WSR March 2015 by IHRIM Publication

March 2015

The Official Journal of the International Association for Human Resource Information Management

IHRIM.ORG

THE CHANGING WORKFORCE How Organizations can Use Technology and Flexible Staffing Models to Manage the Dynamics of a Rapidly Changing Workforce

See 2015 HR Service Delivery Buyers Guide on Page 22

Contents

Volume 6, Number 2 • March 2015

features

2015 HR Service Delivery Buyers Guide

Page 22

columns From the Editors

Bob Greene, lead editor Shawn Fitzgerald, editor Jeff Higgins, editor

Executive Interviews

Featuring Samantha Hanson, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota and Maureen Cahill, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois

The War for Top Talent

Stop Talking About Work/Life Balance!

TEQ and the Millennial Generation

Challenge to Change

Meagan Johnson

High-Touch Solutions for Hiring Vets

Carl Kutsmode, talentRISE

Product Review

Erin Spencer and Stacey Harris, Sierra-Cedar

Alex Diaz, MyUnfold

Our changing workforce isn’t a cause for alarm, unless you’re an organization that is fixed on the notion that every employee should be treated the same; rather, every employee and candidate should be treated with respect with their individuality celebrated and acknowledged.

The Back Story

A Future More Powerful than Hierarchy

Andrew Jacobus

It is not about balancing how much time you work versus how much time you spend on your leisure activities; it is a combination of both. It is a lifestyle of both working and personal activities that are merged into one. This is Technology Equilibrium and it has erased the line between work and personal life altogether.

Understanding the Global Individual in our Changing Workforce

David Verhaag, HireVue

The Commoditization of Talent Management Software Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte

Frederic Laloux The author believes we are at the beginning of a historical shift and that our grandchildren will be puzzled to discover that we have known a world full of bosses and subordinates. Among the many questions they might have, I imagine they might ask: What role have you played in this shift? Did you see it coming? Were you among the pioneers making the leap?

Delivering Tools for Workforce Change

Correction:

Paul Meyer, Ascentis

In the November 2014 issue of Workforce Solutions Review, page 42, we incorrectly published the title of a book by Elke Nigge. The book title should have read “Organization Management with ERP SAP, European Version.”

Considering the amount of change that is happening within our organizations, often supported by shrinking resources, organizations must continually look for ways to leverage technology to facilitate that change. You must reconsider all aspects of evaluation and development, and be willing to allow the tools to address needs on-demand.

Point/Counterpoint: “Social HR: Leading Edge HR Necessity OR Not-Quite-Ready-for-Prime-Time?

Wes Wu, Appirio Consulting and Bob Greene, Ascentis Many HR processes are ripe for transformation. Social adoption in the workplace continues to increase and workers have become used to technology evolution… OR, social HR is an idea that will inevitably come to fruition, however, HR professionals should take a slow and cautious approach.

Workforce Solutions Review (ISSN 2154-6975) is published bi-monthly for the International Association for Human Resource Information Management by Futura Publishing LLC, 20505 Live Oak St., Leander, TX 78641-9273. Subscription rates can be found at www.ihrimpublications.com. Please send address corrections to Workforce Solutions Review at the address above. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

Volume 6, Number 2 • March 2015

Workforce Solutions Review is a publication of the International Association for Human Resource Information Management, whose mission is to be the leading professional association for knowledge, education and solutions supporting human capital management. Opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the editors, the IHRIM board of directors or the membership.

MARK BENNETT, Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, CA USA mark.bennett@oracle.com

LEXY MARTIN, Independent Consultant/Researcher, Meadow Vista, CA Lexy.martin1@gmail.com

ERIK BERGGREN, VP, Customer Results & Global Research, Success Factors, San Mateo, CA USA eberggren@successfactors.com

BRIAN RETZLAFF, Head of IT for HR, Legal & Communications, ING US Insurance Americas, Atlanta, GA USA brian.retzlaff@us.ing.com

JOSH BERSIN, Principal and Founder, Bersin by Deloitte, Oakland, CA USA jbersin@bersin.com

NAOMI LEE BLOOM, Managing Partner, Bloom & Wallace, Fort Myers, FL USA naomibloom@mindspring.com

LISA ROWAN, Program Director, HR, Learning & Talent Strategies, IDC, Framingham, MA USA lrowan@idc.com

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Managing Editor SCOTT BOLMAN, HR Service Delivery Market Leader, Towers Watson, Chicago, IL USA, Scott.Bolman@towerswatson.com

Co-Managing Editor SHAWN FITZGERALD, PMP, SPHR, Director, Talent Aquisition, DeVry Education Group, Downers Grove, IL USA sfitzgerald@devrygroup.com

Past Managing Editor ED COLBY, Managing Principal and Technology Evangelist, PRO HCM Solutions, Chapel Hill, NC USA edcolby@gmail.com

Academic Editor KAREN BEAMAN, Managing Director, Teilasa Global, former CEO/Founder, Jeitosa Group International, San Francisco, CA USA karen.beaman@teilasa.com

Associate Editors ERIK ALVARADO, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP eralvarado@deloitte.com

YVETTE CAMERON, Research Director, HCM Technologies, Gartner, Littleton, CO Yvette.Cameron@garter.com LEW CONNER, Executive Director, Higher Education User Group, Gilbert, AZ USA lconner@heug.org ELENA M. ORDÓÑEZ DEL CAMPO, Senior VP Globalization Services, SAP AG, Frankfurt, Germany elena.ordonez@sap.com LARRY DUNIVAN, SVP Products and Technology, Ceridian larry.dunivan@ceridian.com GARY DURBIN, Chief Technology Officer, SynchSource, Oakland, CA USA hacker@synchsource.com Dr. CHARLES H. FAY, Professor, School of Management & Labor Relations, Rutgers University, Highland Park, NJ USA cfay@smlr.rutgers.edu

CARL C. HOFFMANN, Director, Human Capital Management & Performance LLC, Chapel Hill, NC USA cc_hoffmann@yahoo.com

DR. KATHERINE JONES, HCM Research, Bersin by Deloitte, San Mateo, CA USA kathjones@deloitte.com

ERIC LESSER, Research Director, IBM Institute for Business Value, Boston, MA USA elesser@us.ibm.com

SYNCO JONKEREN, VP, HCM Applications Product Development & Management, EMEA, The Netherlands synco.jonkeren@oracle.com

BRUNO QUERENET, HR Technology Executive, High-Tech and Medical Industries, Sunnyvale, CA USA bruno.querenet@gmail.com

MICHAEL J. KAVANAGH, Professor Emeritus of Management, State University of Albany (SUNY), Albany, NY USA mickey.kavanagh@gmail.com

MICHAEL RUDNICK, Vice President, Principal Consultant, Logical Design Solutions, New York, NY USA michael.rudnick@gmail.com

BOB KAUNERT, Principal, Towers Watson, Philadelphia, PA USA robert.kaunert@towerswatson.com

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

IHRIM BOARD OF DIRECTORS Officers Chair SHERRY TIMMERMAN, Partner/Senior Consultant, Apex Performance Consultants Ltd

Chief Financial Officer GARY MORLOCK, HRIP, Senior TRM Project Manager, Qualcomm Inc.

CATHERINE ANN HONEY, VP, Customer Services, Radius Worldwide catherine.honey@comcast.net

CECILE ALPER-LEROUX, VP Product Strategy and Development, Ultimate Software, Weston, FL cecile_leroux@ultimatesoftware.com

DR. MARY YOUNG, Principal Researcher, Human Capital, The Conference Board, New York, NY USA mary.young@conference-board.org

ALSEN HSEIN, President,Take5 People Limited, Shanghai, PRC Alsen@take5people.com

ROBERT C. GREENE, Channels Account Executive and Sales Training Manager, Ascentis, San Mateo, CA USA rcgreene@mindspring.com

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

DAVE ULRICH, Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA dou@umich.edu

Vice Chair JAMES PETTIT, HRIP, HRIS Manager, Project Byrd Kimberly-Clark Corporation

JIM HOLINCHECK, Vice President, Services Strategy & Marketing, Workday, Inc. james.holincheck@workday.com

FREDDYE SILVERMAN, CEO, Silver Bullet Solutions, Baltimore, MD USA, freddye.silverman@mysilverbulletsolutions.com

MARK SMITH, CEO, Chief Research Officer, and Founder of Ventana Research, San Ramon, CA USA mark.smith@ventanaresearch.com

DR. URSULA CHRISTINA FELLBERG, Owner & Managing Director, UCF-StrategieBeraterin, Munich, Germany ucfell@mac.com

DAVID GABRIEL, Ed.D., Global Reach Leadership, Berkleley, CA davidcgabriel@gmail.com

JEFF HIGGINS, CEO, Human Capital Management Institute, Marina Del Rey, CA USA jeff.higgins@hcminst.com

Dr. DANIEL SULLIVAN, Professor of International Business, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware USA sullivad@lerner.udel.edu

Secretary DAVE BINDA, HRIP, CHRP, CCP, President , HR Results, Ltd. Past Chair Kevin Carlson, Ph.D., Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech

Directors JOYCE BROWN, HRIP, Brink’s Inc. MIKE HARMER, Intermountain Healthcare JAMES LEHMAN, Results Driven Consulting, LLC KEVIN MURPHY, HRIP, Murphy Management Consultants STUART RUDNER, Rudner MacDonald LLP

IHRIM Executive Director TODD S. MANN

BILL KUTIK, Technology Columnist, Human Resource Executive, Westport, CT USA bkutik@earthlink.net

PUBLISHING INFORMATION

DAVID LUDLOW, Global VP, HCM Solutions, SAP, Palo Alto, CA David.ludlow@sap.com

TOM FAULKNER, Publisher, Futura Publishing LLC, Austin, TX USA, tomf@futurapublishing.com

RHONDA P. MARCUCCI, CPA, Consultant for GruppoMarcucci, Chicago, IL USA rhonda@gruppomarcucci-usa.com

PATTY HUBER, Advertising Manager, Austin, TX USA phuber2@austin.rr.com

Bob Greene, Lead Editor Robert C. Greene (Bob) is channels manager and sales trainer at Ascentis, a leading provider of SaaS HCM applications to the small and medium business marketplace. He has 35-years of experience in the Human Capital Management industry as practitioner, consultant, and vendor/partner. He can be reached at bob.greene@ascentis.com. Shawn Fitzgerald, Editor Shawn Fitzgerald is a global HR leader with expertise in workforce technology, talent acquisition, talent management, HR transformation and change management. She has experience transforming the HR function within organizations and focusing on the areas of people, process and technology to align HR strategy with organizational strategy. She is currently the director, Talent Acquisition for DeVry Education Group where she is focused on recruiting skilled medical faculty to the DeVry Medical Institutions. Fitzgerald has an undergraduate and MBA from Dominican University and holds the PMP, SPHR and HRIP certifications. She is an editor for the IHRIM Workforce Solutions Review and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. She can be reached at sfitzgerald@devrygroup.com. Jeff Higgins, Editor Jeff Higgins is the CEO of the Human Capital Management Institute, a driving force in workforce analytics helping companies transform data into intelligence via workforce planning and predictive analytics. With his unique experience as a senior HR executive and former CFO, he helps organizations rapidly advance their analytics and workforce planning journey to unlock billions of dollars in workforce ROI. He is a founding member of the Workforce Intelligence Consortium and a member of the SHRM Global Standards Committee on human capital. He can be reached at jeff.higgins@hcminst.com.

from the editors

In this issue, we focus on The Changing Workforce. With so many generations now working side-by-side (baby boomers, Generation X, millennials), discussions of how these generations are impacted by, and work best with, our changing HR technology capabilities are particularly timely. This issue’s expert authors and thought leaders educate, inform and opine on this subject. In our lead feature, Meagan Johnson, who has been called a “bright, funny, and delightfully obnoxious generational humorist,” takes a serious turn and implores us to “Stop Talking about Work/Life Balance.” In doing so, she sets some important guideposts for this issue, describing how the different generations’ use of technology impacts the way they work while offering important and practical suggestions about how to leverage their innate work habits. In “Understanding the Global Individual,” Erin Spencer and Stacey Harris of Sierra-Cedar offer some terrific insights into their 17th Annual Survey of HR Technology, and how both age and regional differences reveal different practices and experiences. In “A Future More Powerful than Hierarchy,” Frederic Laloux offers a vision of a future workforce dominated by self-managing individual contributors, and a significant reduction of our current dependence on middle management. In “Delivering Tools for Workforce Change,” Paul Meyer offers us some very practical ideas about how performance management and its “penumbral” applications (goal setting, competency modelling and learning management, for example) must change for us to motivate and reward our youngest generations of workers appropriately. And in our final feature, a Point/Counterpoint entitled “Social HR: Leading Edge HR Necessity? OR Not-Quite-Ready-for-Prime-Time?,” Wes Wu of Appirio Consulting, and your Lead Editor engage in a lively (but always polite) debate about the current trend to incorporate social media into everything HR. It’s a timely topic, and our guess is that you will probably end up agreeing, at least in part, with both of them! Our columns similarly represent a diverse array of topics. Leading them off, our perennial Executive Interviews focuses on the health care industry. Two top HR executives, Samantha Hanson of Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, and Maureen Cahill of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, offer their insights and experience in working with multiple generations, and the HR functional and technology challenges they currently experience, and expect to see in the future. “This Time It’s Personal,” by David Verhaag of HireVue, offers us practical advice on seeking out candidates in some relatively new and unusual places. David’s column tells us how to appeal to those generations on the basis of their amazing appetites for all things high technology. Our “Back Story” column written by regular contributor, Dr. Katherine Jones of Bersin by Deloitte, is titled “Commoditization of Talent Management Software.” In it, she advises on how to continue to distinguish the innovators from the laggards. In “Nonstop Restructuring: The Myth of the Perfect Workforce Structure,” Andrew Jacobus presents his views on change management and suggests that with better use of more accurate and relevant workforce analytics, organizations can stop “chasing the Holy Grail” of the perfect workforce model, reduce the “churn and burn” of endless restructuring, and focus instead on intermediate and long-term business deliverables. At this time in our history when we, in the U.S., have so many talented men and women returning from active service all over the world and seeking employment, Carl Kutsmode of talentRISE has contributed some essential insights on engaging with military veterans. The column makes clear that while these people form a diverse group that transcends generational boundaries, what they have in common is the fact that some of the more traditional methods of outreach frequently don’t work with this group, and innovative and unique approaches are needed. In our Product Review column, Alex Diaz, CMO of MyUnfold.com, tells us about his product’s new and unique approach to matching candidates to jobs by moving the process from art to science, and relying on skills validation and personality traits, rather than the intuition of the recruiter or interviewer. Just like the youngest working generation and their orientation toward technology, the content of this issue is diverse, easily consumable, and available on your favorite browser and mobile device. We are confident that you’ll enjoy it! www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

feature

Stop Talking About Work/Life Balance! TEQ and the Millennial Generation By Meagan Johnson

he millennial generation is filling the ranks of our ever-changing workforce. Sometimes referred to as Generation Y, or the Echo Boom, the millennial generation is the 80 million people born between 1980 and 2000.1 Mighty baby boomers take note; your millennial children have dwarfed your 72 million and are poised to become the largest generation in the workforce. Roughly 10,000 new millennials reach the legal drinking age every year (21 years old)2 and in five years, 40 percent of the workforce will be part of this generation.3 It is estimated that in 10 years, 75 percent of the workforce across the globe will call themselves the millennial generation.4 The millenials are the first generation to reach adulthood during the early years of the new millennium. Millenials are more ethnically diverse than past generations, more racially accepting, more likely to have a tattoo, more open to immigration than older generations, and are more likely to sleep with their cell phones.5 As baby boomers’ numbers in the workforce begin to diminish, it becomes more important than ever to an organization’s financial success to harness the skillsets that these young people can contribute. Their managers claim this generation wants instant gratification, praise, a fun work environment and a casual dress code. Human Resources is often left feeling that millenials hold all the cards: if they do not give into their demands, this generation will quit in the blink of an eye. This is not the case. Millenials do want to make a difference in the workplace, and they want to challenge the “old ways of thinking.” In Deloitte’s survey of 7,800 young people, two of the fundamental findings were that the millenials perceive that innovation is being stifled by management’s attitude, and that a company should be judged not only on a monetary basis but also on the impact it makes in society.6 In the 2014 Millennial Impact Report, over 90

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

percent of millenials are aligning their skills with organizations that are making a positive impact on society.7 They are eager to change the landscape of today’s workplace and leave their individual mark. They just want your help to do it! Here are some actions you can take to work more effectively with millenials and harness the incredible energy and fresh perspectives they bring to our workplace today.

Stop Talking About Work/Life Balance! According to baby boomer company owner Alec Johnston, “When I hear someone tell me they want work/life balance, they are really telling me that they want more time off to goof around.” BusinessDictionary.com defines work/life balance (WLB) as, “A comfortable state of equilibrium achieved between an employee’s primary priorities of their employment position and their private lifestyle.”8 Work/life balance is nothing new. We have all struggled with how much time we spend at the office versus our own personal interests.

Baby Boomers Live to Work They will likely cancel personal activities if the work is not done or their boss asked them to stay late. To baby boomers, the term “work ethic” translates to putting in long hours at the office and sacrificing personal interests until the job is complete. The line between work and play is very distinct. There is time to work and time to relax. Generation X entered the workforce in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the recession preceded by Black Monday, the largest one day stock market crash. Gen Xer’s cries for WLB became a backlash to baby boomers’ intense dedication to employers and long hours spent at the office. For Generation X, WLB became synonymous with “working to live” rather than “living to work.” Gen X championed the home office and began demanding flexible working hours. They felt at ease working earlier

or working later to get the job done so they would have free time to spend with friends and family. The line between working and free time became hazy; they felt comfortable putting a load of laundry in, working from home in their pajamas, and making one or two appearances at the office.

