analytics, which clearly lays out the essential components of data analytics for HR, arguing that “Predictive workforce projects need to address and predict business outcomes, not HR outcomes.” Hence a focus on the big picture and efficiency, as opposed to abstract factors.

Rather than trying to determine the best employee traits at your company based on your current workforce, for example, first determine what it is you need to accomplish with each upcoming project, as well as what traits are required in the people chosen to carry out that task. From there, you can more quickly determine the best ideal candidates for a given project. In this way, you’re focusing on the business at hand, rather than abstract predictors of success. Also, though, make sure to pay attention to the potential for turnover, retention, risk, and talent when looking for viable candidates.

Research & Development, Training

The best HR practices include keeping an eye on how to train existing employees internally and dedicate a substantial part of the company budget to research and development. This means hiring workers who can act as skill trainers and instructional leaders. Moreover, finding the best people to utilize as trainers means being able to identify desirable traits and talents desired in company trainers, and then to successfully recognize those qualities in both internal and external candidates for the position.

It’s crucial to focus on individual talents during the search for company training candidates, so as to match skilled leaders with an interest in and a talent for teaching to the position. Making sure that the trainers you pick are born teachers, rather than experienced project managers or product developers, can help avoid future frustration and lack of productivity. As a hiring manager, you can help ensure job satisfaction by using a talent assessment tool as part of the interview process, as well as making sure to focus on employee strengths and incorporate them into their duties.

Quality Recruitment

If you want to reach out to the best people, all while giving a nod to the first strategy discussed in this article (innovation), it pays to utilize the best sites out there. One effective method involves recruiting talent that isn’t necessarily applying with you for a position—for example, via LinkedIn. This is also known as finding ‘passive’ job candidates, and it involves strategies such as networking, focusing on growth and satisfaction in job descriptions, and communicate with recruits as people, rather than potential job candidates.

In a recent article on the biggest trends of 2015, Meghan Biro estimates that nearly 80 percent of job seekers utilize social media in their job searches—and, furthermore, younger generations are estimated to use social media 90 percent of the time! Advertising job positions on a platform like Twitter, for example, will open up the field of applicants even further by making it accessible to a much wider, public audience. This can also help with the innovation component since it’s more likely that external applicants from outside the fold will apply for a position as opposed to merely internal candidates. Moreover, as Biro also points out, social media recruitment can be extremely profitable.

What’s the bottom line, then? Emotional intelligence and holistic, long-term thinking rule the day. Don’t be afraid of data, but at the same time, don’t allow facts and figures to be the sole determining factors in the decision-making process. In other words, think with your heart as well as your head. Here’s to a unique and successful 2016!

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Using Data to Link Talent Decisions to Business (Webinar)

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The HR industry talks a lot about analytics and data. Yet are we using data to link talent decisions to business? Not as much as we could be. There are many things to measure and a whole host of ways to measure them. The connection between the people in our organizations and the success of the business are so intertwined that it’s hard to believe that we ever separated the two. But even with powerful data readily available, are the majority of organizations using applicable information to their advantage? Maybe not. Are most HR departments just skimming the top of the analytics iceberg? Unfortunately yes.

We all know that talent acquisition, training and onboarding is time consuming and expensive. The figures vary across industries and titles, but selecting employees who are knowledgeable, trainable and a good fit for the workplace culture is a fine art. But once that person is a full-fledged member of the team, how are we retaining him or her? And even more importantly, how are we aligning people to the bottom line? It can be simple or incredibly challenging, depending on how the business sets up an analytics dashboard.

Let’s take a deep dive into a few HR metrics that truly matter to the business (and these are just a handful). Let me also acknowledge that these metrics don’t just magically bubble to the surface. Workforce planning, applicable processes and savvy tools are necessary to reveal the truth.

Engagement Scores

Employee engagement. It’s almost become a buzz phrase in the HR world, but that’s because it matters. Let’s look at this in a linear fashion. Effective leaders are driven to engage their employees. Engaged employees tend to be happier. And what do happy employees do? They produce great work and they stay. Everyone wins! Engagement scores can be calculated from survey scores about the supervisor-employee relationship. In my opinion, high engagement should be taught to managers and required as a success metric. Consistently low engagement on a team should be addressed with the leader and a remediation plan should be put into place. It’s costing the business money and change needs to happen.

Absentee Rates

It’s simple to track how many days an employee missed during a certain timeframe. But if you aren’t taking a hard look at why certain teams have a higher rate of absenteeism, you are deliberately missing the boat. Is the manager working the team too hard? Is the team under-engaged? Pinpointing teams with high absenteeism and exploring the reasons why this is the case is another wise business move.

