WSR November 2014

November 2014

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

IHRIM.ORG

The Employee Life Cycle: Hire-to-Retire Technologies

See Compensation/Benefits Buyer’s Guide on Page 24

Contents

Volume 5, Number 5 • November 2014

features

Compensation/Benefits Buyer’s Guide

Page 24

columns From the Editors

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Shawn Fitzgerald, lead editor Bruno Querenet, editor Jeff Higgins, editor

The Extended Workforce

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Talent-as-a-Service: How to Navigate the New Workforce Ecosystem

By Nicole Dessain, Talent Imperative

Global Mobility

Extreme Recruiting Approaches Emerge as the Battle for Top Talent Increases

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By Dr. John Sullivan, San Francisco State University Things are now moving as fast as they did during the last “war for talent” in 1999. Whether you work in the Silicon Valley or not; the steamroller of these aggressive changes is headed in your direction. The time has come where you will be forced to raise your aggressiveness level…be prepared.

Virtual Job Tryout: Exciting Recruiting Technology in HR

Social Enterprise

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A cool and innovative new technology in HR and the area of recruiting is created by a company called SHAKER. Joseph Murphy, vice president and co-founder of SHAKER gives WSR readers an opportunity to learn more about its recruiting solution during this recent interview.

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By Gayle Norton, talentRISE People who leave their organization may be brutally honest about their experiences. In addition, it’s likely that they have recently been job hunting and interviewing and can offer some useful intelligence on how their former company compares with other employers. Clearly, information gathered through exit interviews can be worth its weight in gold.

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Cool New Uses of Big Data for HR An Interview with Michael Beygelman, CEO of Joberate

Strategic HR?

An Interview with Joseph Murphy, co-founder of SHAKER

Onboarding not Working? Learn from your Offboarding Practices.

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Using Technology to Optimize Global Mobility Management

By Ed Hannibal, Yvonne Traber and Paul Jelinek, Mercer Global Mobility Technology Solutions

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Employees are like Peanut Butter and Napkins: A Story of HR not yet at the Strategic Table

By Jeff Higgins, Human Capital Management Institute

Executive Interview

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Featuring Wolfgang Tauman, Elke Nigge, and Udo Stauber of METRO AG

The Back Story

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Looking for Technology that’s in it for Life

By Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte

Accelerating Talent Development and Succession Planning through Technology 14

By Nancy Johnson, DeVry Education Group Among other positive outcomes as a result of implementing new technology tools, in the last calendar year, 250 key talent colleagues were identified with confidence and DeVry Group is accelerating the investment in their development through participation in leadership development programs, development plan creation, and short-term coaching.

Learning on the Go: Mobile Learning as it’s Lived

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Rob Keery, Brightwave The technology we all carry around in our pockets changes not only the way our learners learn, but empowers them to take control of their learning and become creators, consumers and curators of the best learning content to support and optimize workplace performance.

Compliance and Consumerism Drive Demand for Benefit Point Solutions

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By Rhonda Marcucci, Gruppo Marcucci Health care reform is here to stay but there will be ongoing modifications to employee health and welfare benefits, requiring the industry to remain attentive and agile – something at which good point solutions excel. When easily integrated with HCMs, it’s a win-win for the employer and the employee.

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 • November 2014

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Volume 5, Number 5 • November 2014

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

© 2014 All rights reserved

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

Associate Editors ERIK ALVARADO, Associate Director, Global HRIS SD&D, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals erik.alvarado@boehringer-ingelheim.com DAVID GABRIEL, Ed.D., Global Reach Leadership, Berkleley, CA davidcgabriel@gmail.com ROBERT C. GREENE, Channels Account Executive and Sales Training Manager, Ascentis, San Mateo, CA USA rcgreene@mindspring.com JEFF HIGGINS, CEO, Human Capital Management Institute, Marina Del Rey, CA USA jeff.higgins@hcminst.com ERIC LESSER, Research Director, IBM Institute for Business Value, Boston, MA USA elesser@us.ibm.com BRUNO QUERENET, HR Technology Executive, High-Tech and Medical Industries, Sunnyvale, CA USA bruno.querenet@gmail.com MICHAEL RUDNICK, Principal Consultant, KnowledgeSource Consulting, New York, New York USA Michael.rudnick@jeitosa.com FREDDYE SILVERMAN, CEO, Silver Bullet Solutions, Baltimore, MD USA, freddye.silverman@gmail.com