What happened to WLB and the Millenials? The millennial generation has been on the forefront of the ever-changing technology wave. They may not have invented many of the technologies we use today (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs) but they adapted the new technologies into their lives at an early age and for many of us, have become the “experts” we turn to when our smartphones, tablets and laptops confuse us. Millenials perceive that technology makes their lives easier and makes their generation distinctive. According to Nielsen, more than 70 percent of millenials feel that technology makes their lives simpler; more than 50 percent feel that technology brings family and friends closer; and almost 25 percent ranked technology as the top defining characteristic of their generation.10 Technology has given the millenial generation the ability to work where they want and when they want. It is not about balancing how much time you work versus how much time you spend on your leisure activities, it is a combination of both. It is a lifestyle of both working and personal activities that are merged into one. This is Technology Equilibrium (TEQ), a term I coined that describes the successful blending of life and work via technology. Technology Equilibrium has erased the line between work and personal life altogether. The millenials do not recognize a distinction between work and personal life because technology has made it so easy to move from one to the next. According to the Cisco Connected World Technology Report, 90 percent of millenials check their phones, texts, and social media before getting out of bed and over 65 percent spend as much time if not more with their friends online versus in person.11 In that time before getting out of bed, the millennial has, in a typical case, responded to a customer request, communicated with his or her overseas team, updated his or her online calendar, read his or her Twitter feed and made happy hour plans with friends via OpenTable. Can Generation X and baby boomers do this? Of course they can, but for the millenials, adopting TEQ means there is not a distinction between

the work tasks and the non-work tasks. The millenial does not think of communication with a client as work and making dinner reservations as leisure; it is all the same thing. Most important, by embracing TEQ, the millenial does not resent one part of his or her life interfering with the other because work and life have become one. Apps and social media have facilitated the TEQ lifestyle with the millenial generation. At one time, apps and social media were seen as ways to play games on The millennial our phones, think Angry Birds, or generation has been an anonymous way to spy on people we dated in high school (we have all on the forefront of done it, or thought about doing it, via the ever-changing Facebook). Apps and social media have technology wave. matured from being solely social gameplaying mechanisms to both entertainment venues and business tools. Apps and social media successfully blend life and work via technology. Currently, apps and social media’s importance in the HR world is becoming more apparent, more than 90 percent of organizations use them for recruiting and greater than 70 percent have had favorable hiring outcomes through social media;12 however, companies continue to place outdated rules or even social media bans on their employees. According to research firm Statista, one out of five companies block Facebook on company computers.13 I have spoken with countless audience members who tell me their companies do everything from prohibiting cell phones in the office, to not allowing tablets in meetings, blocking all social media sites on company computers, or installing cameras in the break rooms with hopes of “catching” the younger generation using social media during office hours.14 These tactics are not only futile; they stifle the ability of millenials to take a TEQ approach while working for your organization. The rules also convey to the millenials that you do not trust them or value the skillset they bring to the workplace. More importantly, research is discovering people who use social media sites at work are more productive. A study by research firm Evolv shows that employees who access several social media sites retain more, get more done, and stay at their jobs longer.

What can Organizations do to facilitate a TEQ Workplace for the Millenials? First, get rid of bans on social media. Social media has become the smoke break of the 1970s and the water cooler chat of the 1980s. It is a mental reset for all employees, not just www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

the millenials, to check in, connect and take a breather. Rename social media, social mental floss, and you may feel better about the time people spend checking their Twitter feed. This does not mean you can’t have rules. A good social media policy is smart business. The rules need to make sense and apply equally to everyone. For example, a social aid organization that caters to single parents has a ban on posting anything about the clients they serve. Sara McCarthy, a Gen X manager, says that, “Our clients talk about sensitive issues when they visit us. We do not want the clients to feel embarrassed or feel violated if they see pictures of themselves entering our offices or A good social waiting in our lobby. We tell employees that because of these reasons, they media policy is cannot post anything about whom we smart business. serve at the office. We do, however, encourage employees to post how they feel about the work they do and post photos of themselves and co-workers.” Recently on Yelp, I read a scathing review of one of my favorite places to eat. The review did not criticize the food or service, but focused on one of the senior managers. The review took several mean jabs at the manager and seemed to be written by a disgruntled employee. Some organizations place social media rules for fear of negative comments that its employees may post. If that is the case, create an internal platform where your employees can vent without retribution. This not only allows people to “get it out of their system,” it also gives management an opportunity to really “hear” what is plaguing their employees and take action. Intel’s social media policy is specific regarding what not to share, i.e., confidential information. But it also works from the assumption that their employees are mature individuals. Intel asks their employees to be “transparent, truthful, yourself, and up-to-date” when it comes to social media.15 Intel further instructs their employees not to reveal confidential information, not to bash the competition, to admit when they make a mistake, and to correct their social media mistakes.16 Some organizations rely on employee discretion. Olivia Johnson (millenial) is a member service representative for a financial institution, stating that, “The company expects us to act responsibly when it comes to social media. They do not want us to get drunk and post pictures of ourselves everywhere. They expect us to use common sense.” Having a progressive social media policy is a critical factor for the millenials and their TEQ

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

approach to work. Thirty-three percent of the millenials ranked “social media freedom” more important than salary.17 As more and more of them join the workforce and assume management leadership positions, social media will become a larger part of the communication toolbox. Remember when it was all about the Three Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic – of education? Now, we need to add social media to the equation. According to Future Workplace’s Multiple Generations @ Work survey, by year 2020, 60 percent of the millenials believe that “social media literacy will be required of all employees.”18 It behooves all organizations to become more social with social media.

We are People, not Widgets. Reward us as Individuals. Carol Kauffman, VP and director of Development and Communications at Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix, and a baby boomer, recalls, “When I first began my career, my boss came back from vacation with a small gift for everyone on her team. She gave us all the same identical gift. At the time, I appreciated the thought and I know she did what she thought was fair. You can’t do that with the younger generation today. Millenials expect to be motivated individually.” I had a “seasoned” audience member approach me after a presentation and tell me that motivation could be summed up in two words: “your paycheck.” It is tempting, especially following the great recession, to feel that people, especially younger people who lack years in the workforce, should express gratitude and be thankful for a paycheck and not concerned with other perks or rewards. Millenials do not equate a large paycheck with job satisfaction. In a Brookings Institute study, over 60 percent of millenials claim that “they would rather make $40,000 a year at a job they love than $100,000 a year at a job they think is boring.” According to the study, Understanding a Misunderstood Generation, the millenials feel pay is not as important as having more intangible benefits.20 Almost half of the millenial generation would rather not have a job than work at a job they despised.21 A paycheck gets people in the front door. What keeps the millenials past their probationary period is more than just a salary. What motivates a person can be as unique as their fingerprint; however, millenials do have some common characteristics to consider when it comes to motivation.

Jaxson (millenial) an inside sales rep for a sports equipment manufacturer, states that, “I work here because I love sports. I work in a cube all day; I am not crazy about that aspect of my job, but the company rewards us and makes it easy to lead a healthy lifestyle, which is important to me. They have a health-wise program with a gym, locker room and showers, which are free to the employees. There is a chiropractor, coach and a personal trainer. Every time you work out with your trainer, you get points and the points add up for additional vacation days. You can also earn extra points by getting a physical every year or visiting the dentist. One of the sales reps lost a considerable amount of weight using a Fitbit bracelet, so the company got everybody one. The company also encourages everyone to be smoke-free.” Not all organizations can afford as many perks as Jaxson’s employer, but every company can create a bonus program that is not expensive, but still has value for millenials. For example, smaller companies allow employees to take a longer lunch if they are taking an exercise class during their lunch break. Comp days are strong motivators for the millenial generation because it allows them flexibility. If your company can’t afford to allow someone off for an entire day, give “slack hours;” time during the day when the employee can do whatever they want; such as update their social media, read, watch their dog online via their nanny-cam or take a nap. Other groups have small perks to create a happier work environment. Have a dry cleaning service pick up at the office, a massage therapist come in to give 15-minute chair massages, or (my favorite), bring in free food. These are the types of rewards that make the workplace a pleasant place to be. The key to motivating the millenial generation is leaving the final look and feel of the reward in their hands. The more ownership they have over the reward, whether it’s staying healthy, receiving flex-time or in-office perks, the greater the value, i.e., more motivating for the millenial generation. They want their career and lifestyle to complement each other, they want TEQ, and they want to be motivated differently. They also want to make a difference and influence great change moving into the future. The good news for HR is that the millenials recognize that the greatest impact they can have on the world is through their employer. When we are willing to work differently with each other, only then will we take multiple generations and truly work successfully as one.

Endnotes 1 Dan Schawbel, “Millennials vs. Baby Boomers: Who Would You Rather Hire?” Time, March 29, 2012. http://business.time.com/2012/03/29/millennials-vs-baby-boomers-who-would-you-rather-hire/ 2 Ibid. 3 Rob Asghar, “What Millennials Want In The Workplace (And Why You Should Start Giving It To Them),” Forbes, January 13, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2014/01/13/what-millennials-want-inthe-workplace-and-why-you-should-start-giving-it-to-them/ 4 Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, “How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America,” May 2014. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/05/millennials%20wall%20st/brookings_winogradv5.pdf 5 Executive Summary, “Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change,” Pew Research Center, February 24, 2010. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/02/24/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change/ 6 Ray Williams, “How the Millennial Generation Will Change the Workplace,” Psychology Today, March 19, 2014. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201403/how-the-millennial-generation-willchange-the-workplace 7 Britt Hysen, “Millennials Making a Social Impact,” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/britthysen/millennials-making-a-soci_b_5851186.html. 8 h ttp://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/work-life-balance.html. 9 Jesse Colombo, “Black Monday – the Stock Market Crash of 1987,” The Bubble Bubble, August 3, 2012. http://www.thebubblebubble.com/1987-crash/ 10 Millenials: Technology = Social Connection, Nielsen, February 26, 2014. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/ insights/news/2014/millennials-technology-social-connection.html 11 Carlos Dominguez, “The Smartphone Gets Which Side of the Bed?” Cisco, December 18, 2012. http://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-smartphone-gets-which-side-of-the-bed 12 Infographic, http://www.staff.com/blog/social-media-for-recruitment-infographic/, Staff.com, October 17, 2013. 13 Stephanie Vozza, “Why Banning Facebook In Your Workplace Is a Stupid Move,” Entrepreneur, September 30, 2013. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228641 14 Francesca Fenzi, “Social Media: Not the Productivity Killer You Thought?” Inc., http://www.inc.com/ francesca-fenzi/social-media-not-the-productivity-killer-you-thought.html, April 4, 2013. 15 h ttp://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/legal/intel-social-media-guidelines.html. 16 http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/legal/intel-social-media-guidelines.html. 17 Infographic, Staff.com, October 17, 2013.http://www.staff.com/blog/social-media-for-recruitmentinfographic/ 18 Jeanne Meister, “Want To Be A More Productive Employee? Get on Social Networks,” Forbes, April 4, 2013. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2013/04/18/want-to-be-a-more-productive-employeeget-on-social-networks/ 19 Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, “How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America,” Brookings Education, May 2014. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/05/millennials%20wall%20st/brookings_winogradv5.pdf 20 Jessica Sier, “Generation Y thinks work-life balance more important than cash,” AFR, November 14, 2014. http://www.afr.com/p/national/work_space/generation_thinks_work_life_balance_GwT1CXmsI7ZmY8TDi31B8J 21 E mily Matchar, “How those spoiled millennials will make the workplace better for everyone,” Washington Post, August 16, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-those-spoiled-millennials-will-makethe-workplace-better-for- everyone/2012/08/16/814af692-d5d8-11e1-a0cc-8954acd5f90c_story.html

About the Author Meagan Johnson is a generational expert, speaker, and co-author of the bestselling book Generations Inc., From Boomers To Linksters Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work. She is the de-facto expert when it comes to navigating the maze of generational quandaries that every organization faces. Known as the “Generational Humorist,” she has entertained and educated thousands of audience members from all around the globe. Among her many satisfied clients are SHRM, Dairy Queen, Burger King, Cadillac, American Express, Harley-Davidson, Monster.com, and the CIA (although the work she did at the CIA is classified!). A third-generation native of Phoenix AZ, she lives with her tall husband and four dogs, who have a total of 15 legs (not including the husband)…you do the math! Want to know more? You can reach her at Meagan@MeaganJohnson.com. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

feature Understanding the Global Individual in our Changing Workforce By Erin Spencer and Stacey Harris, Sierra-Cedar

hen people discuss the need to prepare for our changing workforce, it’s easy to simplify the conversation down to a few characteristics that can be addressed with a defined set of best practices. We focus on a younger workforce, or an older workforce. We think in terms of a more technology savvy workforce, or one that is more culturally separated. The reality is that tomorrow’s workforce will simply be more diverse in all ways – and very aware of what makes them unique. In the last generation, our workforce was generally focused on findings ways to fit the required mold for being successful; the desire to follow a defined plan for the path to success crossed borders, industries and generations. Organizations had comfortable prescribed plans, and for most of their employee and leadership roles they had a general formula for success that would work regardless of the location or industry. The biggest change in tomorrow’s workforce will be the expectation that organizations and institutions see every employee as individuals, and value their individuality. The explosive focus on individuality is being driven, in part, by the fact that today’s technology has created an environment where our individual needs can and are being met. We have personalized radio stations, regionalized automobiles, tailored marketing campaigns, and local food challenges. Even in cultures and communities where the idea of individualism is less celebrated, we see technology that helps elevate individual ideas and voices without focusing on the person. Technologies that allow for crowdsourcing, sharing sites, and even simple likes and dislikes provide both a voice and tremendous power to individuals. Tomorrow’s workforce assumes that these technical advances that tailor to their individualism outside of work will also be leveraged inside of work in the very near future. SierraCedar’s Annual HR Systems Survey, now in its 18th year,1 looks carefully at how organizations are adopting and leveraging innovative HR

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

technologies that can help organizations address the demands of the changing workforce. Over 93 percent of more than 1,000 organizations surveyed across the globe stated that they had adopted a core HRMS application. With this single application, organizations are moving toward gathering the data needed to understand their workforce. As organizations grow, and their workforces become more complex, capturing and making sense of individual workforce data requires additional HR systems such as talent management or workforce management suites, or individual applications for onboarding, engagement or succession planning. All of these technologies were designed to gather data effectively, but to meet the needs of our changing workforce they also need to be able to analyze that data, provide context and understanding, and present end users with an experience that is unique to them. Human Resources, managers, and leadership require similar tailored insights and context-driven data that helps guide organizational decisions with the total workforce in mind. This requirement to build a representation of the individuals that make up our workforce is even more pronounced for complex global organizations. More than 43 percent of SierraCedar’s survey participants identified themselves as global organizations, meaning they had operations in more than one country, with the average organization operating in more than 24 countries. Over 20 percent of global organizations have a major initiative in the next 12 months to consolidate their core HRMS environments, working toward creating a shared information repository for their international workforce. Widespread shifts in global spending and buying patterns will drive even more organizations to look for global markets and global workforces as part of their long-term growth strategies. So what do organizations need to understand about their future workforce at an individual level?

They need to understand: • Regionally approved demographic information; • Background and work experience; • Skills and capabilities; • Personal and professional goals; • Regional and cultural experiences and expectations; • Communication and leadership preferences; and, • Fears, concerns, and challenges. Each data point is valuable, but it is the total profile that provides the greatest insight. When thinking about the workforce of the future we know that the millennials have been a large topic of conversation, and that they seem “different” in a way that needs explanation. Research about this new generation abounds, and is valuable as a single data point. However, it is import to ask additional questions such as how do factors such as skills, education, or geography play a part in generational changes? How do these answers change how we should engage the individual millennial as a member of our workforce? Last year Sierra-Cedar beta-tested an Employee Feedback survey on HR self-service2 applications for our annual research effort; this survey was delivered by several large global organizations to their HR system end users and line managers. We were able to capture data from workforces in 46 countries, from workers in hundreds of different roles across multiple industries. The goal of this secondary research effort was to capture data directly from the end users on their perceptions, expectations, and actual use of current HR technology. Our initial findings gave us food for thought as we considered the changing workforce. Although generational differences are important, when we look at data through the lens of geography or technical aptitude we start to see trends that break across generational and geographical stereotypes.

High Touch by Region Although the economic outlook for 2015 is slightly lower for the Asia Pacific market than 2014, it still has one of the fastest growing consumer markets in history, and an emerging middle class with higher levels of spending power than ever before.3 All of these factors make the Asia Pacific region an extremely attractive market for expansion, outsourcing and manufacturing, and requires organizations to think more broadly about their workforce. Analyzing data specifically from the Asia Pacific end users, we found several differences in HR

applications’ self-service use, and perceptions on the value of HR technology as a whole. Although a core HRMS and talent suite with self-service capabilities was deployed in all of our end-user survey respondent organizations at a global level, the Asia Pacific workforce was more likely to contact their HR department or their direct manager to complete HR administrative activities than those employees located in Europe or the United States. For example, only 2% of European employees and 4% of U.S. employees predominantly contact their HR representative or direct manager to complete their performance reviews. In comparison, 10% of Asia Pacific employees contact an HR representative or a direct manager regularly to perform these HR tasks. The same percentage of distribution holds true for scheduling or completing an online course where less than 1% of U.S. employees contact HR or their manager, and less than 2% of European employees, while 6% of Asia Pacific employees prefer to pick up the phone and contact someone versus using the online self-service solutions. Overall, when comparing these three different regions (Asia Pacific, Europe and the United States), Asia Pacific is more likely to contact an HR representative to complete an HR transaction on average 12% of the time; Europe is the second highest touch group with 8%, and then the United States is the least likely to connect with a manager or HR at 5%. Our survey highlighted that employees from the United States seem to prefer taking care of HR administrative self-service tasks themselves online. If, overall, Asia Pacific seems to be more likely to contact an HR representative or direct manager when completing an HR administrative task online, we wondered if this also varied by age? One “truism” about older workers is that they are less tech-savvy than younger workers, but even if this is true for writing code or social media skills, is this true when looking at employee self-service? Not at all! In almost every area both in our aggregate data set, as well as for the Asia Pacific workforce alone – respondents over 30 were more likely to complete tasks online rather than contact their HR representative or direct manager.