Resignation Rates

Most organizations can provide a number of resignations in the last year. They may even be able to provide some explanations for an increase. But with the right tools, patterns can be revealed that aren’t all that obvious. I could geek out talking about patterns and predictive analytics for who may resign in the future – it’s fascinating. I mean, Debbie is still a human and how we treat her is way more important than a computer’s prediction for her summertime resignation letter; but if we can see it coming and make wise business decisions to hold onto key employees, why not?

Money, Money, Money

When HR was asked to justify an expense or explain budgetary decisions, it used to be awkward and embarrassing. Compared to the finance or marketing department, HR was often seen as a black hole. Well that just isn’t the case anymore. Or at least it shouldn’t be in your organization. With the ability to align costs with output, people with profits, hires with increased productivity, pay raises with palpable potential, HR can and should show any executive or money cruncher that we know how, when, where and why money is and will be spent. There are former HR executives that would kill to have had this data at their fingertips. In fact, be sure not to flaunt it in front of a retired HR pro. He or she may have a flashback and lash out at you.

Just kidding. Well, kind of.

There are so many HR metrics out there that are dying to be used to make wise business decisions. So quit reading about them—imagining how nice they would be. Find out how to weave them into your workforce planning and be amazed at how easy they are to access. I will be talking more about this topic on a webinar with our friends at Visier January 21 at 2pm ET. Join us!

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5 Must-Have Metrics for Recruitment Success

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To the uninitiated, the recruiting world looks like a supermarket: When you need something, you simply go to the right part of the store and select from your pre-packaged options.

But for those in the know, recruiting behaves more like the stock-market: it’s fast-paced and varied. You are never sure whether the skills you need will be available at the price you want. Like a stock market trader, the successful recruiter needs a balance of experience and data to land great talent.

Too often, recruitment success is gauged by time-to-fill quotas or cost-of-hire numbers. All these numbers do is tell you how quickly you hired someone at the lowest possible price. These metrics just won’t cut it in a place like Silicon Valley, where skills and expertise (quality) trumps fast and cheap.

William Tincup, one of the leading thinkers in HR, expressed the “recruitment paradox” well with this tweet:

Often we focus on what can be measured. Instead, we need to focus on what should be measured: whether we are efficiently finding the skills and expertise at the right time and for the best price.

Here are five indispensable metrics that will help you determine whether you are finding top quality hires who will move your business forward — In short, whether you are actually recruiting people you want to retain. I will also outline the red flags you should be acting on to refine your recruitment process.

Remember: For all these metrics there is a spectrum in terms of success. The more critical, complex or hard-to-fill the role is, the tighter the target should be:

Must-have recruitment metric #1: Qualified applicants-per-requisition

Why you need it: The qualified applicants-per-requisition metric indicates whether your sourcing practices are delivering what you want: people who can do the job effectively.

How to get it: To calculate this metric, follow these steps:

  1. Start at the end of the period you want to analyse
  2. Count all of the qualified applicants you have for the requisitions that are still open or were closed during the period
  3. Count the number of requisitions that are still open or were closed during the period
  4. Finally, divide the number of applicants by the number of requisitions to calculate your metric

You can further refine your numbers by looking independently at the requisitions that are closed and the requisitions that are still open. You can look for flags that indicate whether specific roles or geographies are seeing more or fewer qualified applicants per requisition.

Red flags to act on: If you see that your qualified applicants-per-requisition metric is declining over time, then you need to tweak your sourcing activities. For example, you may need to post job openings in new locations or revamp your referral program.

Must-have recruitment metric #2: Offer acceptance rate

Why you need it: Declined offers are very expensive for tangible and intangible reasons.

How to get it: To track how well your organization is performing, look at:

  1. How many offers were accepted
  2. How many were declined (if an offer has not closed then do not count it in the calculation)
  3. Divide the offers accepted by the sum of offers accepted plus offers declined

By following the above steps, you will be able to see offers accepted as a percentage of all offers closed.

Red flags to act on: Aiming for 100 per cent acceptance is not realistic, however if less than 90 per cent of people are accepting your offers, then you have work to do. This could indicate that there is a mismatch between your expectations, the resources you are putting against this, and the level of player you are trying to “attract” from the market.

You need to remain flexible – just like a stock trader – in terms of the price you will pay. At the offer stage, it may be cheaper to include a signing bonus and land your candidate than to start again. Or it may make sense to introduce some assessment tools or other types of qualifying tests to the interview process so that you fast-fail candidates who will not match your offer.