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

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ERIK BERGGREN, VP, Customer Results & Global Research, Success Factors, San Mateo, CA USA eberggren@successfactors.com JOSH BERSIN, Principal and Founder, Bersin by Deloitte, Oakland, CA USA jbersin@bersin.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

LEXY MARTIN, Vice President, Research & Analytics, CedarCrestone, Alpharetta, GA USA alexia.martin@cedarcrestone.com BRIAN RETZLAFF, Head of IT for HR, Legal & Communications, ING US Insurance Americas, Atlanta, GA USA brian.retzlaff@us.ing.com LISA ROWAN, Program Director, HR, Learning & Talent Strategies, IDC, Framingham, MA USA lrowan@idc.com Dr. DANIEL SULLIVAN, Professor of International Business, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware USA sullivad@lerner.udel.edu MARK SMITH, CEO, Chief Research Officer, and Founder of Ventana Research, San Ramon, CA USA mark.smith@ventanaresearch.com DAVE ULRICH, Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA dou@umich.edu DR. MARY YOUNG, Principal Researcher, Human Capital, The Conference Board, New York, NY USA mary.young@conference-board.org

GARY DURBIN, Chief Technology Officer, SynchSource, Oakland, CA USA hacker@synchsource.com

IHRIM BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Dr. CHARLES H. FAY, Professor, School of Management & Labor Relations, Rutgers University, Highland Park, NJ USA cfay@smlr.rutgers.edu

Officers

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

Chairman of the Board KEVIN CARLSON, Ph.D., Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business Vice Chair DAMON LOVETT, HRIP, KnowledgeSource HR

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

Chief Financial Officer JEREMY AMES, HRIP, Hive Tech HR

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

Secretary BOB LUPP, HRIP, Gaucho Group

JIM HOLINCHECK, Vice President, Services Strategy & Marketing, Workday, Inc. james.holincheck@workday.com CATHERINE ANN HONEY, VP, Customer Services, Radius Worldwide catherine.honey@comcast.net DR. KATHERINE JONES, HCM Research, Bersin by Deloitte, San Mateo, CA USA kathjones@deloitte.com SYNCO JONKEREN, VP, HCM Applications Product Development & Management, EMEA, The Netherlands synco.jonkeren@oracle.com MICHAEL J. KAVANAGH, Professor Emeritus of Management, State University of Albany (SUNY), Albany, NY USA mickey.kavanagh@gmail.com

IHRIM Past Chair NOV OMANA, HRIP, Penn State University IHRIM Executive Director TODD MANN

Directors DAVID BROOK, HRIP, Southern California Permanente JOYCE BROWN, HRIP, Brink’s Inc. MARIO ELLIS, HRIP, St. Luke’s Health System GARY MORLOCK, HRIP, Qualcomm, Inc. JAMES PETTIT HRIP, CareFusion SHERRY TIMMERMAN, Federated Co-operatives Limited

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

PUBLISHING INFORMATION

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

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

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

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

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

November 2014 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

From the Editors Shawn Fitzgerald, Lead 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. She has worked in the financial services, technology, professional services, utilities and health care industries.

She has an undergraduate and MBA from Dominican University, holds the PMP, SPHR, and HRIP certifications, is an associate editor for the IHRIM Workforce Solutions Review, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. She can be reached at sfitzgerald@devrygroup.com.