Managing Age Questions Our survey also asked the respondents whether or not they supervised other people, and although this data differs dramatically by industry and region we found that on average www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

14% of those age 23-30, 33% of those age 31-40, and 43% of those age 41-50 were in management positions. We acknowledge that this data is somewhat skewed for our Employee Self-Service Feedback survey beta-tester group, which included large global organizations in finance, high-tech and the services industry; however, it does call into question some long held generalizations about age and technology preferences. Although the majority of managers complete their administrative HR managerial tasks online, the younger managers were more likely to contact their HR department or direct manager to complete tasks than their older peer managers across all HR administrative areas when online self-service options were available. For example, 11% of our managers under 30 primarily contact HR or their manager to create and/or review their direct reports career development plans, while only 2% of those over 30 contact HR or their direct manager for that same task. With 43% of managers over the age of 40, we also wondered if by region there were exceptions to the percentage of younger managers – leading to even more complex technology considerations. In our sample group, Europe is more likely to have younger managers than either Asia or the United States; 24% of those surveyed aged 23-30 in Europe were managers, compared to only 8% in the United States and 17% in Asia Pacific. We also found that Asia Pacific had the highest percentage of managers between the age of 41- 50, i.e., 64% of their total management survey respondents. Please note that this data doesn’t make any judgments on whether or not the managers are effective regardless of their age; an article from Harvard Business Review4 found in a survey of 17,000 worldwide leaders that the average age of supervisors was 33 and the typical individual became a supervisor around age 30, today’s millennial generation. This research also found that on average individuals did not receive any leadership training until age 42 – 10 years after the individual began to supervise others. Organizations that move employees into management roles early are likely to find that these new first level managers require more direct support from their HR representatives or their direct managers – and adjustEndnotes ments may need to be 1 h ttp://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e8n8k4zehozw7vhv/ made to the expectations a02ay7i5s8c57s/questions for HR systems man2 h ttp://www.sierra-cedar.com/research/annual-survey/ ager self-service adoption 3 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andre-bourque/is-your-businesslevels. This data emready-fo_b_6376056.html phasizes the importance 4 h ttps://hbr.org/2012/12/why-do-we-wait-so-long-to-trai of gathering multiple levels of data, and ensur4 h ttp://www.sierra-cedar.com/research/annual-survey/ ing that information is

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

placed in context before an organization makes enterprise-wide HR technology decisions that may impact the individuals within their workforce. Assuming that a younger workforce, or younger managers, prefer online interactions and require less individual support could very well create an employee relations nightmare. On the other hand, assuming that older employees are unwilling or unable to leverage HR manager self-service tools could be limiting your organization unnecessarily.

Mobile Adoption In the middle of these debates concerning the role and impact of technology on an organization’s ability to optimize their workforce, gather individual data, and address a workforce’s unique and changing needs, social and mobile technologies must be given a major portion of this discussion. These technologies change how we think about the role of HR systems and their ability to address needs of individuals across our workforce in a scalable fashion. The overall adoption of social media tools as a strategic HR solution increased from 33% in 2013 to 41% in 2014, with plans to grow to 68% adoption by 2015. No other HR technology has grown in overall adoption this quickly in the last 18 years of our survey. Most of this adoption level has been driven by the use of social technology for recruiting purposes with over 67% of organizations’ talent acquisition staff adopting social-enabled HR processes this year – and 52% of organizations stating that they are leveraging LinkedIn strategically within their HR function. In addition, over 30% of organizations are leveraging both Twitter and Facebook as strategic HR tools. The social buzz is probably reaching its peak as far as a true differentiator for organizations leveraging this new technology; it is now simply another part of our communication and data gathering channels with a workforce that expects us to leverage the data they’ve already shared with their broad social networks. Social communication is just another form of communication, and trying to build another platform or social technology integration point that doesn’t feel natural or have a valid purpose only frustrates a workforce that is more interested how an organization can connect with them individually. On the other hand mobile delivery still provides a unique opportunity to rethink our approach to HR technology. It allows an organization to engage current and future employees at a personal level that has never historically been possible. For today’s workforce, mobile technol-

ogy adoption is almost universal and a large part of how individuals communicate with the world around them. If we want to meet our workforce where they are, where they communicate and take action on a personal level, then mobile technology is the most appropriate delivery mechanism. HR systems have been relatively slow in embracing mobile technologies, and thus far the total average for mobile-enabled processes adopted by organizations is only 13%, but end users and organizations are impatient and our survey respondents forecast over 100% percent growth in mobile-enabled process areas in the next year to 27% average adoption levels. Organizations are investing heavily in mobileenablement of talent management processes, particularly performance and goal management processes. Mobile-enabled performance management processes have been adopted by 25% of the organizations we surveyed, with 40% planning to adopt mobile delivery within the next year. Data from our Sierra-Cedar’s Employee Feedback survey on self-service tools took a deeper dive into the actual transactions that employees were conducting on mobile devices; the highest percentages of mobile transactions conducted by employees were in core HR self-services activities such as: •

7% of employees use mobile devices to manage work-related social connections;

•

6% use mobile to manage sick leave; and,

•

5% use mobile to view their paycheck.

On average only about 3% of employees conducted talent management activities in a mobile environment – such as performance reviews, scheduling online learning, creating career development plans, or applying for internal positions. Employees were least likely to use mobile devices to change withholdings or request scheduled shift changes or project roles. What employees currently do in a mobile environment depends a great deal on what is available from their organization and the organization’s preferred HR technology vendor. When asked about preferences for future mobile development, employees were most interested in being able to conduct more administrative HR transactions in their mobile environments such as changing their address or signing up for benefits. Managers were less likely overall to have conducted an HR activity on a mobile device, but the top activities done on mobile devices included: •

5% using to view employee contact details;

•

4% using to review and approve time reports and leave requests; and,

•

3% using to complete performance reviews or review career plans

The use of mobile technology is another area where context, situation, and further data are important to understand the needs of individual employees. It may surprise many organizations, but our survey sample found that European respondents are the most likely to use mobile devices, at 4.28% overall, with Asia Pacific workforces second at 3.75%, and the United States least likely at 2.77%. In contrast, when it comes to the availability to complete HR self-service processes on mobile devices Europe reported the least availability at 19% of employees not able to complete activities via mobile devices, with Asia Pacific next at 15% and then the United States at 14%. Europeans were the least likely to have mobile device access to HR transactions available, yet when given the opportunity they About the Authors were the most likely to use them for Erin Spencer is a research their self-service tasks. For our changconsultant at Sierra-Cedar, ing workforce, mobile access will be a assisting Stacey Harris, the vice requirement, not an option, but we will president of Research and find that certain regions and industries Analytics, with the programming may be prepared to take advantage of and analysis of the HR Systems Survey. Her these capabilities more aggressively previous experience includes research and analysis at Brandon Hall Group, learning administration than others. at ACS Learning Services, and instructional Our changing workforce isn’t a cause design, LMS selection and management at for alarm, unless you’re an organizaManagement Recruiters International. She also tion that is fixed on the notion that has experience in the non-profit sector. Spencer every employee should be treated the has a B.A. in History and minors in Business and same; rather, every employee and canSociology from Grove City College. She can be didate should be treated with respect reached at erin.spencer@Sierra-Cedar.com with their individuality celebrated and Stacey Harris is vice president of acknowledged. Candidate selections Research and Analytics for Sierraneed to be based on clearly defined Cedar, in charge of its Annual HR criteria and actual data, and employee Systems Survey and Research. and employer relationships should She has been a leading member be based on a clear understanding of of the HR practices and technology research how information will be used to make community since 2007, with groundbreaking research on high-impact HR organizations, decisions and support business goals, enterprise HR technologies, and key practices as well as an employee’s personal goals. Technology should be an enabler across the talent management spectrum. Prior to joining Sierra-Cedar, Harris held executive-level in our goal to meet the needs of our research roles with research organizations Bersin changing workforce, specifically pro& Associates and Brandon Hall Group. She has viding solutions that not only capture launched multiple HR, talent, management and data but provide context and insight, learning research practices and personally led key research initiatives in strategic HR, talent along with personalized experiences tailored to individual needs and prefer- strategy, organization and governance, measurement and total rewards. Harris also ences. For more information about the served as director of strategic services for three changing workforce and HR technolyears and worked with companies such as ogy please download the Sierra-Cedar McDonald’s, Lockheed Martin, Cisco, and Pfizer HR Systems Survey White Paper5 and on a variety of mission-critical talent initiatives. to contribute to further research efforts She has M.A. Ed. and B.A. degrees from Kent State and Ashland University. She can be reached be on the lookout for how you can parat stacy.harris@Sierra-Cedar.com ticipate in the 2015 Sierra-Cedar HR Systems Survey. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

feature

A Future More Powerful than Hierarchy By Frederic Laloux

very now and again, humanity makes a leap in its thinking. For thousands of years, all agrarian societies operated within caste systems – the nobles ruled over the peasantry and Brahmins ruled over the untouchables. Had you suggested then that all men (let alone all women) could have equal rights, and that society could be ruled by democracy, people would have called you a fool, at best. These ideas were quite literally unthinkable. It appears that we might be about to make a similar leap again. I think the notion that we need power hierarchies – layers of hierarchy – to run organizations will soon come to feel slightly ludicrous, a remnant of some outdated past. I believe our children and grandchildren will ask us, somewhat incredulously: You’ve worked in organizations with layers of hierarchy? You’ve had a boss who, on a bad day, could discard a great idea? You had a boss that, for good or bad reasons, could make decisions about your career advancement? For the last three years, I have been researching the emergence, in many different places in the world, of large organizations that operate entirely without power hierarchies. These are truly powerful and soulful organizations, much better equipped to deal with the speed and complexity of today’s world. And yes, in case you’re wondering, financially they are highly successful. Of course, the sample size is low, and comparisons are fraught with methodological problems, but in terms of achievements, they seem to beat, hands down, traditional organizations that are held back by hierarchy.

Historic breakthrough or wishful thinking? When I share the insights from this research, I’ve noticed that most leaders have two reactions at once. On the one hand, some of them wish this were true. Perhaps this is your reaction too. We have all experienced how our pyramidal organizations based on hierarchy channel power to the top and generate lots of politics, silos and infighting. We intuitively sense that pyramids are not agile enough to deal with today’s complexity and speed of change. No matter how much we try to simplify complex issues in neat PowerPoint slides, we overwhelm members of executive committees who in endless meetings try to make the right calls on issues with complex context and implication they cannot possibly grasp. Gary Hamel expressed it well when he said that “pyramidal structures demand too much of too few and not enough of everyone else.” No wonder survey

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

after survey shows that the majority of people in organizations feel disempowered and disengaged. Instinctively, leaders know this. They sense that the way we run organizations is somehow outdated, somehow not fit for our times anymore. On the other hand, another voice in you may be saying: “Come on, you can’t have organizations without hierarchy! Perhaps a group of four or five people can operate without a boss. But, any group larger than that needs structure and a boss.” Certainly, this is what I believed before I engaged in this research. What we know now to be true, both from theory and from practice, is that, yes, in a larger group, we need structure, but no, we don’t need a boss. Hierarchy is one way to attempt to deal with complexity, but not a very powerful one. It has served us well over the last one hundred years, when the complexity we were dealing with in the world was low. Now, that complexity has increased exponentially, it’s time to shift to organizational structures that are more powerful, more agile and more resilient.

We are surrounded by systems more powerful than hierarchy. We don’t need to look far for inspiration. We are surrounded by truly complex systems that operate with clear structures and coordinating mechanisms, but no bosses. Take the global economy. Billions of consumers, millions of companies making trillions of choices every day. This is a complex system of staggering proportions. There are structures and coordinating mechanisms, but there is no boss, no pyramid trying to steer it all. Thank goodness! Only North Korea and Cuba still try to steer their economies with a central planning bureau, and we know how that is working out. (Note the irony, though: we scoff at the idea that you could run an economy through central planning, and yet, we still unquestionably accept that that is the best way to run an organization.) Or, take the human brain. It has 85 billion nerve cells. It’s a hugely complex and creative system; there are structures and coordinating mechanisms, but there is no one cell that calls itself the CEO and there is no executive committee. Let’s consider a single human cell. A single cell is an extraordinarily complex system with countless chemical reactions and information exchanges happening continuously. All of this complexity works beautifully, and within the cell there is no boss trying to control what happens. Think about your last hike in a forest. Simple as it

looks, a forest is a hugely complex system with billions of living beings, ranging from microorganisms to massive trees that are all interdependent. Say the winter comes earlier than expected. The entire ecosystem will adapt in coordinated fashion. There is no tree that claims to be the leader of the whole ecosystem that will say: “You all wait! All of us trees from the executive committee will come up with a plan. As soon as we know, we will tell you what to do!” All of these systems operate on principles and structures of distributed intelligence that are far more powerful and adaptable than power hierarchies. There is hardly anyone today – leaders, employees, management thinkers or academics – who doesn’t sense that our current management practices aren’t cutting it. But, many of the proposed answers – culture change programs, leadership development, front-line empowerment, incentives systems – only aim at making the pyramid less problematic and fail to see the bigger picture. The world has become so complex that we have reached the limits of what hierarchy can deal with. It’s time for an upgrade. We need to make a leap to systems more powerful than the pyramid.

Pioneering organizations have cracked the code. The fascinating thing is this: it’s already happening. In different places in the world, in different industries, organizations large and small have deciphered the way to operate based on systems of distributed intelligence. They operate entirely without bosses – subordinate relationships, without anyone holding power over anyone else. And, almost invariably, they are spectacularly successful. Last year, the Harvard Business Review featured the case of Morning Star, a California food processing company. In a commodity business (Morning Star makes tomato sauce and ketchup), it churns out extraordinary margins and has come to dominate the industry with 50 percent market share. There is Buurtzorg in the Netherlands, a nonprofit company founded in late 2006, active in the field of neighborhood nursing, caring for the sick and elderly in their homes. In a few years, it has overrun its competitors. Today, it employs 8,000 people, or 80 percent of all neighborhood nurses in the country! Nurses and clients have massively deserted the existing hierarchical players, whose obsession with squeezing out costs and constraining nurses in their choices had dehumanized care. Paradoxically, by focusing on good care rather than costs, Buurtzorg helps patients get better more quickly and ends up saving the social security systems hundreds of millions of euros. There is the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, a highly respected ensemble with residence in New York’s Carnegie Hall, which operates without a conductor and without a director. There is Sun Hydraulics, a Florida-based producer of hydraulic valves, that hasn’t operated at a loss in 30 years in a highly cyclical business and that makes outrageous margins you might expect from a software company, not a supplier of industrial goods. Talking about software, many

companies have a first taste of self-management with agile programming methods, and in Silicon Valley, a handful of companies are now searching for ways to be entirely self-managed. Valve, a leading game designer and distributor, is perhaps the most advanced in this field. Then there is Holacracy, a packaged self-management operating system that is being adopted by dozens of companies around the world, most famously by Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer owned by Amazon.

Self-management isn’t experimental anymore.

If you’ve never spent time thinking about organizational systems other than the pyramid, you might be forgiven for thinking that self-management is still something new, something experimental. It is not. W. L. Gore, of Gore-Tex fame, employs 410,000 people and has been operating successfully with self-management since the late 1950s. FAVI, a French maker of gear boxes, has been operating without hierarchy since 1983, and – regardless of its high labor costs – has come to dominate the European market, while all its local competitors closed their factories and moved to China. We now know how self-managing systems work. An organization without bosses needs to upgrade many of the basic management processes, and we understand how to do that. Who can make what decision? How are people evaluated and compensated? How are budgets established (if at all)? How do you deal with low performers? For these questions and many more like them, we have pretty clear answers. Self-managing organizations aren’t simply pyramids where you’ve taken out the hierarchy. They are something else altogether. If you struggle to get your head around self-management (as I did before I studied this), then I imagine that by now there are all sorts of “yes, but” questions popping up in your mind. I hear these questions all the time when I share my research: Yes, but is this possible for very large organizations? Is this possible with publicly listed companies? Is this possible in highly regulated industries, like electricity generation or banking? Is this possible in countries with a strong culture of hierarchy? In some cases, we can answer with a confident “yes,” because there are existing and successful companies we can point to. In other cases, the proof will be in the pudding, when more organizations make the leap. When people ask me these questions, though, I invite them to listen to where their questions come from. Could it be that your “yes, but” is a way to push aside conflicts with current assumptions you hold about people and work? Could it be that you are looking for clever ways to say “this might be possible for some other organizations, but mine is different,” because you are not sure you are ready to make the leap?