Must-have recruitment metric #3: Resignations and involuntary turnover for less than 3 months service

Why you need it: If someone leaves your organization within 90 days of starting, then you most likely have no return on the time and money you invested in finding them, onboarding them, and training them to do the work required. The combination of the resignation metric with the involuntary turnover metric tells you whether you are landing the right people or not.

How to get it: To generate this metric, follow these steps:

  1. Select the time period you want to analyse
  2. Count all the people who have less than 3 months service at the beginning and end of your analysis period (this allows you to calculate average headcount)
  3. Count all the people who left, that had less than 3 months service, during the period
  4. Categorise and group these exits as resignations or involuntary
  5. Divide the number of resignations or involuntary exits by the average headcount of people with less than 3 months service

Red flags to act on: If an increasing number of people are resigning within three months of starting, then this is a bad sign that the role or culture or something else about the organization was a significant mismatch – that should have been caught through the hiring process. It also could be a sign that expectations about work performance were not properly communicated.

If an increasing number of people are being asked to leave within three months of starting, then this is a sign that the hiring team is not picking up on critical red flags about capabilities or fit.

Must-have recruitment metric #4: New hire performance by lead source

Why you need it:  This metric tells you not only whether your new employees are getting up to speed effectively, but by referencing lead source, it enables you to cycle back into your recruiting efforts so that you know where your best people come from. This allows you to consistently fine-tune and improve your sourcing and selection efforts to build overall quality of talent in the organization.

How to get it: To calculate this metric, you need the following data elements:

  1. Make sure you record the source of the application for successful candidates as part of their employee record
  2. Count the total number of people with less than 12 months of service
  • These people should be grouped by the last performance rating they received
  • They should also be grouped by the hiring lead source through which they came to the organization
  1. Of this group, count the number of people who are not considered low performers
  • Performance scales vary so low performance needs to be defined by the organization. For example, on a traditional 5 point performance scale scores 1 and 2 are considered low performance
  1. Divide the number of people who are not low performers by the total number of people from steps 1 and 2 above

Red flags to act on:  The primary goal of every recruiting function should be to improve the quality of talent in the organization, whilst managing the price that is paid for this talent. New hire performance is something that needs to be tracked over time and action needs to be taken when the trend turns negative. For example, if your new hire performance starts to drop, then you need to review your whole talent pipeline to determine whether candidate quality is dropping or whether onboarding and ramp-up processes are not delivering like they should. That’s why this metric is so valuable: it reveals what is really impacting overall talent quality.

Must-have recruitment metric #5: Vacancy rate

Why you need it: Finance may like vacant positions, as it looks like a cost saving, but in reality having too many open positions can lead to all sorts of repercussions: higher overtime costs, stress (which can lead to absences), as well as mistakes and customer impacts. Therefore, it is important to track how many positions are vacant and for how long. Tracking vacant positions also allows you to determine how well your recruitment process is functioning.  If the recruitment team is not landing good new hires fast enough, then your organization will be negatively impacted by the absence of people who do the work.

How to get it: To calculate this metric, follow these steps:

  1. Count the current number of open positions (positions which have hiring activity underway)
  2. Count the number of employees (headcount) at the beginning and end of the period
  • This allows you to calculate average headcount
  1. Divide the number of open positions by the headcount plus the number of open positions
  • This gives you vacancy rate as a percentage of your total possible workforce.

Red flags to act on:  Every organization runs with a certain amount of vacancy. The dynamics of your industry, geography, etc. will determine what is a good number for your organization. But in any case, if the vacancy rate is increasing, then you need to take action.

This is where the other metrics on the list play their part.  Are we getting enough qualified applicants? If the answer is no, then you need to review your sourcing strategies. Are people accepting offers? If the answer is no, then you need to review the competitiveness of your roles in the market. Are we keeping people longer than 3 months? If the answer is no, then you need to review your selection and onboarding processes.

Looking at the big picture

Rarely in the dynamic environment of talent and people does one metric tell the whole story. With the combination of metrics detailed above you will be properly informed about the effectiveness of your hiring processes and able to respond to deliver the right people, at the right time, to the right place at the right price.

To learn more about how to take an analytical approach to recruitment and other critical areas of focus for HR, download this free white paper: The Datafication of HR: Graduating from Metrics to Analytics.

This article originally appeared on the Visier Workforce Intelligence Blog.

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Visier Analytics is a client of TalentCulture and sponsored this post. 

Does Your Data Contribute to Sustainable Business Growth?

