The People Management Blog

Building a Workforce Performance Business Case March 19, 2008

Posted by sbonadio in : HCM Industry, Workforce Performance , add a comment

Many companies approach Workforce Performance Management (WPM) with the goal of moving from a manual, costly, and time-consuming process that everyone loves to hate, to one that is automated, optimized, and more palatable to managers and employees. Recent analysis of several key Softscape customers revealed a common result when implementing WPM. Beyond the rather obvious benefits of an integrated WPM strategy, customers are getting far more value from their investments than originally anticipated.

Bottom Line: These are things your CEOs and CFOs care dearly about, especially during a recession. Building a business case around concepts that executive management can readily relate to is key to securing funding for your WPM initiatives.

There’s No Better Time For Succession Planning

Posted by sbonadio in : HCM Industry, Succession Planning, Hiring Management , add a comment

Let’s move beyond the prevailing glass-half-empty perception that either the U.S. is currently in a recession or about to be in one.

Yes, the U.S. economy lost 63,000 jobs in February according to the BLS, and the hiring outlook is softer in many parts of the world, including the U.S. and U.K., according to Manpower’s 2Q08 Employment Outlook Survey.

A couple of interesting data points caught my attention from the Manpower survey:

Of the U.S. employers surveyed (n=14,000), and for the April-June 2008 quarter, 26% still plan to increase their workforces, 60% don’t expect any change, and 9% expect a decrease. These results are only very slightly worse than for the same period in 2007.
Parts of APAC are hot for hiring, including Australia, India, and Singapore. Australia and Singapore in particular have never seen higher levels of optimism by employers since the surveys were established in 2003.

So what does all this hiring talk have to do with succession planning?

I found the following quote from the Chairman & CEO of Manpower, Jeffrey A. Joerres, to be spot on: “The important change we are seeing is not about reductions in workforces, like we would typically expect in a recessionary period, but rather an increase in the percentages of employers who are planning to put a hold on hiring and forge ahead with the people they already have.”

Succession planning isn’t just about grooming executive management leaders. It’s about identifying high potential employees at all levels of the company and implementing effective learning and development plans to help them grow and succeed.

Learn more by downloading the latest Softscape Whitepaper, Top 10 Steps to Managing Your Leadership Gap: The Impact of Effective Succession Planning.

Softscape Survey Reveals Workforce Readiness Gap January 17, 2008

Posted by cfaust in : HCM Industry , add a comment

Softscape’s latest “State of the Global Talent Nation” report was released this month, and reveals an increasing trend of organizations moving too slowing with preparing their workforce to meet growth demands.

94 percent do not feel their personnel are adequately prepared to meet their companies’ future goals.
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The primary reason HR professionals are increasingly less confident about their workforce readiness lies in their organizations’ immediate need to improve a variety of HR processes. More than half of the survey respondents are not confident that their businesses effectively manage their HR processes. Given the misgivings about preparedness, it comes as no surprise that companies’ top concerns are all related to employee retention, development, and performance.

The report, which Softscape has conducted for past three years, surveyed over 250 HR leaders to measure their workforce readiness and what initiatives were underway to correct shortcomings.
The full report can be download at: www.softscape.com/whitepapers

Top 10 High Performing Characteristics November 4, 2007

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The top ten characteristics of high performing organizations are a mixture of effective human capital, and customer and operating functions. Below are results from an Accenture study on the “High Performance Workforce.”

Achieving Strong Financial Performance
(% of respondents rating “very important”)

Building strong customer loyalty (59%)
Acquiring new customers/increasing market share (61%)
Attracting and retaining skilled staff (45%)
Having a performance-oriented mindset in the workforce (41%)
Finding and developing talented leaders (37%)
Having a flexible organization that responds to changing market conditions (37%)
Managing risk (35%)
Dealing with the regulatory environment (36%)
Generating superior business value from technology investments (25%)
Infusing innovation across the organization (24%)

*Source: Accenture High Performance Workforce Study 2006

HR Function Struggling to Keep Up September 3, 2007

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Many organizations suffer from low satisfaction with their HR function. While companies are focused on improving performance, their HR functions struggle to keep up. According to Accenture, the percentage of respondents “very satisfied” with the contribution of their Human Capital organizations has declined since 2004. In 2006 alone, only 11 percent of organizations were very satisfied with the contribution of their HR function, and only 10 percent were very satisfied with their training function. Both of these are unfavorable trends over prior years.*

Why this declining trend? In this age of increasing need to do more with less, organizations are burdening HR functions with a plethora of strategic initiatives that require both expertise and technology investments to expedite.

Common Directives Burdening HR