A whole lot of unlearning and relearning is needed. Of course, the idea that you could run an organization without layers of hierarchy is so radical that it www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

can make people nervous. Isn’t this just a recipe for disaster? Will everyone just do whatever they want? Can anybody just make any decisions? Some people surely have more experience or skills than others to make important decisions, so why wouldn’t they call the shots? Remember, these new organizations aren’t workplaces from which you would simply have removed power hierarchies. They operate on an entirely new and more powerful set of structures and coordinating mechanisms. Arguably, these systems have more control built in than traditional hierarchies. The control is simply no longer dependent on a cascade of bosses, who might exert that control well or not, but is baked into the system itself. A whole lot of unlearning and relearning needs to happen for us to wrap our heads around these new systems. But once we “get” the system, it all suddenly makes sense, because form follows function, because these organizations actually formalize the way we would naturally try to do things if we weren’t constrained by a rigid organizational chart and reporting lines. The organization adapts to the work that needs to be done, rather than the work to the organization.

Without a power hierarchy, natural hierarchies emerge. Let me share one frequent misconception. Often people assume that organizations without layers of hierarchy are “flat,” that everyone is equal. That’s not the case at all. When you take out the power hierarchy (in other words, when you take out the fact that a boss has power over his or her subordinates), something wonderful happens – natural hierarchies emerge; hierarchies of skills, experience, contribution and reputation. This is the source of the extraordinary outcomes we so often witness with self-managing organizations: Power is no longer a zero-sum game. Here we stumble upon a beautiful paradox – people can hold different levels of power, and yet everyone About the Author can be powerful. If I’m a machine Frederic Laloux is a man of many projects that he tries to square, not operator – if my background, always easily, with the inner education, interests, and talents knowledge that he is meant to live a predispose me for such work – my simple life, spending much time scope of concern will be more with his family and, whenever possible, in the silent limited than yours, if your roles presence of trees. Among other things, Frederic involve coordinating the design advises leaders of organizations who feel called to of a whole new factory. And yet, if fundamentally explore new ways of managing within what matters to me, I can organizations. His research in the field of emerging take all necessary actions using organizational models, published in his book Reincertain well-defined processes, I venting Organizations, has been described as have all the power I need. “groundbreaking,” “spectacular,” “world-changing,” and “a leap in management thinking” by some of This paradox cannot be underthe most respected scholars in the field of human stood with the unspoken metadevelopment and management. A former associate phor we hold today of organizapartner with McKinsey & Company, Laloux holds an tions as machines. In a machine, a MBA from INSEAD, and a degree in coaching from small turn of the big cog at the top Newfield Network in Boulder, Colorado. He has can send lots of little cogs spintraveled widely and speaks five languages fluently. ning. The reverse isn’t true – the He can be reached at little cog at the bottom can try as frederic@reinventingorganizations.com.

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

hard as it pleases, but it has little power to move the bigger cog. The metaphor of organizations as complex, self-organizing systems can much better accommodate this paradox. In an ecosystem, interconnected organisms thrive without one holding power over another. A fern or a mushroom can express its full selfhood without ever reaching out as far into the sky as the tree next to which it grows. Through a complex collaboration involving exchanges of nutrients, moisture and shade, the mushroom, fern, and tree don’t compete, but cooperate to grow into the biggest and healthiest versions of them. In many ways, selforganizing companies have more, not less hierarchy, but they are natural hierarchies, in which everyone is supported to grow and unfold.

Can you make the mental upgrade? In summary, we know that all complex systems in the world operate on structures and processes that are more powerful than those of the pyramid. And, we now have enough examples of self-managing companies that have cracked the code to create organizations on these principles. We know that these organizations can be spectacularly successful and that people love working there. Actually, even people who used to be “bosses” love it. They no longer have to deal with the politics, no longer have to fight for their turf and their careers. They don’t need to motivate subordinates any more. There are no more endless meetings to attend either, no more people throwing their problems up the hierarchy to them. Often, this comes as a huge relief. They can focus on doing creative work again, something that they now realize they missed terribly, and they can trust the system with the rest. Unless you have already spent a lot of time looking into self-managing systems, I assume this article might have raised more questions than it provided answers. Perhaps this all sounds puzzling, somewhat unreal. My invitation is for you to listen to that part of you that senses there must be better ways to run your organization. The next time you are frustrated in your work because you have some important goal, something important you know you could contribute, and you feel you waste your time trying to fight the system, in aligning stakeholders in long meetings, I invite you to ask yourself this one question: How much more fun and productive would work be if the organization upgraded its structures and management practices? Go and read about Morning Star, W. L. Gore, Buurtzorg and the others; go and visit these places and start to imagine what it could look like for your organization. I believe we are at the beginning of a historical shift and that our grandchildren will be puzzled to discover that we have known a world full of bosses and subordinates. Among the many questions they might have, I imagine they might ask one or all of these: What role have you played in this shift? Did you see it coming? Were you among the pioneers making the leap? These are exciting times, and we can help usher in a new chapter in the history of management.

feature Delivering Tools for Workforce Change By Paul Meyer, Ascentis

erhaps never before has the role of HR been changing more than today. Not only is our workforce changing, it’s bringing in a new generation of not only “technology-aware,” but “technology-dependent,” individuals who demand we respond. Over the years, we’ve seen a wave of changes from casual Friday to casual every day, from vacation days to unlimited PTO, flex hours to working from home, and coming full circle with companies who give no reviews, to regular reviews, and back to no annual reviews. Anyone who is not aware of how much this new workforce influences our policies is due to receive their own performance improvement plan (PIP), if they haven’t changed that process already as well! And, of course, that increased responsibility to adapt likely does not come with an increased HR budget. The new reality is that goals and priorities change (perhaps not at the top, but in the lower level goals required to get to the top). Training is changing; the use of competencies is changing. And, in a growing company (or a shrinking one), positions change. So, perhaps the most crucial change is HR’s willingness not only to accept it, but to embrace it.

Don’t just listen to the Business – “Listen.” For those who have actually been listening the past year (or 20), business has been sending a very strong message: “We need more tools to develop our employees.” What they need are things that save time. They want things to help them and their teams do their job better, not take them away from their job. And, those things needed to be simple. In 2015, technology should not require training, documentation and help screens. It should be practical and actually facilitate the change, because change is the new normal. And, by definition, growing companies are changing. So, it’s important to not just listen to the business requirement, but also ensure that whatever is done is practical. Processes not fundamentally intuitive will be rejected (either publicly or privately). So, everything the organization does must help the business stay focused on growing the business, not on mandat-

ing new tools and programs with new learning curves. As an example, when the business says they need to teach their managers to give more regular feedback, they are not asking to do more regular formal reviews. They want tools that make it easier to record feedback or provide more on-demand ratings or training.

Change Your Perspective from Push to Pull. Instead of trying to force employees to comply, why not try to provide tools that make it easier to do what you want and need them to do? If you want managers to provide more real-time feedback, make that process easier through mobile tools. If more accurate goals and better goal alignment is key, then make it easier for managers to access and update their goals (and their direct reports’ goals) in real-time, or as part of team meetings. The more you make it easy for managers to monitor their teams’ goals, the more accurate the goal information will be. The easier you make it to find the training an individual needs, link it to key skills, and filter out irrelevant training, the more the courses will be accessed. And, the easier you make it to find relevant competencies to rate, rather than trying to force the rating of competencies not relevant to the individuals performance needs (which then requires excruciating detail), the more likely the competency will be rated and rated accurately. For example, if you have an individual who has difficulty with listening skills, make it easier to find all skills related to listening, and then automatically recommend training.

Change What You Monitor. As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. So, why not monitor the behaviors you’re trying to change, and show the correlation of performance to the behavior? If you want managers to provide more regular feedback, why aren’t you using tools to monitor the employees who are and aren’t providing (digital) feedback? If you want managers to quickly record sub-par www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

behavior before it becomes an issue, why aren’t you providing tools to record those opportunities easily, and then monitor who is or isn’t providing feedback and training afterwards? Additionally, provide reminders to take action and update the rating. Then show the impact of performance to the feedback that has been left. And, if you want to encourage managers to reward successes and acknowledge mentors, why aren’t you monitoring which managers are regularly recording accomplishments for their individuals?

Change Your Approach to Competencies. Many companies try to limit their competencies to a short list of core and/or leadership competencies for reviews. Other companies try to architect large competency libraries for every role. This can be time and cost-prohibitive to create, require a tremendous amount of change management, and, ultimately, may still not hit the mark. Why not start with a short list of the critical competencies for jobs or job families, and then add and remove as needs arise. The key is to not overengineer, nor over-define. If you don’t plan to manage the skills, don’t force the rating of them. And, as position needs require it, add the competencies. For example, rather than over-engineering a list of sales competencies, create a simple list of the skills that sales management believes are contributing to their top sales peoples’ success, as well as those that they believe are holding back performance. Then, create a simple dashboard to monitor those skills until behavior improves. That allows the company to focus on what matters and grow the library over time as adoption increases.

Change Your Source for Training. Large companies have experienced shrinking development teams; small companies don’t have one. So, why are organizations still suffering with either limited training, or spending disproportionate time and money trying to create massive training programs? Why not leverage what is readily available, both internally and externally? There is a plethora of online training available today, much of it free or at very attractive subscription rates. Why not use tools which make it easy to load, link to skills, promote, track usage, and then gain feedback through user ratings? Authoring tools continue to emerge and improve, allowing anyone to turn presentations and simple videos into sharable content object reference model (SCORM), Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee (AICC), or Tin Can API trackable training with a short quiz to test comprehension. Training has gone from being a project to something that can be created whenever needed. After

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

all, training happens in an “ad hoc” and informal fashion constantly within our companies. We’re just not recording it. Tools must allow for the rapid creation of training, whether it’s recording a presentation on a laptop or simply uploading a 5- to 10-minute training course recorded with a smartphone. Our technology should leverage the tremendous knowledge already present in our workforce. As an alternative to architecting the perfect training program, why not consider the following approach: Identify the mentors of specific skills as mentioned above, and allow those mentors to find or create and record their own training which can be attached to the skills. By decentralizing training, you get employees more involved and grow a library of training faster.

Don’t Change the Goal, Change the Plan. It’s routine practice for companies to establish corporate and departmental goals each year. More and more companies are implementing ways to either cascade goals down, or align goals upward. But, don’t assume that just because you create goals for the year, that plans don’t change. Ultimately, changing the priorities of teams often is not reflected in the system because of the difficulty in recording those changes. Why not provide tools that allow managers and employees to modify goals and simply notify and track those changes? If goal setting tools were used to more effectively manage your priorities in realtime, the information collected in those systems will naturally increase. Could your goal-planning tools be used to more effectively conduct team meetings? Or, are your goals out of alignment with where our teams are spending their day-to-day activities? The more you allow the tools to reflect the realities of day-to-day activities, the more they will become part of your routine.

Change How You Prioritize Goals. Goal weighting serves a number of purposes: 1. Showing priority of goals in our time management; 2. Showing the relative impact of goals; 3. Ensuring performance scores reflect goal importance and impact; and, 4. Aligning merit increases or bonus pay to results on higher priority tasks. However, by simply examining data from competencies over many years, it’s clear that a simple comparison of several rating scenarios of poor, average, and top performers often demonstrates that weighting does not have a major impact on the actual ratings, nor does it change day-to-day behavior. They may not accurately be reflecting the

performance of the individual relative to the company’s success or failure, and they may actually be demotivating to individuals who felt they did as they were instructed to do on a day-to-day basis, but still don’t receive the expected bonus. Rather, the tools that you use should make it easier to more accurately reflect the priorities on which you are asking your teams to focus. In that manner, management can have a more accurate view of what is actually happening.

Change Review Processes. Originally created to provide consistency among ratings, protect organizations from disgruntled employees, and foster growth with employees, performance reviews in today’s environment appear, ironically, to put companies at greater risk. Companies are now recognizing that in situations where supervisors lack managerial courage, average performance ratings followed by termination, or lower than expected raises, can expose the company to increased external scrutiny, and even to litigation. At best, they waste managers’ time. Why not provide a tool that allows managers to enter performance information at any time, and then capture a full snapshot of employee information on an annual (or more frequent) basis? Even more powerful tools can foster change by monitoring the follow-up of managers who rate employees low. Additionally, performing analytics on employees with low ratings and the subsequent follow-up from their managers can identify needs for leadership development.

Change Pay for Performance. Are you truly paying for performance, or are the managers reverse engineering scores to achieve the desired merit increases or bonuses? Why not change the paradigm to stop using tools to justify a raise for people who simply achieve the

expected levels of performance. A more practical approach is to offer a slightly lower “standard” increase for anyone meeting expectations, and then use the tools for managers to help make a business case for any additional increase by capturing accomplishments in real-time or taking on more goals or responsibilities. The impact of those increases in performance or responsibilities can then be tied to actual return-on-investment (ROI). With tools monitoring the amount of money awarded by managers each month in relation to budget, it is entirely reasonable to have a goal that “less” would be allocated across the organization within a year. More importantly there would be less focus on the “merit increase event.” Merit increases would be more equated to either achievement of goals, which had a demonstrable financial impact, or for acceptance of additional responsibilities.

Conclusion Considering the amount of change that is happening within our organizations, often supported by shrinking resources, organizations must continually look for ways to leverage technology to facilitate that change. And in a workforce culture that is more receptive to change than ever, you must reconsider all aspects of evaluation and development, and be willing to allow the tools to address needs on-demand. Managers must be willing to accept that just because goals are set at an individual level does not mean that they are immutable. In smart organizations, goals change! The sooner we all consider a competency library that is relevant, starts small, and continues to evolve, with a growing library of associated training that can be dynamically assigned, the sooner our business users will feel like they’ve been heard.

About the Author Paul Meyer has been leading talent management software development teams as the president of Starfield Talent Management Solutions, acquired by Ascentis in 2014. Meyer brings more than 22 years of leading sales, marketing, and product management teams in both the technology and supply chain management industries and has been an advocate of more innovative approaches to technology’s role in HR. Meyer holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the State University of New York. He can be reached at paul.meyer@ascentis.com.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

feature POINT/COUNTERPOINT

Social HR: Leading Edge HR Necessity? By Wes Wu, Appirio Consulting Influenced by consumerism and generational behaviors, there is no doubt that the workplace is changing. Emerging technologies permeate every motion and thought in our lives and, in turn, shape workplace expectations. We all use Yelp and Amazon reviews as a major part of our decision-making about where to eat and what to buy. We no longer buy printed maps since our vehicles and smart devices all have street-by-street navigation. We get our news from Facebook, while actual newspaper readership declines. Technology has made inroads in our daily lives to simplify often frustrating tasks. In the last 20 years, we have also seen many significant transitions in our workplaces, and most of us can’t imagine going back. A simple activity like having an assistant send out office memorandums shifted to emails and then to community and collaboration spaces. Other activities like having to stay late in the office to complete work transitioned when network connectivity and laptops became available, and have now transformed again with “anytime” access via smart devices. Those same technologies that have made our daily consumer lives simpler have also made our work lives simpler. The one common thread between consumer and workplace technologies that has simplified our tasks is not technology advancements, but that communications and communities have come closer to realtime. We use Yelp and Amazon not by reading every review, but by first filtering by top-rated products. We use navigation on our phones, and are secretly pleased that Google has analytics calculating the driving speed of other cars using the same service to warn us when a route is slower. And, at work, the once-a-week memorandum that moved to email is now happening via text or community boards. The common thread in the simplification of menial tasks is that social interactions are ubiquitous and no longer wait for the face-to-face interaction. A decade ago, HR had a wonderful opportunity to lead the conversation about social interactions in the workplace. “Enterprise Social” is defined by the interactions employees have at the workplace, generally enabled by a technology. While not bound by traditional HR practices, how employees communicate and interact with each other and the business in the course of their work should be an activity that HR would influence. Unfortunately, HR lost

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

its opportunity to influence social deployments and policies governing enterprise social interactions a decade ago due to fear. We found every reason why social communities would be a compliance risk, from “bad behavior” to concerns about the storage of communications, to setting up community infrastructures, to managing the chatter. All of these concerns were valid, but rather than putting HR at the forefront of the conversation, many organizations simply moved ahead without us. Information technology departments put in tools like Microsoft Sharepoint and Salesforce.com, chatter with communities and discussion boards, and now IT runs organizational social policies. Human Resources wanted to proceed with curation, so IT moved ahead without us and social happened anyway. Human Resources now has a renewed opportunity to create a new level of workplace effectiveness through social HR. While the initial technology wave passed us by, significant workforce changes and expectations are just on the horizon. Within a decade, we’ll have employees in the workforce who may never have been laptop users, with phones, tablets and wearables being their regular technologies, with social interactions being the primary method they will use. Certainly, not all HR processes should be social, but HR will have to rethink each and every process to see if social HR is feasible in that area and the opportunities will be abundant.