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No matter your business, it all comes down to the bottom line. How do you achieve sustainable business growth?  In the recruiting world, this often means making high impact decisions on data. Data isn’t sexy, but it’s a reality of every business move.  Marketers live in the world of data, always trying to test and refine what’s working. Recruiters are learning to take a page from their marketing coworkers. Recruiting firms need to focus on increasing their volume of sales and profitability to achieve sustainable business growth. What does this mean? It means attracting more clients, more candidates, and sourcing them at a lower cost.

Big Data and Sustainable Growth

The recruiting industry has changed a lot in the past 20 years. And in the last 5 years, it feels like it’s moved at warp speed.  What has emerged is a new form of recruiting, feedback, and monitoring that is driving business. As budgets shrink and demand raises, the following can be helpful to achieve sustainable growth:

Video Interviews. Video interviews are a low cost effective solution that saves both time and money. In the span of time that a recruiter can make a telephone screen, that same recruiter can view 10 on demand recordable video interviews. Many recruiters prefer to choose a set list of questions for consistency and send them to candidates. The onus is on the candidates to then record their responses to these questions and send the video interview to the recruiter. Within this platform, recruiters can share candidate responses, rank candidates and make informed decisions on how to proceed. Advanced reporting tools help inform recruiters how many interviews they’re conducting, their cost per candidate, and more. These tools can help recruiting firms recruit smarter on a tight budget.

Building Talent Pools. Having a bank of resumes is not enough to be able to lower your recruiting costs. Recruiters should be turning these resumes into talent pools. These talent pools should be searchable within narrow search terms, which why many recruiting firms turn to ATS systems. These systems allow recruiters to spend less money on advertising job postings and less time searching for candidates. It’s a cliche that employers say they’ll keep a candidate’s resume on file for future use. But now, recruiters can truly keep all of those resumes and search them at lightening quick speed. The data contained in all of these resumes, references, and attachments can help recruiters source talent at a lower cost, which contributes to sustainable growth over time.

Social Data Tools. Increasingly, social data tools will be able to predict which passive candidates are a good fit for organizations.  And most importantly, they’re beginning to predict when a candidate may be ready to make a move. This kind of data will be able to help recruiting firms identify candidates faster and reduce time to hire.

Data is becoming the new buzz word in recruiting. It’s clear that the data that various technologies are offering can help recruiting firms to identify talent faster and engage with them. Overall, a small investment up front is going to save recruiting firms both time and money. And this is where data is going to contribute to sustainable growth.  If you’re not yet using data to adjust your hiring process, you could be missing out. Gain the insight your recruiting firm needs.

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But First, A Single Source Of Business Truth

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“He picks up scraps of information
He’s adept at adaptation
Because for strangers and arrangers
Constant change is here to stay…”

—Neil Peart (musician and writer), “Digital Man”

So I’m standing there and this HR VP walks up and asks:

“What does the ‘predict’ mean?”

At first I don’t get it and am not sure what to say; repetitive tech talking with waves of people stretched over time can dull one’s focal strength, like trying to blow bubbles with stiff old gum that lost its flavor hours earlier.Predict

Then he points to the one of the panels in our PeopleFluent booth with the word “predict” on it.

“Ah, good question,” I say, perking up. “That’s probably something you’re hearing a lot more from your management team. How do we predict? Am I right?”

He nods and adds, “Analytics, analytics, analytics! Seriously. We need predictive analytics that can help us understand who is engaged, who is performing, and why, but we’re not sure exactly how to get there.”

Certainly one of the major themes at this year’s 2014 HR Technology Conference & Exposition, thousands of HR technology buyers and influencers hiked for miles and miles through a $15 billion landscape according to Bersin by Deloitte’s HR Technology for 2015: Ten Big Disruptions Ahead.

Bersin’s latest report states that finance, marketing, and supply-chain organizations have implemented analytics solutions for decades, but only now is HR starting to see the benefits with only 4% of large organizations able to “predict” or “model” their workforce. However, more than 90% can model and predict budgets, financial results, and expenses.

Talent analytics, analytics, analytics!

That’s why business leaders continue to shout more frequently from their rooftops about getting the right talent analytics from HR today that inform their near- and long-term recruiting, performance, compensation, succession and learning strategies — all to support their corporate financial goals and ultimate results.

And as I’ve written about before, to get there, we need a single source of business truth!

Wait, what’s that you ask? It makes common business sense, but just isn’t the reality HR executives are living in today. The majority of business leaders agree that the most vital investments for long-term growth are the people they attract, hire and employ, but too many are still focused primarily on basic (reactive) reporting.

This week in fabulous Las Vegas, we echoed TalentCulture #TChat Show guest Jessica Miller-Merrell that we just can’t get to the truth from reactive reporting and gut checks, so where do we start?