Bruno Querenet, Editor Bruno Querenet is an HR technology executive with extensive international experience in the high tech and medical industries, with a track record of achievements within IT and HR. He has led business transformations requiring cross functional coordination, change management and process re-engineering. He is passionate about the potential human capital represents for the enterprise. He can be reached at bruno.querenet@gmail.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.

As our seasons change, so do employees transition into stages of their careers within our organizations. The employee life cycle is the HR model that describes this. HR strategy is critical for an effective employee life cycle to ensure that management is proactive and connected, and not reactive or simply tactical. We know that HR strategy created in isolation from organizational strategy won’t be effective.

Technology is a key ingredient in supporting HR strategy and in making the employee life cycle more effective. Our authors discuss how from initial recruitment to final offboarding, HR technology supports an engaging employee experience.

We begin with a review of “extreme” recruiting approaches by Dr. John Sullivan, the HR visionary and educator. Dr. Sullivan, always searching for leading organizations, walks through intriguing practices that cutting edge practitioners employ to get the best and the brightest. On another talent acquisition topic, we have an interview with Joseph Murphy, VP and co-founder of SHAKER. Joe discusses Virtual Job TryoutTM, a tool that combines the power of highly branded, realistic job preview and simulated work activities along with more traditional assessment methods. This tool creates a more engaging candidate experience while the value is shown through ROI. Typically the second process in the employee life cycle is onboarding. Gayle Norton, principal at TalentRise examines why it is impor-

tant for organizations to make an excellent first and last impression on an employee.

Several articles focus on case studies and best practice reviews about how to get the development and performance phase of the life cycle right. Nancy Johnson, VP of Talent Acquisition and Development at DeVry Education Group, details how her organization improved the annual talent review and succession planning process through technology. When the succession planning cycle was enabled with technology, additional data already known about employees like engagement scores could be combined to tell a whole story of the organizational talent resources. On another development topic, “Learning on the go” is gaining attention in employee development with the use of mobile devices and Web lectures via podcasts. Rob Keery with Brightwave, tells us how students no longer need to be tied to one place or time when learning.

Rhonda Marcucci, partner and consultant at Gruppo Marcucci reexamines her 2012 Workforce Solutions Review article in which she wrote that the use of point solutions was critical in health and welfare benefits enrollment and administration. With the reality of the U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA), now more than ever it is important for “the industry to remain attentive and agile – something at which good point solutions excel.” Thirty-four percent of the U.S. workforce is now working as freelancers; and that number is growing. Organizations need new approaches to understand their extended workforce.

In our next article, Nicole Dessain, founder of talent.imperative shares her thoughts on “Talent as a Service.” She points out some tactical tips to help organizations use their contract labor to create competitive advantage.

Ed Hannibal, Yvonne Traber and Paul Jelinek of Mercer discuss how technology can improve your global mobility processes and enhance the expatriate experience.They provide a set of questions that every organization should use to assess whether their organization is using technology appropriately with their global population.

Employee retention is critical to a successful organization, but you can’t intervene and keep employees from leaving if you don’t know who is at risk. In an interview with Michael Beygelman, CEO of Joberate he explains the “J Score,” which is a measure that can predict an employee’s risk of leaving your organization derived through unique big data analytics for social media.

With probably our most unique article title yet, “Employees are like Peanut Butter and Napkins,” Jeff Higgins, provides a practical case study on HR’s place at the strategy table. The article illustrates how HR is often invited to strategy discussions after decisions are already set, and then has to work twice as hard to influence outcomes.

In an interview, Wolfgang Tauman, Elke Nigge, and Udo Stauber at METRO AG discuss their journey towards HR optimization from hire to retire with the “Blue Sky” project. The team shares how this seven-month project helped save money, improved HR service through enabled technologies, and allowed HR to lead value-added activities at the fifth largest retailer in the world.

In The Back Story, Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte, caps off our issue by reporting that the movement to integrated talent management has reignited the concept of a virtual cradle-to-grave people management environment at work. She looks at “end-to-end and then some” and the data management ramifications for HR professionals.