Social Talent Management Many HR practitioners, along with employees and managers, have long proclaimed the ineffectiveness of traditional performance reviews. Looking back once a year is onerous; real performance and development outcomes are based not in the process, but in the quality of the manager and employees involved. Good managers and employees progress in spite of the performance process, and poor ones remain mediocre even in leading performance processes. Periodic performance processes simply do not provide employees with timely and actionable plans, but real-time conversations with peers and managers who provide constructive feedback are highly valuable. Feedback that is instantly usable is (Continued on page 20)

feature POINT/COUNTERPOINT

Social HR: Not-Quite-Ready-for-Prime-Time? By Bob Greene, Ascentis Heathers? Mean Girls? Coming soon to an HR Department near you? The advent of social media has had profound impacts on individuals, institutions, industries and business organizations throughout the world, but perhaps none quite as interesting – or potentially controversial – as the Human Resources department in the average American private sector business. As a result, more and more HR professionals are asking themselves, “How much involvement in social media is appropriate for our organization?” And, while some HR solution providers appear to be investing, or gearing up to invest significantly in “social HR” technology innovations to be leveraged by those HR departments, the jury is still out on whether HR professionals will take them up on it. Social media has had differing impacts on different areas of the HR department’s focus. From recruiting to compensation, performance management, and even specialty applications dedicated just to evaluating “social influence” with a view toward using it to a positive effect in HR decisionmaking. The questions are: how well are these social HR applications working, are HR professionals adopting them, if so why, and if not why not? Arguably, the recruiting function within HR has been the most aggressive adopter of social media integration, and also the most successful. The professional biography and networking site, LinkedIn. com, has achieved ubiquity, with 347 million members worldwide. And, as a result, it’s tough to find a recruiter brave (or silly) enough to say that LinkedIn isn’t useful to their business. But, as has been pointed out by others in this issue, there are large swaths of the available candidate market, representing some experienced and talented individuals that are simply not accessible by LinkedIn or most other social media tools. Additionally, everyone in the hiring process (from direct supervisors on up through HR heads) should be on guard for subtle, or even outright, bias toward those candidates who more successfully use social media in their candidacy process, unless, of course, the nature of the position requires familiarity with that technology as a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ). LinkedIn has been the most successful social HR tool leveraged by recruiters for some very

good reasons, prime among them that they have kept their product laser-focused on professional networking. This has kept LinkedIn from becoming the corporate equivalent of a Match.com or eHarmony.com. When HR professionals are asked about the extent to which they use other, far more popular social sites for finding the best candidates (sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc.), few are willing to invest (time, effort, hard dollars) in them at anywhere near the same level as LinkedIn. These sites are certainly appropriate for establishing and improving employment brand. But, the extent to which these sites are largely unmoderated for content presents some serious risks to HR managers – risks that many are unwilling to take. Take this quote, for example: “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on (our) platform and we’ve sucked at it for years.” That criticism of Twitter wasn’t leveled by any HR professional – it was a recently publicized admission by Dick Costolo, Twitter’s own CEO. The quote was leaked from an internal email Costolo wrote in response to a situation in which Anita Sarkeesian, feminist author and videographer, documented more than 150 hate-filled tweets directed at her in a single week, some threatening rape or even death. Knowing this, what HR vice president would want to risk attempting to leverage Twitter as a social platform within the politically correct and litigation-prone world of employee relations? The utility of Glassdoor.com for, say, compensation planning, provides a similar cautionary tale. Again, any HR professional will want to monitor the profile and user contributions related to their employer to ensure a clean and positive employment brand. But Glassdoor also tries to promote itself as the social HR alternative to formal salary surveys. And, for individuals (current employees and/or candidates) who can’t subscribe to those surveys, it is probably a serviceable alternative. But again, given that the compensation information collected on Glassdoor.com is entirely employee self-reported and anecdotal, and not validated, certified or normalized, what responsible HR professional would base their compensation policy on it? Have you ever known an employee to exaggerate their compensation when talking to friends or in (Continued on page 21) www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

always better than feedback delivered months after the event, and real-time feedback already occurs between good managers and employees. Unfortunately, not all managers and employees are great at feedback. Luckily, social and mobile-ready technologies exist for HR today that allow real-time feedback between employees and/or managers. Formalizing feedback by systematizing the interaction and creating policy-based expectations trickles down the habits of good managers and employees, while also documenting interactions so that employees and their managers have a record of what is going well or poorly. Unlike exclusively verbal conversations, technology also allows the content of conversations About the Author to be secured, sent to the manager only, Wes Wu is the vice and bound by specific skill or compepresident of HCM tency parameters. Configuration options Consulting Services for will exist to allow an organization to Appirio’s Western Region. make social, real-time feedback based on His team helps clients their own policies. improve the effectiveness of their HR If the goal of performance managefunctions in the areas of strategic planning ment is to increase employee perforand technology deployments. He has previously led Appirio’s research and mance, we know that traditional perforthought leadership initiatives, and has mance review processes are generally helped global organizations in all industries ineffective, and real-time conversations to achieve their human capital, talent, and are the real goal. The practice we are HR service delivery strategies. He is based looking to model is inherently social, in San Francisco and can be reached at whether it’s through a technology or othwes.wu@appirio.com. erwise. Since the best way for us to quantify and measure successful development endeavors is through a technology, social talent management should be the future.

Social Employee Engagement Analysis Employee engagement surveys are an important part of any HR organization. They allow HR to understand organizational health, policies, manager capability and many more key metrics. A pronouncement to get rid of the employee engagement survey may not be a current reality, but close monitoring of social sentiment analysis can yield real-time mood analysis of your employees and customers. For organizations with high adoption of social tools for messaging, collaboration and general communications, writing an algorithm to understand the mood of your internal population is not difficult, yet can yield real-time results regarding employee engagement. While the annual engagement survey is effective at spotting macro trends, near real-time analysis of spikes of happiness or dissatisfaction lead to the ability to correlate against a root cause. It’s nice to know annually if engagement scores go up by a point, but it’s even nicer to know when productivity increases after free lunches every Wednesday. For the right organization, social sentiment

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

analysis of internal social communications can be an indispensable tool to pinpoint the micro trends that drive overall engagement scores. Simple algorithms measuring positive and negative words, or even positive and negative emoticons can be the basis of a daily “spot check” for engagement and are easily implemented.

Social HR Service Delivery Human Resources has spent a great deal of time setting up call centers and intake processes for employee inquiries. Indeed, there is a large volume of employee questions that need to be answered by HR, but many questions never actually get to HR in the first place. Employee questions commonly happen “around the watercooler” or over cubicle partitions with other employees. Simple questions about benefits, payroll, HR processes, and policies are asked and answered often without HR’s knowledge. Much of HR service delivery is taking place socially with HR because HR does not have the social infrastructure to manage this type of communication. Rather than trying to enforce current-state HR service delivery, HR needs to admit that social interactions will continue, and as employee networks and online communications grow, these interactions will also move increasingly to technology forums. As a growing population of digital natives enters the workforce, HR can once again get left behind, or HR can cultivate and curate online HR interactions that are more meaningful for new workforce entrants. The task of phone and email inquiries easily transitions to marking correct answers in social collaboration spaces, linking to policy documents, and making conversations searchable to lower the overall volume of questions. Human Resources’ transition in service delivery depends on the acknowledgement that social interactions already happen without them, and HR social interactions can be made better, more accurate and easier to search. To do this, HR will need to reskill service center staff to focus on technology curation, rather than the intake and logging of inquiries.

Social Learning Human Resources is on the verge of a second chance at social HR. An incoming wave of digital natives will force an increasing wave of social interactions into the workplace, and many HR processes are ripe for transformation. Social adoption in the workplace continues to increase and workers have become used to technology evolution. Certainly, not all HR services will be immediately ready for social transformation. Sensitive areas like employee health and employee investigations may never be ready. But, other processes that are communications-centric and depend on easy-to-access or real-time interactions are prime candidates.

an anonymous, e.g., Internet-based setting? But, perhaps the most concerning move in the current trend to integrate social media into daily HR operations emanates from those human capital management vendors seeking to develop a tool for measuring and ranking employees’ “influence,” and then using that influencer rating in performance management (reward the influencers and make them managers, train the non-influencers to become influencers, etc.). The inherent problem with this idea is the lack of any proven correlation between influence and leadership. “Pure” influence is a measure of a person’s passion to share ideas, to see their own ideas as very important (indeed, to “never have an unexpressed thought,” in some baby boomers’ eyes). It can be addictive and selfperpetuating, both for the influencer and their followers. It also has the potential, if one is not careful, of stratifying the organization into cliques. In high school, it was “the cool kids” versus “the outsiders;” does any HR professional miss those days and seek to reintroduce these popularity stratifications into their organizations? But, more importantly, nowhere in the personality profile of a great influencer is there a guarantee of either sharable expertise in issues that matter to an employer, nor of pure leadership potential. To put it more bluntly, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Kelly Osbourne have some of the highest social media profiles in the world, and millions of people hang on their every post, tweet and selfie. But, I wouldn’t want them leading me over the hill in battle to face the enemy – or even leading my next HRMS implementation project! Influence does not equate to leadership.

The traditional approach to talent management has always sought to find and promote those employees within an organization with the most highly developed competencies, knowledge and skills, and to cross-pollinate those attributes through training or formal mentorship programs. The migration toward social HR appears to be moving to simply finding those who have the most influence over others in the organization, and to leverage that influence, without necessarily correlating it to specific, relevant attributes that will move the organization forward toward its overall goals. With these “social HR IQ scores,” the potential is there, but the path to utility (or someday, perhaps, even indispensability) for these ranking applications are unclear at this point. In summary, social HR is an idea that will inevitably come to fruition. However, for now, to the extent that social HR is defined as leveraging the social media websites and tools available in non-business settings, and to the extent that dedicated social HR apps are being developed to focus primarily, or solely, on an employee’s ability to influence others, and not to lead, mentor or train, HR professionals should take a slow and cautious approach.

About the Author Bob Greene is a member of the Editorial Committee of the IHRIM Workforce Solutions Review, and guest editor of this issue. He is currently Channel Partners manager with Ascentis. With 35 years in the HRMS industry and having worked for such industry leaders as Towers Perrin, SAP, Oracle and SumTotal, he is proud to be a certified member of the baby boomer generation. And, while he has made peace with his laptop, his tablets (all three of them) and even his smart phone, he’s also happy to admit that he has no Facebook account, no Twitter handle, has never been on Pinterest or Instagram, and has never taken a “selfie.” But, he has absolutely no problem with people who do! He can be reached at bob.greene@ascentis.com.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

2015 HR Service Delivery Buyer’s Guide The 2015 HR Service Delivery Buyer’s Guide will serve as a valuable reference tool. For your convenience, the guide has two sections: a Categorical Listing and an Alphabetical listing. In the Categorical Listing, companies are listed under the product and service categories of their choice. For information on a specific company and its products and/or service, please refer to the Alphabetical Company Listing. While a listing in this guide does not constitute an endorsement by IHRIM, it does indicate that these companies are interested in serving the needs of HRIS professionals. We hope this Buyer’s Guide will assist you in your 2015 purchasing decisions.

Product Categories

Cloud Computing

Ceridian Decusoft, LLC Workforce Software

ERP

Ingentis

Paid Advertising

Rewards/Recognition

CrystalPlus.com Ceridian Decusoft, LLC Workforce Software

Ceridian Workforce Software

SaaS

Outsourcing

Ceridian

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

Shared Services

Ceridian Workforce Software

Self-Service

Ceridian

SOA

2015 HR Service Delivery Buyer’s Guide

Alphabetical Company Listing* *Systems and applications referred to in this section are trademarked, registered, or in progress. These names should not be used generically.

Decusoft Ceridian 3311 E. Old Shakopee Rd Minneapolis, MN 55425 Resource Center 800-729-7655 onesource@ceridian.com www.ceridian.com/IHRIM Ceridian is a global provider of human capital management solutions. Our Dayforce HCM solution is a single SaaS application for Payroll & Tax, Benefits, Workforce Management, HR, Talent Management and Recruiting.

70 Hilltop Rd. Ste. 1003 Ramsey, NJ 07446 Karie Johnson 201-258-1414 201-785-0774 Karie.Johnson@Decusoft.com www.Decusoft.com You have an HCM software suite but you are managing compensation outside the system. Now what? You need COMPOSE, a specialized compensation management software solution that handles any level of variable compensation complexity, reduces your total cost of compensation administration and integrates with existing HR solutions. Not so suite but oh so right. See ad on Inside Front Cover.

WorkForce Software

38705 Seven Mile Road Livonia, MI 48152 Sales Department 877-493-6723 info@workforcesoftware.com www.workforcesoftware.com WorkForce Software is the leader of complete, easy-to-use workforce management solutions. Its EmpCenter suite enables strategic HR by automating and streamlining interactions between the employer and its workforce, enabling organizations to better manage payroll and processing costs, help ensure compliance with labor regulations, and increase productivity and satisfaction of employees.

CrystalPlus.com 18475 E. Valley Blvd., City of Industry, CA 91744 888-779-8803 888-669-0838 service@crystalplus.com www.crystalplus.com CrystalPlus.com is a leading supplier/ manufacturer of crystal awards and corporate gifts. We offer free engraving and no setup charges on all of our crystal awards and gift products. We have in house professional graphic designers, engravers and customer service specialists to serve our customers making ordering crystal awards and gifts easier than ever. At Factory direct prices and with huge inventory selection at our California warehouse, you can’t find any better prices and faster turnaround for the same premium quality of custom engraved corporate awards, sports trophy and personalized gifts.

Ingentis Raudtener Str.7 90475 Nuremberg Michael Grimm 800.477.1408 Michael.grimm@ingentis.com www.ingentis.com Ingentis org.manager is a software for organizational charting and visual HR controlling. The tool is linked to leading HR systems and enables you to create and publish organizational charts within minutes. Furthermore, Ingentis org. manager empowers you to calculate personnel or corporate statistics and to deliver visual reporting through organizational charts. See ad on Back Cover.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

Executive Interview WSR: Welcome to this interview for Workforce Solutions Review on the Changing Workforce with Samantha Hanson, chief human resource officer for Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. Samantha, could we start with an introduction?

Samantha Hanson Interview conducted by Shawn Fitzgerald, WSR co-managing editor.

Samantha: Thank you so much for the opportunity. My background has been in HR and HR technology for most of my career. I have worked in large corporate environments such as Best Buy, UnitedHealth Group, either leading HR for the organization or for large business segments. I’ve also led HR in HR technology firms, such as Vurv and Taleo, and then at Verifications, I was EVP of products and people, which was a very fun job. Whether in my roles as an HR leader, HR practitioner, or as a builder of products and services to help HR and organizations, my passion is creating environments where people can do their best work and organizations can deliver outstanding products and services. I made the transition to health care several years ago as I joined UnitedHealth Group Optum and was working on the health services and health technology side of the UnitedHealth Group corporate entity. Through massive growth and acquisitions, I happen to have the good fortune of being on the side of the business that was really focusing on how data and technology drives the innovation and the evolution of the health care system in the United States. Currently, I am the CHRO for Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. I joined Children’s Hospitals in early 2014 because I was very attracted to the mission of the organization and saw a tremendous opportunity to build workforce capabilities in such a highly evolving and a highly changing industry. I’m very glad to be with you. WSR: As we said at the top, this issue focuses on the changing workforce. Please let us know what you see as some of the biggest changes in the workforce in the past 10 years? Samantha: Well, my first observation is about the environment in which our workforces are operating. There’s a shift from a focus on products to a focus on service. Even in those industries where you are delivering a specific outcome, such as health care, there is a rapid transformation to a service industry. We also saw this in retail 10 to 15 years ago with the move from a product-centric industry to a consumercentric industry. So what does that mean to our workforce? It’s creating environments where our employees shift their thinking from “what I do” to “why I do it and for whom.” It sounds like semantics, but it’s actually

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

very material in how we shape our expectations of our workforce, how we think about organizational design and efficiency, and how we think about performance in these types of cultures. The second change that I’ve seen is actually the speed of change and innovation. Business models are changing rapidly. A worker in our parents’ generation may have worked in the same kind of business model their entire career. Now, even if you’re working for the same industry, you may be working in a completely different way. The technology that you’re using changes materially along with the business cycles. From an HR perspective, that means that you have to make sure that you’re hiring talent that your organization needs for today and tomorrow; not the talent that you needed yesterday. While that sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, I think that sometimes our HR processes get a little unyielding and we get into bad habits of hiring into the same job code over and over, without making sure that we’re hiring for our future needs, not our past needs. The third element that I’d like to talk about is the shifting demographics, which we have been talking about for several years. I find it amazingly rich and perplexing that we have multiple generations in the workforce. The complexity of our workforce is changing dramatically and we need to leverage and optimize the strengths of multiple generations and create inclusive environments that accept different types of learning styles. We can respect and learn from the past while driving to the future. We need to be intentional around how we manage our shifting demographics, and we can’t just assume that people are all going to move along in a similar way. WSR: How do those changes you identified shape strategies that organizations should use now? Samantha: I’ll focus on expectations for collaboration. We need to be overt around environments where change is the norm and where innovation is expected. We need to move beyond the rigid “Six Sigma-kind” of improvement that was so pervasive in the 1990s and early 2000s and move to collaboration and fast innovation cycles. This shift requires a level of willingness to team and communicate in a different way. In HR we have to help our multiple generations. We have to help create expectations and select our talent accordingly, and then be very clear that our performance management, hiring, and cultural initiatives are aligned. WSR: I’d like to hear more from you on technology, Sam. What impact do you see technology having on the workforce? (Continued on page 26)

Executive Interview WSR: Welcome to this interview for Workforce Solutions Review on the Changing Workforce featuring Maureen Cahill, senior vice president and chief HR officer for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. Maureen, let’s start with an introduction of your background. Maureen: I joined Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) in December 2014. The Association has about 1,100 employees and owns and manages the Blue Cross and Blue Shield trademarks and brands. The 37 independently owned, and locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies provide health care coverage to nearly 105 million Americans across the country. Prior to joining BCBSA, I spent about four years at Highmark and Highmark Health as the senior vice-president of Total Rewards. My other background is as VP of Total Rewards and HR Administration with Career Education Corporation and 10 years in multiple roles in HR outsourcing, internal HR and HR consulting at Hewitt Associates. WSR: What do you see as some of the biggest changes in the workforce in the past 10 years? Maureen: Diversity is certainly a big change whether that is the increase of millennial generation in the workforce or demographic changes in our employee populations. The landscape for employers has shifted significantly and employers need to attend to that. I would say other changes in the workforce relate to the education required of employees today. Many industries are demanding a bachelor’s degree as the price of entry. That said, there is also room for certifications and associate degrees that will help open doors, but post-secondary education in different forms is what employers are looking for. Another interesting trend I’ve seen that could have something to do with the increase in millennials in the workforce is this notion of freelancing. Whether it is freelancing, contracting, contingent staffing, or tempto-perm strategies, both companies and individuals are looking at this as an option. Organizations value more fluid staffing models that flex with business demand and individuals. Millennials especially enjoy the freedom and sense of entrepreneurship that comes along with those types of work relationships. The catch in this trend is that once those specialized resources end their assignment, the knowledge gained through their experience goes with them. There needs to be the right balance for the organization. In addition, even though there have been some publicized moves away from flexible and remote working arrangements, I still think that’s going to increase and

be a particular expectation of the younger generations. If you go into Starbuck’s today, or a Panera, there are college students working on team-based assignments, independent study, research, and more – they are getting work done, they’re productive. That’s what they know; that’s what they’re going to expect to some extent when they get into the workforce. I don’t know if organizations are ready to go down the flexible working path as aggressively as might be needed. This increased diversity in the workforce really pushes on organizations to figure out how to create cultures and climates that are very inclusive in response to changing demographics, education demands, and the freelancing trend since this is all going to continue.