TChat Trending

Data management is where it all starts, although aggregating and maintaining the sheer volume of talent data available today can be daunting to even the most progressive CHROs. Large organizations have multiple systems managing HR and financial data, and to get to a single source of business truth, you must maintain and leverage both micro (such as individual performance data) and macro (such as organizational trends) data together, unifying it from any and all systems so that it is transformed, standardized and reportable.

Only then you’ll be able to plot past trajectories, analyze the present, and predict the future needs of your talent supply chain management, which can in turn lead to measurable improvement in your financial performance.

Mature talent analytics and positive business outcomes come to those who master their data, and, again according to Bersin, the 14% of companies that have invested in data-focused HR far outperform those that haven’t. Recruitment efforts are two times more effective and stock returns outperformed their peers by 30% over the last three years. But of course, these results don’t come without a serious investment of energy, resources and time.

The benefits of creating a single source of business truth are huge. Companies outperforming all others today focus on delivering:

  1. Recruiting Analytics – Help you understand your current talent supply, both internally and externally, and the skills needed today versus those that will be needed tomorrow. Plus, leveraging the diversity strengths of organizations beyond gender, race and geography to include the skills and expertise that lead to business growth are important predictive elements in planning for the right skills and productivity tomorrow. For example, Center for Talent Innovation research showed that diversity “unlocks innovation and drives market growth” and companies that embrace diversity “are 45% likelier to report that their firm’s market share grew over the previous year and 70% likelier to report that the firm captured a new market.”
  2. Compensation and Performance Analytics – Give you the ability to define your investment strategy in people because it’s less about budget management and mediocre (or worse) pay practices, and more about driving business growth relative to individual and organizational performance. This is critical to preventing future compensation increases for poor performers by using predictive analytics to highlight where these have happened historically and why. For example, according to a 2014 compensation and benefits survey by Human Capital Media Advisory Group, the research arm of Talent Management magazine, only 40% of companies say their organization’s compensation program is fully aligned with the business strategy.
  3. Learning & Development Analytics – Provide you a clearer view into strategizing continuous development and improving retention. Predictive analytics allow you to look at current sales relative to high-performer output and retention, and see how they impact long-term sales and development. Firms require an engaged and developed workforce so they can promote from within, saving on external recruiting costs that don’t ensure even short-term retention in today’s competitive talent market. In fact, according to Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell, “external hires” get significantly lower performance evaluations for their first two years on the job than do internal workers who are promoted into similar jobs.

It’s time to answer the talent analytics call!

HR can and should drive their organization’s workforce strategy from a unified platform of meaningful data and analytics. But first, a single source of business truth is critical to providing guidance for all your talent management decisions, reinforcing the relationships among finance, operations and all business units in your organization, and delivers the ultimately desired business performance and results.

Constant change is here to stay, so you may as well get comfortable with picking up the scraps of perpetual information that ultimately create the right talent analytics collective.

Anybody got any gum?

 

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Talent Science: Leveraging Medium Data

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Big data promises to change the world.

Sometimes, though, medium data can massively move the needle. Particularly when applied to an area that has historically been managed by gut instincts, like talent management.

Bringing ever more data to the human side of business is a natural evolution. Corporations have squeezed nearly every drop of efficiency they can from general ledger, but the line item that comprises the biggest costs has, until recently, not been subjected to the microprocessor’s sharpening stone.

Why? The challenges for people-centric investment decisions are three-fold.

1.  Success is Ill-Defined

Even the biggest brains in the C-suite whom we (RoundPegg) talk to have a very hard time defining what success looks like on the people front.  And it’s not their fault.

It’s the “Curly Challenge.”

Curly, the Jack Palance character in City Slickers, identifies the secret of life by holding up one finger. The secret is just one thing…and what that is, is up to you.

Ultimately, success at the people level is different for every micro-group within the organization. And because these issues have historically been centrally addressed at the macro level, they’re rarely relevant to a majority of the workforce.

2.  Relevance

The researchers who study the human side of business have failed Corporate America.

In an effort to diligently tie their work back to the bottom line, they have relied on quantifying the hundreds of billions of dollars lost via our disengaged workforces, or they look at the improvements made at a single organization. Rarely do they have the data to make their macro or micro insights relatable to your company.

Everyone believes their company is unique and, therefore, what worked at company XYZ won’t necessarily work for them. While there is some truth in this, it’s too often used as excuse to disbelieve and avoid change.

In order to find relevance in the research, organizations are forced to suspend belief and make a transitive leap to justify that investing in people will drive to the bottom line. Historically, there has been a great deal of difficulty involved in measuring human performance, so drawing a tight link from talent management to ROI requires more justification than any other business decision.