Maureen Cahill Interview conducted by Shawn Fitzgerald, WSR co-managing editor.

WSR: Related to all those changes in diversity and working style, what’s an employer to do? What kind of workforce strategies do you think organizations need to use right now to address some of those challenges? Maureen: There are some misperceptions about the millennial workforce, but the key is to recognize that we have a generation that was educated differently. They had access to technology from the very beginning and they have certain expectations because of that fact. This means employers need to recognize and help bridge some of the generational differences. The millennial workforce expects to be trained in a different way. They’re not going to sit in a classroom for eight hours and take in information and be able to do anything with it. Gamification in training is something that companies need to pay attention to and determine how to make training match the way this generation is familiar with learning. Organizations also need to help the workforce continue education and development in different ways, but that does require investment. The other thing I see in the millennial generation, in particular, is the desire to have social impact in a positive way, so they’re looking for organizations that support and sponsor different philanthropic events where they can have an impact. I think many of them tend to be mission-driven and they don’t expect to stick around with any one company for very long. We’ll see a two to four year stint for a millennial as the norm; it’s their plan. Many boomers have had limited career movement and our parents’ generation aspired toward lifetime employment. We’re starting to see organizations value talent that has changed jobs and acquired different experiences, even though they’re for shorter periods of time. Organizations also have to figure out how to help the millennials work with the boomers and tradition(Continued on page 27) www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

Samantha: Technology is having a significant impact in the workforce in a couple of ways. One of them is clearly the access to data and the ability to use data and analytics to identify trends. From an HR perspective, that means using data to move from reactive to proactive. Marrying workforce data with business analytics is a powerful and necessary connection. How your people and organization needs to shift and change to meet and beat industry shifts will be the differentiating factor in industry leaders now and in the future. I see that as a huge benefit from a workforce perspective, you can have real-time access to the drivers within your company, but then that can also quickly turn to your consumers. Technology-driven cultures can create issues with interpersonal skills. We have to make sure that we are arming our leaders with the ability to manage teams and individuals with as much focus as we use in managing and optimizing their use of technology to do their jobs. Technology is a tool, not the end game. To be successful, organizations still need teams that work effectively together, people leaders who solve problems, innovate and communicate well. WSR: In the area of total awards, what has changed? What’s important to employees now that were not important to employees previously? Samantha: There are three key areas that I would like to talk about: flexibility, learning and pay programs. We’ve talked a lot about results orientation, but there is also a shift towards work/life balance, or flexibility, and towards staffing models, leveraging technology, and a cultural preparedness to focus on outcomes versus “occupying a chair.” This shift About Samantha Hanson requires a great talent management Samantha Hanson is an experienced global system and leaders who know how to HR executive with a career that has involved extensive collaboration with executive leadership set and manage goals and expectations to develop effective teams. It as a trusted advisor in achieving current and future business goals. Currently the CHRO for also requires individuals collaborating Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, and communicating in an open way so she is leading large-scale transformation to that they can take advantage of schedenable growth and reinvent the HR function. In ule and workforce role flexibility. the role for only six months, she has been instruIn our 24/7 world, many workforces mental in launching service models to integrate are global, working across multiple new value into all people strategies and culture time zones. In HR, we are responsible of patient care. Previously, Hanson served as the senior vice president of Human Capital for creating and driving roles and at Optum Insight, executive vice president of cultures that allow for flexibility of Products and People for Verifications, Inc., and scheduling and roles to support both vice president of Global Human Resources at the business needs and the needs of a Taleo/Vurv Technologies, Inc. From 2000-2004, shifting workforce that is looking for she held marketing communications roles with work/life balance. CitiStreet. Her experience in communications One other area that interests me is during this time fueled her passion surrounding the impact of communications around effective “learning” as a development benefit. HR processes. Prior to her career in HR, she was As employers, we have workforce a leader for domestic and family violence nonresponsibility for continuous learning. profit organizations. She holds a Bachelor of Arts As I talked about earlier, the speed of in Psychology from the University of Minnesota change requires a workforce to conand can be reached at Samantha.hanson@ tinue to learn, and we need to think childrensmn.com. about that in a non-traditional way as

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

part of our development process. I’m playing around with ideas of development as an experience versus a program. There is a change in how you fund and provide development experiences that are mentoring and work beyond tuition reimbursement and traditional college degree/certification programs. The last element from a total rewards perspective is ensuring that we’re scouring our pay practices that might directly or indirectly reward occupancy versus performance. There’s room for us to think about rewards for disruptive innovation and making sure that we’re putting rewards around the behaviors that are necessary for organizations to stay competitive in a rapidly changing environment. Obviously, that’s going to be different from industry to industry, but I think about where some of those hidden unintentional structures exist that support reward-for-occupancy. You’ve got to be diligent about making sure that you’re using your reward and incentive dollars to truly transform your organization to the desired future state. WSR: Our last question, how do you suggest employers keep up with what employees are requiring these days? Samantha: Use analytics to really know your workforce – where you are, where you’ve been, what trends are developing. Customer segmentation is mainstream in the marketing and retail industry. They have been, for over a decade, slicing and dicing data around consumers and know how to structure and best encourage consumers to buy products and services. Human Resources can be the segmentation experts for their employee population. We can apply the same types of analytics to understand the differences, similarities, behaviors, motivators, and de-motivators of their employee population and can be far more effective at laser-targeting incentive programs that work, customizing performance management and other types of HR processes to better serve their workforce, in general. We can move from the mass treatment of HR processes to the customization of HR people processes that will get the very most out of the workforce. Thinking about individualization, none of us, whether it’s on our iPhone or on our computer, tolerates anything but the ability to customize. Why shouldn’t an employee expect a similar level of customization in their workforce? What if the customization is tied to the outcomes of the organization, or the ability to apply customer segmentation practices and analytics? That could take our HR people strategies to a completely new level. WSR: Anything else you would like to share? Samantha: I believe that HR is an accelerant to business outcomes. I’ve seen tremendous change in my career, as technology has changed the productivity of the workforce. We have an opportunity to lead workforce strategies that drive business transformation. It is a very exciting time to be in HR.

alists and vice versa, so that everyone can recognize and value the different styles and skills. This focus

on inclusion is very important in organizations. How do you create an environment where people can be their best so they want to come back every day? WSR: Can you share your perspective on the impact of technology on the workforce? Maureen: When I think about when I started in the workforce to where it is today, it’s the constant connectivity that changed. The incredible speed that we can process data has created incredible efficiencies, which is very positive. We need to start asking the question around boundaries, and the fact that just because we can immediately respond, doesn’t mean we should. Technology is blurring what is urgent versus important. As an example, in email, you can respond instantaneously, but in many cases, that may not be the best way for us to interact and work. While in many regards the connectivity can be a tremendous asset, we need to balance that with what is happening to us outside of the workplace. If I’m always checking messages on my phone, what does that mean for how present I am with my family? In those types of experiences, I think it’s a blessing and a curse. You can’t ignore social media in the conversation around technology. How do we help people understand that pictures and posts are part of your story forever? When you’re 18, 19, 20 years old, you’re not thinking those things could come back and affect your position when your 40 or 50 or 60. Social media has tremendous positive implications, but we just need to be smart as individuals and think about what it means for our personal brand. LinkedIn is probably the primary source of professional hiring for millenials and its had such a tremendous impact in how we attract talent. Once you get talent in, they want that same connected experience in the workplace, so you need to provide technology solutions that allow knowledge sharing and connecting groups with common interests together. If there’s a word that could effectively describe the impact of technology on the workforce in the last 20 or 30 years, I think it would be exponential. WSR: What do you see from the Total Rewards perspective that’s now important to employees but perhaps wasn’t important before? How do you see the trend of compensation changing? Maureen: Employees now have a better awareness regarding health care benefits. Are you an employer who is continuing to offer traditional benefits? Are you an employer who is putting your folks on an Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange or going to a defined contribution plan? Employees today are

smarter about health care, are starting to ask more questions, and want to understand what it means for them. Interestingly, and there’s a couple of different studies that have shown that when people are given an exchange environment, some buy less insurance than they had before. In the Total Rewards today, base pay is still king. If you’re not competitive on your base pay, you’re going to have a tough time attracting talent unless you are in a startup mode and you can provide real wealth and value creation down the road. Base pay isn’t the price of entry anymore; you have to be market competitive. WSR: What do you suggest employers do to keep up with what employees are requiring now? Maureen: It’s actually quite simple, but hard to do; you need to ask and listen. Ask your employees what’s important to them, what do they value, and how does that align with the organization’s mission and vision as well. Alignment is important and when you ask them, be sure you listen to what they aren’t saying. I think employees want a way to speak out and not feel like they’re at risk if they’re very honest about the environment or what’s important to them. Employers then need to make the changes that employees are expecting. Employees are going to expect to do open enrollment on their iPhone. I don’t know if that’s a good idea, but I think it’s an expectation. Employers need to stay current by asking and allowing the workforce to have input and influence the “deal.” The “employment deal” incorporates the theory of the trade-off. I’m willing to trade-off a higher salary, if you allow me to work remotely three About Maureen Cahill days a week. I’m willing to tradeMaureen A. Cahill is senior vice president, and off health care because my spouse chief human resources officer for the Blue Cross has coverage, if I get an enhanced Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), a national federation of 37 independent, community-based retirement plan. and locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield It’s hard for employers who are companies. She directs the corporate human reused to the fixed deal, but customsources function for the Association, accountable ization might be back. WSR: Maureen, do you have any closing thoughts? Maureen: The last thing is that it’s a new day and what you did in the past won’t work in the future. I am sure every generation has thought that, but the good part now is that employees are willing to tell you as an employer how to get it right. You just need to listen and determine how the needs of the employee and employer can meet.

for its strategic direction and the management of the executive and nonexecutive employee benefit and compensation programs, talent acquisition, employee relations, and training and career development. She is also responsible for the development and management of the BCBSA HR Leadership Forum whose participants include the heads of human resources across the federation of Plans. The Forum is focused on best practice sharing, creating opportunities for development and leveraging the scale of the Plans to increase purchasing power in the HR arena. She has a bachelor’s degree in business management from North Central College and an MBA from DeVry University’s Keller Graduate School of Management. She can be reached at maureen.cahill@bcbsa.com.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

The War for Top Talent

This Time it’s Personal By David Verhaag, HireVue

In the mid-1990s we were warned about the coming war for talent, so much so it almost became a cliché. But what we are facing today is a rapidly escalating war for top talent. The unemployment rate recently dropped from the great recession high of 10% to 5.6% in December 2014. Among professionals, the unemployment rate appears to be tracking that of the overall labor market at 5.8%. With the stock market at an all-time high, it would be expected that talent management professionals would be in a panic about sourcing strategies for top talent. Is it time to go all out on sourcing “like it’s 1999?” Is it time to gear up with the latest and greatest in social sourcing, office perks and signing bonuses? Although the war for talent might be on, this is not your father’s battle. The unemployment rate might at first appear to be healthy, or at least moving in the right direction, but the percentage of working age people in the labor market has declined to a low not seen since 1978, currently hovering around 63%. In addition, the real unemployment rate, including individuals who are underemployed, is an uncomfortable 11.2%. The long-term unemployed number is 4.1 million or 2.6%. In addition, there are currently 507,000 unemployed veterans. Escalating this problem further is the surge of retiring baby boomers and an incoming labor force of millennials who have not been trained to meet the needs of these highly skilled and specialized positions. If the war for talent is back on, this fight is about reaching across the generations to find talent in non-traditional places. It is about uncovering the skills and capabilities of individuals with job titles and educational backgrounds that simply do not fit the old formula. To find top talent, organizations will need to look beyond the tried and true, to look across generations of talent and focus on the individual rather than using processes and tools that source, filter and focus on candidates with the right résumé headings and key word matches. The war for talent is back on, and this time it is personal.

The “Social Sourcing” Myth The technology enabling today’s talent sourcing is incredibly advanced. Long gone are the days of simply posting a job to a generic job board and waiting for candidates to roll in. Actually, long gone might be an overstatement. Talent sourcing today can often resemble a Rube Goldberg machine. While there are a host of features, events and complications that may amaze and dazzle, you ultimately only get out of it what you put into it. Despite the amazing sourcing technology that enables outreach to a broad and di-

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

verse audience, and tools to ensure that engagement is maintained and tracked over time, many organizations use this technology to simply track their LinkedIn or Twitter job postings. Worse, organizations may purchase this advanced technology with the best of intentions but quickly relegate it to shelfware, leaving uninspired recruiters to focus their energies on filtering candidates through LinkedIn Recruiter and blasting job postings to Twitter, in an effort to broaden their “social sourcing.” It is easy and fun to engage in brand building on social networks but it is not the same thing as actively sourcing top talent. Ask yourself, beyond engaging candidates on LinkedIn and Twitter, what is your social sourcing strategy? If LinkedIn and Twitter went down for six months, how would you find the talent you need? And why aren’t you leveraging those resources today? The opportunity in today’s challenging talent market is reaching across the generations and capturing those non-traditional candidates in a way that allows their skills and capabilities to stand out. LinkedIn, while an incredible tool for professional profiles, is limited in its reach beyond the traditional professional. LinkedIn’s database contains 332 million profiles, but according to the Pew Research Center, that makes up only 28% of adult Internet users. Focusing only on LinkedIn reduces the talent pool by 72% of Internet users and even more who don’t use the Internet. Only 12% of Internet users that are high school grads or less use LinkedIn. Twitter’s reach for job posting is limited even more, with only 23% of Internet users having a Twitter account and only 12% of users 50-64 years old. More importantly, the engagement level of the Twitter users appears to be low. The Wall Street Journal reported that 44% of Twitter users have never posted a single Tweet. Recruiters focused on Twitter should ask themselves, if they were looking for a job, actively looking, would they actually use Twitter to find that opportunity? Both LinkedIn and Twitter are great tools that serve a very important role in building a clear employment value proposition and in sourcing talent. But recruiters have focused a disproportionate amount of their attention on LinkedIn and Twitter for their “social sourcing.” As a result, a significant population of potential talent has been overlooked, including a wealth of non-traditional talent.

Next Generation Sourcing If the unemployment rate continues to drop, the competition for talent will increase. McKinsey Global Institute has found trends in educational attain-

ment and projected employment needs that indicate employers will require 16 to 18 million more collegeeducated workers than will be available in 2020, a gap representing 11% of demand in Europe and North America alone. Even without a continued drop in the unemployment rate, it will be increasingly important for recruiters to reach beyond the tried and true to source candidates from the non-traditional talent pools. There is already an increasing interest in sourcing returning military. In 2011, eleven companies cofounded the 100,000 Jobs Mission. The goal of this coalition was to hire 100,000 veterans by the year 2020. Since the founding, more than 175 organizations have joined the cause and were on track to hire 200,000 veterans by the end of 2014. Organizations like Hilton, JP Morgan Chase and United Health Group are investing heavily in creating paths for our returning heroes to successfully integrate into their organizations post service. The same is not yet true for the long-term unemployed, the underemployed or individuals returning to the workforce after raising families. In fact, a survey from Smartrecruiters.com discovered that 82% of recruiters, hiring managers, and human resources professionals reported the existence of discrimination against the unemployed. A competitive sourcing strategy in 2015 and beyond will require not just building programs to successfully integrate multigenerational talent into the organization, but also adapting sourcing strategies to ensure that they can be successfully identified and sourced into the organization in the first place. The key challenge in the next generation of sourcing is that the non-traditional talent does not rest in a single large pool like Monster.com in the 1990s or the current pool of LinkedIn, but in many small talent ponds. Additionally, not all talent can be engaged and sourced online. As the LinkedIn and Twitter user populations demonstrate, a large percentage of the population simply doesn’t have a LinkedIn profile or use and engage on Twitter. Effective sourcing strategies must contain a balance of online, social and offline targets. Sourcing strategies that include building relationships with niche online communities (not just job posting sites) and offline communities (they still exist) can serve as an amazing source of talent for savvy recruiters willing to invest time in actually sourcing talent. If you are looking for socially adept talent, leveraging social media for sourcing candidates can be a prerequisite and a great tool. If socially adept talent is not a requirement, going beyond social sourcing will be required. Job fairs (both on and off campus), unemployment offices, billboards and the like may feel like an echo of sourcing from days gone by but they are still very effective for identifying talent beyond the large social networking pools. Good recruiters know how to network and build relationships outside of the online world by engaging in

professional associations (like IHRIM, SHRM, AICPA and others), alumni associations and other communities. They also know how to actively leverage a reference and referral network to engage short and long-term potential talent. To reach today’s multigenerational audience, organizations need to adjust their employment value proposition to resonate with the non-traditional candidate. Photos of young up-and-comers gathered around an office pool table won’t resonate with the Baby Boomer Generation and will immediately reduce your access to this incredible pool of talent. Similarly, the stock photo of professionals gathered around a conference room table smiling over their coffee cups might not resonate with the long-term unemployed or underemployed concerned about fitting into today’s workplace. Through the use of diverse sourcing strategies, employment branding built to encourage multigenerational talent, and programs designed to ensure fair treatment and to help transition non-traditional talent into the organization, companies can increase their sourcing effectiveness and take advantage of the untapped talent market.

The Machine Doesn’t Understand You Beyond simply sourcing multigenerational and non-traditional candidates into the organization, the sophisticated screening tools of today’s application tracking systems need to evolve. People are more than bullet points and numbers on a résumé – they are stories and experiences that traditional technology has a hard time deciphering. Sourcing incredible returning military talent won’t help if the application tracking system filters them out based on titles or an employment history that doesn’t match the model. A returning service member who held the role of quartermaster might be a great fit with an operations manager position if he/she can make it past the organization’s filtering mechanisms that toss him/her based on the job title match. The long-term unemployed or underemployed won’t have the opportunity to share their deep expertise and experience if the system decides that their recent career history wasn’t recent or long enough. The technology used in many organizations today evolved to serve several important roles. First, they were designed to track candidate information, filter candidates based on basic job fit, provide recruiters a place to disposition and track candidates as they worked them through the recruitment process, and ultimately generate reporting on the talent pipeline for the company, EEOC and OFCCP. Unfortunately, these highly efficient tools and the processes that evolved around them are more effective than they are user friendly for the non-traditional talent pool. While these systems still have a role to play in today’s talent management and recruitment programs, the labor market has evolved beyond their impersonal www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

hard-coded processes.

Beyond Your Father’s Interview The interview has evolved even if the typical recruiter hasn’t. Beyond the phone screen of your father’s generation, technology has enabled candidates to tell their story in a way that can be heard effectively by organizations without placing a barrier between the candidate and the hiring manager. Through the use of digital interviews, candidates can share their story directly with the hiring manager in a way that scales for organizations. Candidates are empowered to take the interview at any time of the day, removing an important barrier to the underemployed who may not be able to afford the time off to interview or the talent just returning to the market who may not be available during regular business hours. The technology has also enabled returning military to interview for positions while still in theater or on-base to secure employment before they return Endnotes home to their communities. 1 All statistics in this paragraph retrieved from Bureau Importantly, the evolution of of Labor Statistics Jan 30, 2015. the interview has enabled companies to share their stories and About the Author employment value propositions in David Verhaag serves as vice ways that simply weren’t possible president of Customer Success at before digital interactions. In place HireVue, the premier global and cloud of a recruiter talking through the based digital recruiting and talent interaction platform. He leads an company’s marketing pitch, candiamazing team of subject matter experts who partner dates can be presented with high with and serve as advocates and trusted advisors to definition introductory videos that HireVue’s innovative and global client base. Together give them a realistic preview into with his team they have helped customers achieve a working at the company. These Net Promoter Score of 62 across several hundred videos can serve an important thousand candidate surveys completed post role in welcoming non-traditional interview. Through his leadership, HireVue has seen greater than 200 percent adoption growth in two candidates into the process and consecutive years. Verhaag served in a variety of ensuring that they are made to feel leadership roles at SuccessFactors over the last eight comfortable. Through the use of years. Most recently he impacted positive growth in video questions, scenario-based adoption, satisfaction and retention as director, questions and even coding chalCustomer Value at SuccessFactors. You can find more lenges, candidates can be provided of his perspectives on technology startups and the opportunity to demonstrate Customer Success on his website, www. davidverhaag.com. HireVue created an entirely new their skills and experience, leveling kind of technology. It helps you find the best talent the playing field for non-traditional and promotes meaningful interaction. For more candidates. information, visit http://www.hirevue.com.

Interviewing Goes “Big Data” Data science has revolutionized much of the world around us from how we shop (because you bought this you might also like that), to what we eat and how we understand the weather. Deep insights into human behavior have fundamentally changed how we interact with each other. Gone are the days of gut feelings driving decisions around selling, marketing and even dating. Unfortunately, many organizations are still relying on the gut feeling of individual recruiters to decide who will be joining and contributing to the organization. These recruiters, often having been

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

thrown into the recruiting role without any first hand business experience or training and frequently lacking first hand management experience, make gut feeling decisions about candidates and their potential in the organization. These are do or die moments for the few non-traditional candidates who have successfully run the gauntlet of the sourcing, candidate relationship management (CRM), applicant tracking system (ATS) and archaic recruitment processes that are found in many organizations. Consequently, much of this great talent fails to pass the gut feeling of the “people person” sitting in the first interview chair. Data science is more than just a database allowing you to query structured data. Data science, machine learning and advanced language analytics have enabled technology to play a more active role in the interviewing process, empowering organizations to reduce or even eliminate the gut feel of the recruiter and hiring managers. True data science adds an element of machine learning, and when combined with advanced language analytics, can enable technology to make recommendations and uncover and highlight nontraditional and highly qualified talent. Tens of thousands of data elements embedded in the interviewing interaction software enable candidates not only to tell their story but for that story to be analyzed for fit with the organization in a fair and consistent way. This process allows the organization to compare each candidate’s behaviors to the top performers in the organization, while aggregating many data points on what makes an employee successful and helping organizations connect the dots. This advance in screening technology enables hiring managers themselves to see a prioritized list of candidates who are known to be a good fit. The non-traditional talent that previously wouldn’t have made it past the “gut feeling” now have the opportunity to be heard and the organization has access to not only source but also review talent from a diverse set of talent pools.

Summary The war for talent is back on and this time it’s personal. Although there have been incredible advances in recruitment technology, they have often created barriers for non-traditional talent, a largely untapped resource in today’s labor market. As the new war for talent heats up, this pool will become an increasingly essential element in staffing. Today’s technology has provided innovative ways to remove the barriers to their entry into the labor market and ensure that non-traditional talent cannot only be identified but engaged in the recruiting process in a way that allows them to tell their story and be heard. By removing gut feel recruiting, organizations today have the opportunity to dramatically accelerate their recruitment processes and access an incredibly diverse pool of non-traditional talent that has, until now, largely gone untapped.

Challenge to Change

Nonstop Restructuring: The Myth of the Perfect Workforce Structure By Andrew Jacobus Organizations today seem to be restructuring and reorganizing at an ever accelerating rate, with many making major changes not once per year but twice, or even more. They seem to be going after an ideal alignment of capital, capacity, and capability – the “perfect” business structure – that does not, and could not, last for very long. Human Resources, which often struggles for resources and budget, is typically asked to execute these “organization makeovers” – to create the “perfect” workforce structure – while at the same time managing waves of technological, demographic and structural change.

Change Keeps Coming Faster To some, taxes and changes are the only things we can really count on in life. In this millennium, both are ever-present realities for business, and it can be argued that changes – any kind – are tougher for businesses to deal with. The world is changing faster than ever: technology, competition, globalization, sustainability, exponentially growing data and information, myriad and dynamic regulatory environments, and constantly evolving consumerism – all occur and progress at breakneck speeds. We used to keep an eye on quarterly objectives, but since we live and work in a time when people can get anything they want instantly, or within 24 hours from just about anywhere in the world, making quarterly adjustments to plans seems to be too slow. When facing ever-growing competition for market share, resources, and talent, there’s a lot of noise for businesses to filter and find their clear direction. For HR, whose charge is bringing in and aligning diverse yet culturally-symbiotic, talented people, then maximizing their contribution while rewarding them at a mutually advantageous ROI, this presents a complex talent management and organizational design challenge. Of course, it goes much deeper than that. At the end of these pressures and innovations lies an imperative for HR to help manage and develop how the work is designed and performed. An oil company I worked with in the past ac-

tively sought high value people across the world and hired them up to two years in advance of needing them for key positions. However, for many companies, a long game mindset like that can be paradoxical, due to the aforementioned quarter-to-quarter nature of businesses that use market capitalization to grow and evolve. And it can feel illogical to plan far enough in advance when an unseen “big change” is likely right around the corner. However, it must be done. To grow and advance, the business needs the right people with the right skills in the right roles at the right places at the right time, and ideally at the right cost. However, it also needs to make sure those people have the tools and development to handle the work as it changes quickly and often dramatically.

Doubly Difficult for HR

“Lots of change” poses enough of a quandary for an entire business, but the level of difficulty is greater for the chief people officer. For those businesses that do grow, HR usually doesn’t get to grow its budget at the same pace as business revenues, manufacturing, R&D, technology, sales or service. More commonly, HR has experienced downward pressure on both its own budget and workforce costs. One company I worked with dropped HR’s budget by over 20 percent and downsized its workforce by 15 percent even as it was achieving its best-ever revenues and margins. This problem is clearly visible in the divergence between U.S. wages and GDP in the past five years as shown in the chart that follows:

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

As a result, people across the business are expected to be more productive, and much of HR’s work has been outsourced, offshored or completely eliminated. In some cases, such as with recruitment processes, firms are bringing work back in-house, much like how HR has stereotypically vacillated between centralized and decentralized (or matrix) operating models. These challenges are exacerbated by new employment contracts and value propositions. Workers coming from all over the globe are more mobile, more social, and more entrepreneurial than ever, and they want more flexibility, less geographic commitment, and different benefits and development than less flexible/ adaptable firms have to offer in the traditional employment model (https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=SdZiTQy3g1g). And in so many companies, the saying goes, “our people are responsible for their own development.” Often, this translates to something the business supports by asking all of its managers to talk with their employees about these things, but too many of them don’t actively encourage, engage in the more detailed planning and completion, or reward people for pursuing their own development. To make matters worse, HR often doesn’t have a strong enough handle on its own talent to properly lead organizational and work design discussions. Bersin reported in 2014 that less than 15 percent of businesses had comprehensive advanced analytic capabilities in their HR teams (meaning strong, integrated and accessible data sets and the skills to analyze them in a sophisticated enough manner to affect changes meaningful to the business). It is an alarming fact that the vast majority of HR teams need more horsepower to better understand and align their organization’s talent towards improving productivity, sales, innovation and customer experiences.

Keeping HR Aligned and Ahead of the Curve HR can solve many of its challenges by advancing in three areas:

•

Looking ahead, using strategic workforce planning and forecasting;

•

Looking back and within, using workforce analytics; and,

•

Influencing with the products of planning and analytics using strong consulting and change capabilities.

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

First, with workforce planning, it does not necessarily need to follow in the classic model’s process of supply>>demand>>analyze>>solve >>talent plans, in 12-week programs for critical roles. Even using a strategic forecasting method to predict needed talent, good if it’s based on revenue and expense targets but much better if it incorporates operational, product, and/or customer mixes, will help build better capacity demand requirements that drive organization and work designs. With the rapid pace of change, it’s imperative to (at the very least) forecast and get predictive on head count by job families, and be able to scale this capability quickly. Next, for better analytics, firms need to have a good fundamental understanding of the workforce data and strong standards in place. If needed, HR should engage in a cleanup process and form a data governance group to ensure that they are working with an agreed-upon minimum standard of data quality, and that they have the data content needed. Next, the analytics shouldn’t only be about HR and workforce attributes (like company and job tenure, personal demographics, performance history, career level, etc.). HR should be collaborating with Finance and the business to agree upon definitions and to link people data with business data, such as sales (often easiest), process or customer call quality, manufacturing process times, financial capital performance, and productivity and ROI (which may be more difficult, but is certainly attainable, as shown in CFO.com, May 15, 2013). Finally, influencing and driving/managing change are most important competencies for HR to maximize. HR leaders and business partners have to be good at influencing with the insights gleaned from their workforce analytics and planning efforts, leading discussions that change the way the business and people managers think about the decisions they have to make involving talent. For some, success will mean driving better decisions. But since those decisions often reside outside the purview of the HR team, success should look like catalyzing better discussions. This will also mean HR has to recognize and reinforce the broad set of options for getting work done, rather than just through the traditional hire/develop/engage/retain modes of resourcing. For many businesses and roles, it takes longer than 2-3 years to break even on the cost of a new hire. HR should shorten that breakeven time by engaging with their clients to use alternatives like partnerships, leveraging contingent talent on a time or project basis, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, and projects

and internships in university grad programs, to name a few. They have to be creative in sourcing the skills, abilities, and capacity, with an eye on flexibility. With better discussions, hopefully followed by optimal decisions, then HR should be very strong at driving and managing the needed change. If HR is good at its own change management – and with all the HR transformation taking place these days, it should be – the HR function will naturally be more flexible and agile, and dependent upon strong analytics and planning.

Reaping the Benefits Reforming these approaches to organization and work design and sourcing/aligning talent is a lot of work, and will probably involve stripping away some responsibilities in HR due to the zero-sum or shrinking availability of resources in the function. Of course, HR should optimize manager and employee self-service, eliminate or outsource low value work, and reinforce high-value tasks for high cost/value roles. This means answering the question of “what can we live without?” and then eliminating it. It will also lead to better integration between business functions, and improve organizational readiness and adaptability to change (see URL under Additional References). Putting HR in position to work this way will also result in its own improved anticipation of changes in business pressures and direction, and enhance HR’s ability to translate those changes to impacts on talent and HR. This awareness of impending impacts will increase pro-activeness and creativity in aligning talent – people will be found and hired more quickly and into a greater variety of role assignments, rotations and projects; needed skills will

be developed more efficiently and ahead of needed changes in jobs; succession plans will flow more smoothly to develop high potential talent and eliminate leadership risks. There is a compound efficiency to this approach. Of course, doing anything in advance saves time and money (millions of dollars if adjustments affect 100 jobs or more), but it will also maximize profits by eliminating downtime due to bad decision-making, slow innovations, empty seats or missing skills. The perception of HR – the proverbial “seat at the table” will be so much stronger when HR clearly has responsibility for keeping a business productive and progressive, and minimizing what would otherwise be lost opportunities for innovation, revenues and growth.

Additional references: http://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/human-capital/articles/human-capital-trends-2014.html http://www.slideshare.net/billjensen/future-of-work-study-report-20152020 https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/human_resources_creating_people_ advantage_2014_how_to_set_up_great_hr_functions https://hbr.org/2014/10/workspaces-that-move-people

About the Author Andrew Jacobus is a strategic workforce planning and analytics leader with more than a decade of experience in turning data into insights and getting predictive with those insights, particularly about people and productivity. He has built and led functions and projects in human resources and consulting roles, in small startups, mid-size private and large public corporations, and advised leaders in most industries. Now a principal consultant, he has recently led the Talent Insights teams at a leading biopharmaceutical firm, and has previously led workforce reporting and analytics centers of expertise at Verizon, Bank of America and Hunt Consolidated. He is a certified Human Capital Strategist and Strategic Workforce Planner, and received his MBA in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. He can be reached at Andrewjacobus@gmail.com.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

High-Touch Solutions for Hiring Vets

Hiring Veterans? Rethink Your Recruitment Strategy Put high-touch back into your high-tech recruiting practices – or you will fail! By Carl Kutsmode, talentRISE

Insanity, as famously defined by Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.

Additional Resources for Employers For more information, check into hiring initiatives at both the state and national level. Many not-for-profit organizations also provide invaluable information. ConnectVETS.org, for instance, is committed to removing barriers to employment for veterans and employers and is partnering with talentRISE to provide turn-key consulting, training and recruiting solutions to address the employer military recruiting challenges highlighted in this article.

Analogously, employers that are frustrated by their inability to attract, hire, retain, and develop veterans must revisit and revamp their hiring strategy. What works for recruiting a civilian workforce definitely does not work for hiring (and then retaining) the roughly 2.8 million men and women who have transitioned from military to civilian life in the last dozen years. Good intentions are also not enough. Surveys1 show that employers – particularly federal contractors who now must meet an annual Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) benchmark of 7.2 percent for protected veterans – want to hire more veterans for many reasons, including their transferable skills, work ethic and training. The problem is that they don’t know how. Why is hiring veterans so challenging? According to numerous studies, the biggest challenge for many organizations is translating military skills into civilian career opportunities. As employers look beyond the fundamental critical issue of matching candidates to opportunities and seek to identify and implement solutions, they must ask themselves the following questions to establish a high-touch candidate experience throughout the hiring process: Does your job posting/résumé review process work for veterans? Veteran experiences and specialized skills generally don’t neatly fit into all the boxes on the online job posting “must have” requirements list. A supply sergeant’s skills, for instance, are comparable to that of a purchasing manager,

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

but that individual may be overlooked either because keywords won’t surface from his or her résumé in a search, or if the skills are lost in translation. Corporate recruiters and hiring managers need to reassess and rewrite jobs to highlight their needs for specific competencies and transferable skills, e.g., “demonstrated leadership and team management skills,” “able to make accurate and timely decisions in crisis situations,” and “aptitude for numbers and data analytics,” etc. Are your hiring managers trained? It’s critical that your entire teams, including hiring managers, not only understand what roles are best suited for veterans, but also are educated in how to review and assess the résumés, career interests, and potential transferable or developmental skills and abilities in order to better match veterans to job opportunities. A common pitfall is to limit training to frontline recruiters and/or HR professionals, only to have ill-informed hiring managers reject candidates because they mistakenly perceive that he or she lacks specialized skills or industry experience. Is your outreach as targeted as possible? Every recruiter knows that you need to look for candidates on their home turf using optimum employment branding, messaging, and an outreach strategy to reach candidates with the desired skills. So, go high-touch and look to the hundreds of veteran employment service organizations (VSO), employment/ career coaching programs that are available and ready to help. Doing so will yield pre-screened and career “transition-ready” veteran referrals, which is key to improving your hiring ratios and, for federal contrac-

tors, meeting requirements for demonstrated outreach. In fact, federal contractors face increased scrutiny under the new OFCCP requirements when those contractors source high volumes of veteran résumés, but only a few of those candidates proceed through the hiring pipeline. Quality and fit, over quantity is most important as the government compares the ratio of job applicants to those moving forward in the recruiting process. If your recruiters or hiring managers screen out a high number of veteran applicants, you could be at risk of an OFCCP audit! It’s important that outreach is strategic and targeted so employment opportunities are promoted where you have the greatest likelihood of attracting “right-fit” talent with a greater chance of moving through your process and be hired. Are you leveraging the veterans already in your organization? Career coaching and peer mentoring programs can have a very positive impact on transitioning military job candidates to guide them on a civilian career path. Coaching is a valuable first step before they can effectively search and apply for a job that best matches their skills and abilities. In-house veteran employee resource groups can play an especially important role by partnering with corporate HR and recruiters to assist in candidate career coaching, job matching, and new hire cultural assimilation/onboarding and/ or employee career development coaching, which will assist in retention of this group. Are you maximizing the use of technology? For veterans, mobile-enabled technology, which allows them to search for jobs while on the go, is a must. Many employers are also seeing great success using videos featuring veterans they have hired to speak about their journey into a civilian career. These individual and personal testimonials offer views into daily job activities and workplace culture. Videos can effectively tell

the story about the company, the jobs, and what it’s like for a veteran to work there. They are great tools for “selling” your company and also for providing veteran job candidates with career exploration information. Lastly, be sure your online applicaEndnotes tion is updated to enable veterans 1 A CareerBuilder survey from 2012 shows that to bypass required information that 29 percent of employers are actively recruiting may not be relevant to them. veterans to work for their organizations and 65 percent said they would be more likely to hire a veteran over another equally qualified candidate.