3.  Believability

When medium data is applied to human capital decisions, the results can generate improvements so enormous that nobody believes them. We, as employers, have done so little to improve the efficiency of the human dynamic in the workforce that small changes make massive improvements – particularly when multiplied across the entire workforce.

Nobody is used to seeing ROIs with percentages in the hundreds or even thousands, so disbelief is understandable.

As a result, talent leaders are unable to justify investing in human capital initiatives in their organizations.

Talent science is bridging the gap. 

Talent science is simple. It tackles the historical challenges inherent in investing in the human side of business by extracting an ROI using medium data.

Data doesn’t always have to be used in a ‘big’ way to be effective. The new realm of talent science leverages cloud-based infrastructure and increases in processing power to gobble metrics and provide real-time talent management metrics to large organizations.

With talent science you can extract and apply macro and micro metrics to manage every part of your employee lifecycle including pre-hire, development, succession planning and employee engagement.

Pre-hire.

Along with a plethora of startups looking to match candidates to the right company, Google has taken medium data to the next level to debunk the efficacy of their own hiring practices. Their longitudinal study revealed no correlation between GPA and success on the job.

A recent report in the Harvard Business Review by researchers at the University of Minnesota has shown that using even the simplest of algorithms in the hiring process can improve the rate of success on the job by 25 percent.

Medium data will often trump our instincts. This is not to say that we shouldn’t use our guts in the hiring process, but we must be prepared to make more informed decisions. The alternative is to fall victim to repeating the same mistakes we’ve always made and that we are blind to correct.

Development.

Humans are awfully complex, but understanding everyone on an individual level allows managers to tailor their management style to best fit their direct report.

Historically, managers were provided some broad training and left to their own devices. Talent science and the rise of medium data can provide them with actionable insights into who may be at risk of leaving and what the manager can and should do about it.

Succession Planning.

Back to Google. One of the best studies they’ve done looked at what makes their managers successful.  While the results were not terribly earth shattering, it provided an irrefutable framework against which to look at promotions and succession planning. The best and the brightest contributors were no longer the only ones being taken away from what they do best in order to do something they’ve never done, manage people.

Engagement.

The traditional ‘measure and hope’ model of engagement is broken. Being able to overlay disparate pieces of data from the psychological to the demographic allows organizations to go well beyond simply understanding which pockets of the company need attention.

The broader and more intelligent use of data allows organizations to customize action plans based on the inner workings of groups and the insights gleaned from what drives engagement elsewhere.

It’s time for change.

Even the smallest pieces of data are completely changing the game on the talent side. No longer are we solely reliant on the subjectivity and whims of our middle managers to determine success within the organization.

Ultimately, the most powerful component of data is that it strips away the subjective. And, if there is one thing that is consistently over-used, it’s the subjective process when it comes to hiring, promoting and engaging people.

The irony is that data is used to inform nearly every decision in Corporate America these days with the exception of those that, arguably, matter most.

We are living in the Dark Ages when it comes to people decisions. Those who start this process now will be dancing on the graves of their competitors by the time the data Renaissance hits in full force.

(About the Author: A serial ‘intra-preneur,’ Brent Daily has always found ways to create new ventures within existing companies. Brent founded Yahoo! Green and, alongside an amazing team, took it from conceptualization to launch in under 100-days. It remains the most popular environmental site online today. It wasn’t until failing brilliantly in his last job that Brent fully recognized the pain of being a misfit within a company. Nothing existed that would help him ensure that this didn’t happen again if he were to continue working for ‘the man.’ Enter RoundPegg. Brent graduated from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and, at least prior to having two kids, could usually be found road biking through the Colorado mountains.)

photo credit: Daniel E Lee via photopin cc

Talent Science: Leveraging Medium Data

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Big data promises to change the world.

Sometimes, though, medium data can massively move the needle. Particularly when applied to an area that has historically been managed by gut instincts, like talent management.

Bringing ever more data to the human side of business is a natural evolution. Corporations have squeezed nearly every drop of efficiency they can from general ledger, but the line item that comprises the biggest costs has, until recently, not been subjected to the microprocessor’s sharpening stone.

Why? The challenges for people-centric investment decisions are three-fold.

1.  Success is Ill-Defined

Even the biggest brains in the C-suite whom we (RoundPegg) talk to have a very hard time defining what success looks like on the people front.  And it’s not their fault.

It’s the “Curly Challenge.”

Curly, the Jack Palance character in City Slickers, identifies the secret of life by holding up one finger. The secret is just one thing…and what that is, is up to you.

Ultimately, success at the people level is different for every micro-group within the organization. And because these issues have historically been centrally addressed at the macro level, they’re rarely relevant to a majority of the workforce.

2.  Relevance

The researchers who study the human side of business have failed Corporate America.

In an effort to diligently tie their work back to the bottom line, they have relied on quantifying the hundreds of billions of dollars lost via our disengaged workforces, or they look at the improvements made at a single organization. Rarely do they have the data to make their macro or micro insights relatable to your company.

Everyone believes their company is unique and, therefore, what worked at company XYZ won’t necessarily work for them. While there is some truth in this, it’s too often used as excuse to disbelieve and avoid change.

In order to find relevance in the research, organizations are forced to suspend belief and make a transitive leap to justify that investing in people will drive to the bottom line. Historically, there has been a great deal of difficulty involved in measuring human performance, so drawing a tight link from talent management to ROI requires more justification than any other business decision.

3.  Believability

When medium data is applied to human capital decisions, the results can generate improvements so enormous that nobody believes them. We, as employers, have done so little to improve the efficiency of the human dynamic in the workforce that small changes make massive improvements – particularly when multiplied across the entire workforce.

Nobody is used to seeing ROIs with percentages in the hundreds or even thousands, so disbelief is understandable.

As a result, talent leaders are unable to justify investing in human capital initiatives in their organizations.

Talent science is bridging the gap. 

Talent science is simple. It tackles the historical challenges inherent in investing in the human side of business by extracting an ROI using medium data.

Data doesn’t always have to be used in a ‘big’ way to be effective. The new realm of talent science leverages cloud-based infrastructure and increases in processing power to gobble metrics and provide real-time talent management metrics to large organizations.

With talent science you can extract and apply macro and micro metrics to manage every part of your employee lifecycle including pre-hire, development, succession planning and employee engagement.

Pre-hire.

Along with a plethora of startups looking to match candidates to the right company, Google has taken medium data to the next level to debunk the efficacy of their own hiring practices. Their longitudinal study revealed no correlation between GPA and success on the job.

A recent report in the Harvard Business Review by researchers at the University of Minnesota has shown that using even the simplest of algorithms in the hiring process can improve the rate of success on the job by 25 percent.

Medium data will often trump our instincts. This is not to say that we shouldn’t use our guts in the hiring process, but we must be prepared to make more informed decisions. The alternative is to fall victim to repeating the same mistakes we’ve always made and that we are blind to correct.

Development.

Humans are awfully complex, but understanding everyone on an individual level allows managers to tailor their management style to best fit their direct report.

Historically, managers were provided some broad training and left to their own devices. Talent science and the rise of medium data can provide them with actionable insights into who may be at risk of leaving and what the manager can and should do about it.

Succession Planning.

Back to Google. One of the best studies they’ve done looked at what makes their managers successful.  While the results were not terribly earth shattering, it provided an irrefutable framework against which to look at promotions and succession planning. The best and the brightest contributors were no longer the only ones being taken away from what they do best in order to do something they’ve never done, manage people.

Engagement.

The traditional ‘measure and hope’ model of engagement is broken. Being able to overlay disparate pieces of data from the psychological to the demographic allows organizations to go well beyond simply understanding which pockets of the company need attention.

The broader and more intelligent use of data allows organizations to customize action plans based on the inner workings of groups and the insights gleaned from what drives engagement elsewhere.

It’s time for change.

Even the smallest pieces of data are completely changing the game on the talent side. No longer are we solely reliant on the subjectivity and whims of our middle managers to determine success within the organization.

Ultimately, the most powerful component of data is that it strips away the subjective. And, if there is one thing that is consistently over-used, it’s the subjective process when it comes to hiring, promoting and engaging people.

The irony is that data is used to inform nearly every decision in Corporate America these days with the exception of those that, arguably, matter most.

We are living in the Dark Ages when it comes to people decisions. Those who start this process now will be dancing on the graves of their competitors by the time the data Renaissance hits in full force.

(About the Author: A serial ‘intra-preneur,’ Brent Daily has always found ways to create new ventures within existing companies. Brent founded Yahoo! Green and, alongside an amazing team, took it from conceptualization to launch in under 100-days. It remains the most popular environmental site online today. It wasn’t until failing brilliantly in his last job that Brent fully recognized the pain of being a misfit within a company. Nothing existed that would help him ensure that this didn’t happen again if he were to continue working for ‘the man.’ Enter RoundPegg. Brent graduated from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and, at least prior to having two kids, could usually be found road biking through the Colorado mountains.)

photo credit: Daniel E Lee via photopin cc

That Single Source of HR Data Truth

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“Memory banks unloading
Bytes break into bits
Unit One’s in trouble and it’s scared out of its wits…”

—Neil Peart, “The Body Electric”

She looked at me as if I’d pushed her. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes blackened like collapsed stars where no light escapes.