Finally, does your onboarding program fill the needs of this 2 For a link to the study, go here: link to http:// www.prudential.com/documents/public/Veterangroup? According to study by PrusEmploymentChallenges.pdf. 2 dential, three out of five veterans report challenges with cultural assimilation into civilian corporate cultures. So, once you’ve hired veterans, make certain that your cultural assimilation process takes this into account and does not assume that veterans will be familiar with office practices, politics or culture. For instance, many corporate cultures value debate as a required part of the decision-making process – which is not how the military chain of command generally works! By instituting an onboarding process that addresses the specific and unique needs of veterans, you will minimize new hire turnover.

Summary For employers looking to add veterans to their ranks (pun intended), the problem is fairly simple: current traditional recruiting and hiring models don’t typically About the Author work well for veterans. The soluCarl Kutsmode is managing tions are not as simple, but asking partner at talentRISE, a talent the questions above and using the management consulting and answers as a guide to creating a recruiting services firm that helps robust, high-touch process that gets companies address recruiting and great talent hired – and helps to retention challenges to enable employers to best support ever-changing business needs for talent. retain them – is a great way to enHe has more than 20 years of experience working sure that your veteran recruitment with employers ranging from startups to global strategy yields results and is fully organizations helping them transition from manual OFCCP compliant. to automated, “high touch” recruiting practices by optimizing their processes, technologies, and strategies related to talent acquisition, performance management and retention. He volunteers with the Staffing Management Association of Chicago and serves as the Chicago Leadership Advisory Board member for www. UpwardlyGlobal.org helping immigrant professionals navigate job searches. He graduated from Loyola University in Chicago and can be reached at carlkutsmode@talentrise.com.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

Product Review

Stop Searching and Start Working By Alex Diaz, MyUnfold

MyUnfold is a match-making service for career recruitment, pairing candidates to employment opportunities without the hassle of searching and applying. This magic first starts when candidates validate their skills, and continues based on a candidate’s initial interest and their assessment results. The candidate is paired to companies that are not just hiring, but are specifically looking for that distinct individual who fits the job prerequisites on a skill level. This happens immediately after jobs are posted on MyUnfold, so recruiters can spend less time hunting for a needle in a haystack and can spend more time interacting with qualified, prospective employees. Candidates find employment. Companies discover talent. The rest is left to the interview. As an example of the current state About the Author of the recruitment industry, the cost Alex Diaz is a marketer, of unfilled roles in the United States leader, strategist and is almost $160 billion per year. Take co-founder of MyUnfold. a moment to consider that and pair He’s worked with small and it with the fact that people are workglobal marketing agencies ing part-time involuntarily and being (Wunderman/Yesler), entrepreneurs and underemployed. This is a lose-lose startups (Experiment.com), as well as large situation, since companies should be companies (Microsoft/Amazon) to help them figure out their process, voice, and overall hiring these talented individuals and branding strategy. He’s on a new adventure people should be working where their to help people in the community find work skillsets lie. through his passion-project, MyUnfold. He The data is a bit troubling, but it’s can be reached at adiaz@myunfold.com. not the current generation that needs a kick in the drum, but rather the systems currently in place that identify talent. A fundamental rethink of the way we view, hire, and get hired needs to happen. At first glance, it’s instantly noticeable that the solution has a playful and clutterfree interface making it easier to stay focused and get the results you need immediately. Think about what these results accomplish:

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

•

Companies receive validation on candidate skills and can find qualified leads instantly after posting a job.

•

Candidates are matched to jobs that interest them, have a chance to prove they’re qualified for the role they’re matched to, and then must “walk the talk” before stepping into a room.

Everyone wins. That’s because from start to finish, skill and personality go hand-inhand with this approach, a methodology lost today by the mistaken belief that hiring is more of an art than a science. Hiring managers and/or recruiters either discount or are unaware of the decades of hiring research. For example, even longknown truths are ignored, such as that found in the 1998 study conducted by Frank Schmidt and John Hunter, “The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings.” Instead hiring managers rely on intuition and subjective judgment. While this isn’t a problem that’s limited to hiring, i.e., trying to use intuition and subjective judgment to predict how well someone will behave in the future, although there may be a handful of superstars who just instinctively hire well, 95 percent of us perform worse than chance. What separates MyUnfold from other career recruiting tools is its emphasis on the problem at hand. Every day, numerous applications and résumés are sent and reviewed by employers. It takes time and money to look over applications, choose the right candidates, plan out interviews, and make the overall decisions; it takes even more time to generate quality prospects and put them through the hiring funnel. MyUnfold aims at making the lives of recruiters

easier and more efficient by optimizing the hiring process through skills validation and quality candidate generation. While other companies aim to make the application process easy for candidates, MyUnfold seeks a solution where both parties involved in the hiring process mutually win.

range anywhere from five to eight minutes long. a A candidate validates a skill and can begin matching up with a job instantly, demonstrating their now qualified status.

Here is how it Works for the Recruiter.

1. The recruiter posts a job with required skills needed and assigns “weights.” 2. Candidate matches are made. 3. Recruiters can choose their quality picks to interview and hire.

Job Matching Service

Here is how it Works for the Candidate.

1. Users can post their professional background information, interests, and skills on their profile (or connect to their LinkedIn to pull in relevant information). 2. Claimed skills can be validated via online assessments. 3. Once skills begin validation, users are instantly matched to jobs that fit their interest and skills. 4. Users will receive alerts from interested recruiters and get a one-step-closer, fighting chance toward getting hired.

Features Skills Assessments/Validation a C andidates state their skills (either manually inputted or is synced from a user’s verified LinkedIn account) all within a responsive website. a W ith 400-plus assessments ranging from technical coding to marketing/communication concepts, candidates can begin to validate their claimed skillsets. a Users take adaptive assessments that

a M yUnfold takes the level of a candidate’s assessed skill(s) and pairs them to specific or similar jobs that match to skill requirements, giving recruiters quality leads instantaneously that are ready to be reviewed and put through the hiring funnel. a T his is powered by a match-making algorithm that just keeps getting smarter and smarter. a R ecruiters only see top-quality candidates, and can choose to learn more or move on to the next set of quality candidates in their MyUnfold candidate pool.

MyUnfold is changing how the hiring process works. Instead of figuring out what to apply for, filling out applications, or waiting for a response, candidates will instantaneously learn from the assessments which career opportunities they can take. Recruiters will be able to access candidates who possess the skills they are looking for. This makes the recruiting process better, so you can stop searching and start working.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

The Back Story

The Commoditization of Talent Management Software By Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte The products that are used to manage talent today – no matter their origins – look far more alike than they are differentiated. Functionally they virtually all do the same things, many in the same ways. Yikes! What is a potential buyer to do? Differentiation among job posting management, 9-Box grids, course sign-up pages, employee profiles – almost nil. And if one provider is missing some area today – well, it will probably be com·mod·i·ty \kə-'mä-də-tē\ 4: a good or service whose wide availabili- in the product tomorrow. ty typically leads to smaller profit margins Solutions are growing horizontally, leap-frogging and diminishes the importance of factors each other daily – but (as brand name) other than price not necessarily becoming increasingly different! The good news for buyers is that on the surface, many of the available talent management systems will do the job. But here, let’s peek under the covers. Given the sameness in functionality, what does differentiate the talent management suites today? Here are some key areas buyers can look at:

1. User Interfaces a. Older applications often support navigation through tabs on the top of a window – looking rather like a series of file folders. Navigation is usually accomplished by clicking the tab plus drop-down menus, which provide a list. Items selected then move the user to another window. Screens are very chart-like, often spreadsheet-like. Widgets, little boxes if you will, each individually actionable, often replace this look and feel – creating a page of user-definable choices for what end users want to see in their workspaces and where they want to see it. 2013 was the year that widgets morphed into “tiles”

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

– primarily used for navigation. The result now in 2015 has been a cleaner, simpler interface. All this leads to the possibility of creating a more personalized work environment. b. More recently, the influence of consumer-grade applications has permeated the user interface world as pages for both managers and employees increasingly look and respond more like the solutions people use to search, shop and traverse the Net. One-click movement to relevant data has replaced icons, tabs, and drop-down menus as a means to move users to the functions of choice. The distance (in clicks) to get to the functions is increasingly shorter (a key feature in usability). d. Tablet interfaces support swiping and pinching as navigational means, and have changed the way in which users interact with the software environment. With the increased number of tablets in the workplace, vendors are addressing (some at a furious pace) the consistency of the interfaces that they are presenting across business functions. e. Smartphones are ubiquitous in the workplace. The talent management software vendors, almost to a one, have mobile applications in the market today. They have successfully moved from the simple and unsatisfactory access to a website to real business applications, spurred by the widespread and rapid adoption of HTML5. Despite this, mobile support is not a key factor in buying decisions in the majority of talent management software acquisitions. What’s up here? New research by from Bersin by Deloitte shows little

appetite for HR to consider its apps on smartphones. f. Because ease-of-use is key in getting users to utilize software products, buyers are encouraged to consider the “modern” look of the user experience, the number of clicks (two – no more than three) and the method of moving from one business process to another, and the latency, if any, in the response time between a click or touch and the desired result appearing on the screen.

2. Social Integration While mobile is barely trending up, “social” is trending down. Neither are top buying criteria for talent management buyers. We surveyed 23 talent management solutions providers on their social technology integration with other talent modules, including learning management, performance, management and recruiting/ applicant tracking systems. We measured the extent social technology was embedded within those modules. In our sample of vendors, only Cornerstone OnDemand, Halogen, PeopleFluent, Saba, and SilkRoad have social technology embedded in all three modules of learning, performance and the talent acquisition solution. Few vendors have no such functionality, but most have social technology embedded in at least one of the modules. Because a fair number of providers jumped on the 2012 bandwagon and integrated a social solution at one or many points within their talent management applications, we see some apps that look like bolt-ons for the sake of being “social.” But many are application-specific forums for recognitions that are maintained in performance management programs, forums for discussion on specific courses and shared classroom work, or “chatter-like” company sites that allow employees to keep in touch and share ideas. Sometimes applications include the ability to reach out to others to find information, tracking the informal learning network. In the broad range of solutions that we reviewed, some presented a highly social environment, while some had none whatsoever. It is likely that the business concept of “collaboration” will prove

both more useful and measurable than solely the past focus on “social” that was not tied to business outcomes.

3. Degree of Integration Solution integration is an angst-causing issue for HR – and a key driver for solution replacement. Why? Even within one provider’s platform, some modules are loosely integrated at best, which results in the inability of data to smoothly glide between and across modules, even in the same product set. Why do we care? HR cannot readily derive the analytics sought through disparate products cobbled together with duct tape and chewing gum. What’s the issue? Many of the solution providers created their talent management suites through acquisitions. The combined “suite” is often not as integrated as most buyers would like; it is often apparent when the user moves from one module to the next – some, in fact, still have the prior solution’s names in them. These loosely coupled applications need work before they really provide the integrated user experience that most HR practitioners seek. Today, often the smoothest user experience is provided by companies that created their products indigenously from the ground up (although those providers may not have the total application set in terms of modules delivered), as well as by companies that immediately invested in developing that commonality of experience over all the different modules, no matter what their origins were.

4. The Depth and Breadth of Embedded Analytics Consider the three tiers of analytics solutions in talent management software today. First is the module-by-module provision of the data that you would expect – time to hire, counts of likely successors by position, numbers enrolling in courses, etc. – plus the capability for ad-hoc reporting. Second, we see solutions that have an additional module specifically for reporting or analytics. In this case, the buyer needs a separate product and that product collects data from the other modules to provide synthesized reporting, generally through dashboards. Third, and becoming far more widely www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • March 2015

accepted as the norm, is the provision of embedded analytics in each module with rich cross-functional reporting and predictive capabilities. HR analytics is a hopping focus for talent management providers today: dashboards, scorecards, benchmarks, predictors, and more are spilling into the marketplace (more vendor leap-frogging here). This may well be the most confusing aspect for the HR buyer because bedazzlement may easily occur. And being the “new kid on the block” of application sophistication also can be the most differentiated in terms of depth and breadth of functionality. Many of the new HR analytics solutions are simply a “me too” look alike on the surface, with providers simply putting the proverbial “lipstick on a pig” to make it appear they provide the same sophistication of the true leading innovators in the HR analytics arena. Take the time to consider what analytics you need, who needs them, exactly what metrics in the vendor’s solutions are used to create the analytics—and how it has been validated. Then consider your audience’s capability to interpret the results. Some solutions offer both querying and the information returned in far more easily understood natural language than others. The talent management systems’ landscape has slowly transitioned from a focus on the integration of HR processes, like recruiting, performance management, succession planning, learning management and compensation, to a focus on people-related outcomes. These include driving employee engagement, retention, productivity and innovation, building talent pools for critical positions, addressing skills gaps, and ensuring a pipeline of skilled future leadership. Historically,

March 2015 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

the markets for applicant tracking (recruiting), performance management (appraisals, pay-for-performance) succession, compensation, and learning were separate. These application areas have rapidly converged, as witnessed by the degree of integration in the applications available to you today. Vendors will likely continue to provide mobile interfaces; more applications will likely be tablet-ready, as the “develop-formobile-first” mantra continues to resonate. Social software has moved from applicationspecific bolt-ons to the “platform” level, serving as an “underbelly” beneath the integrated suites in total. Providers will continue to look at their user interfaces with a critical eye – seeking to attain the interactive friendliness of consumer-grade software. Commodity or not, About the Author integration is a key imperative in Dr. Katherine Jones is a vice president, focusing on human capital all human capital management management (HCM) technology technology, from core HR to the research, at Bersin by Deloitte, talent systems that surround it. Deloitte Consulting LLP. She analyzes “Buyer beware!” the underlying technologies and services that support the management of a global workforce, including HR, hiring and performance management and workforce planning. Jones is a veteran in enterprise workforce and talent management applications and a recognized expert in cloud computing. Prior to joining Bersin by Deloitte, she was a research director at the Aberdeen Group for eight years where she established Aberdeen’s HCM practice, focusing on research and consulting services in HR, talent acquisition, workforce management, ERP and mid-market companies. Later, she was the director of Marketing for NetSuite Inc., a cloud-based ERP company. She has written on many areas of talent management, technology and business practices. With over 300 works published to date, she is also a frequent speaker in the U.S. and abroad. Prior to a high-technology career, Jones was a university dean, involved in academic administration, research and teaching. She has a master’s degree and a doctorate from Cornell University. She can be reached at kathjones@deloitte.com.

2015 education technology community

IHRiM

ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Sept 16-20, 2015 | Atlanta, GA

For additional information, contact: Annette M. Suriani, CMP Director, Meetings and Events 703-261-6562 asuriani@ihrim.org

Network with your peers. Expand your knowledge of HR issues. Find tech solutions for today and tomorrow.

IHRIM is the community for sharing expert knowledge that leverages HR systems, technologies, and analytics for business excellence. IHRIM is the leading association for HR systems and HR information management professionals. IHRIM provides unparalleled professional development opportunities through our annual conference, courses, webinars (all free to members) and topical forums (both face to face and online). We offer you the ability to become certified under our Human Resource Information Professional (HRIP) Certification Program and facilitate the sharing of best practices, professional collaboration and networking. As most benefits are available online, you can access information when you need it, anytime and anywhere. www.ihrim.org

The (R)evolution in Org Charting

Are you still drawing? Org charts –

fully automated, personalized, and easy to use! • Seamless integration into any system environment SAP®, Oracle®, SuccessFactors®, etc.

07, 2015

1:00pm EST

April

21,2015

1:00pm EST

w w w. inge nt is. co m

• Unlimited layout and design features • Visual HR reporting using conditioned formatting and graphs

Get your free 30-day trial of Ingentis org.manager today!

• User friendly simulation component

+1.800.477.1408

om_Anzeige 7,5x10 inch_M.indd 1

mail@ingentis.com

www.ingentis.com

12.01.2015 09:14:42