“But according to this Bloomberg Businessweek article, ‘the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, Britain’s Royal Society, the European Commission, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among others, have all surveyed the substantial research literature and found no evidence that the GM [genetically modified] foods on the market today are unsafe to eat.’”

I shrugged and added, “Period. End of story.”

Probably not the way I should’ve handled the discussion, but I’m not always the brightest light in the night sky when it comes to debating my lovely wife (even though we “dance” very well with one another).

She threw up her hands and waved me away, “I don’t care. I’ve read plenty of reports that counter that and show how detrimental genetically modified foods are.”

Now I shrugged. “Because everything we read on the Worldwide Interwebs is true, right?”

That’s when the light was sucked right out of me.

“Sorry,” said Unit One, scared out of it’s wits (me, of course). Isn’t Businessweek a single source of journalistic truth? I thought but thankfully didn’t say.

Ah, but it’s all in how you collect the data and serve it up, right? A single source of sometimes misinformed truths depending on where you sit or stand?

That’s a cynical viewpoint, but unfortunately data is both a staunch ally and an even fiercer enemy depending on it’s current subjective state, where it’s from and why. The sheer volume of data is staggering. According to IBM Research, 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone (and that was from two years ago!). Seems like research surveys alone pummel the social media atmosphere like meteor showers, most of which disintegrate on impact.

And a big ol’ Milky Way of that data there is, created by us and distributed by us – some clean, vetted and valid, and much of it not so much. Organizations have a unique challenge today when it comes to managing this expanding-universe people data, as well as galaxies of other business-related data.

John Sumser, the founder, principal author and editor-in-chief of the HRExaminer Online Magazine, asked this question in his recent (highly recommended) HR Technology series:

Is there an opportunity for HR to harness people data across the entire spectrum of data sources to find the best utilization of people?

Indeed there is. There are finally HR technology solutions and systems on the market today, and some still being developed (always being developed), that combine with the computing and storage power of a thousands suns (maybe not that much, but still), and that allow for large volumes of data to be managed and integrated and reported on, extracted from so much light and dark online matter.

But according to Josh Bersin, founder of leading HR research and advisory firm Bersin by Deloitte, “Large organizations have seven or more different systems managing HR data. Bringing this data together for meaningful analysis has become mission-critical, driving tremendous demand for integration tools to help rationalize, integrate and analyze people-related data.”

Seven or more systems. Mercy me.

My friend and colleague, Jim Bowley, a long-time HR technology executive and mentor of mine, again reminded me that data collection is a very expensive process in which multiple participants need to synchronize their activities to pull together, transform, and build integrations that in turn will lead to the kind of workforce discoveries that are the very essence and continuous origin, the “Big Bangs” of talent and the true integrated experience. These are what business leaders are demanding today, hence the conundrum for HR.

But before we can solve for and get to the true integrated and insightful experience, we’ve got to understand the data basics and two other related terms:

  1. Data, Metrics and Analytics. Data are specific points of information an organization collects and maintains – like applicant source and key skills. Metrics are measurements with a goal in mind – like what constitutes quality of hire. And analytics are the identification of meaningful patterns within the data and metrics – like what key skills from what populations and locations drive quality of hire within the organization, predicting what and who to look for next.
  2. Data Harmonization and Transformation. Harmonization is about creating the possibility to combine data from varied sources into integrated, consistent and unambiguous information sets, in a way that is seamless to the end-user. Transformation is about converting a set of data values from another source data system into the data format of a new destination data system.

Harmonization, transformation and integration of data from multiple sources in a single solution that can make sense of all the interstellar mess, putting the data to work in far more strategic ways than it ever before – creating that single source of HR data truth. Only then can we get to the telling analytics and insight organizations have longed for (and are finally getting).

That’s where we’re going in HR technology today and tomorrow. Steve Boese, a co-chair of Human Resource Executive’s HR Technology® Conference and a technology editor for LRP Publications, and a recent guest on the TalentCulture #TChat Show, told me that one of the major themes for this year’s HR Tech show is the proliferation of HR data and better ways to measure talent initiatives with metrics and analytics, and there will be some exciting case studies shared to underscore this progress.

Yes, welcome to the Big Bangs of talent, breaking bytes into future-telling bits.

photo credit: c@rljones via photopin cc