I would like to thank my co-editors, Jeff Higgins and Bruno Querenet for their dedicated work on this issue. We hope you will employ many of the ideas and that you learn and take some practice advice from our knowledgeable authors. Enjoy this issue!

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Feature figured out that if you “lock up the good drivers then you lock up the market.” They gain that recruiting dominance primarily by booking rides with their competitors and because the driver can’t get away, it’s easy for them to provide their polished recruiting sales pitch. Because many drivers are male, they have learned to use attractive female recruiting ambassadors to help sway drivers. They utilize an ultra-smart referral program which provides $250 for a referral, but that amount doubles if the referral is from a targeted competitor (a Lyft driver).

The bonus doubles again if the hired individual is a driver trainer at a competitor. They also went so far as to tow a huge mobile billboard around San Francisco that the drivers at competitors simply can’t miss. The billboard says “Shave the Stache” in reference to the large pink mustache that Lyft drivers place on their car grill.

Extreme Recruiting Approaches Emerge as the Battle for Top Talent Increases

By Dr. John Sullivan, San Francisco State University

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ne of my specialties is identifying what I call “bleeding edge” practices in recruiting and talent management. It’s relatively easy for me to find them because I live in the Silicon Valley, the hotbed of aggressive new approaches to talent management. So many aggressive recruiting approaches emanate here because the economy in the Silicon Valley is extremely robust and there is an extremely high demand for hard-to-find technologists. It is also true because startups must literally fight for attention in the land of Google, Apple, Twitter, and Facebook, which are leading the way in introducing some amazingly aggressive and extreme recruiting approaches. My research has revealed a wide array of new recruiting practices. If you’re not using them, it may indicate that your firm is falling behind the competition.

Uber: Clever Captive Recruiting – This San Francisco-based firm is in a battle for top drivers who now drive for competitor Lyft. Like Uber, Lyft is a transportation network company (TNC) that uses an onlineenabled platform to connect passengers with drivers using their personal, non-commercial vehicles. Uber has

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Captive Recruiting at the Google Bus Stop – Google is well known for providing luxury buses for its employees from San Francisco to its headquarters in Mountain View. With heavy traffic, it’s not uncommon for Googlers to have to wait a good while for the next bus. The Tumblr arm of Yahoo figured out that this line of employees would be a great place to recruit, so they placed a free coffee stand there and used it as a recruiting station. Not to be outdone, startup Bigcommerce also joined the raid on the line with coffee, invitations to a lavish party and “poached egg sandwiches” (obviously not so subtly referring to the recruiting term poaching).

Another firm Roku also recruited at the Google bus stop where they gave away “Roku boxes” filled with Roku gadgets worth between $45 and $100.

“I love my job” TV Advertising – Everyone knows that TV reaches a wide range of individuals so it’s not surprising that the recruiting function has begun to utilize it more. What is particularly bold is an approach that shares product advertising with “I love my job” recruiting advertising. Walmart started the approach, but Sam Adams beer and Coors Third Street brand have also utilized it. The Coors commercial includes attention grabbing phrases like: “I love my job.” “A story about loving what you do.”

“When you love your job, you never work a day in your life.” And, “When beer is your calling, you never clock out.” It’s hard to miss the premise that if you love your job, you will produce a quality product.

“Forget the Campus Visit” College Recruiting – There are few areas in recruiting that are more conservative than college recruiting so it was a major

breakthrough when Nestlé Purina used “quality of hire data” to determine that the best college hires often didn’t come from schools that the company visited.

Obviously campus visits are time-consuming, expensive, and problematic because many students now seldom visit their campus during the day. The firm shifted to a 100 percent remote college recruiting model. Nestlé Purina now relies on a wide range of social media to identify and sell college prospects. This model allows them to expand their recruiting reach to recruit the very best from remote schools that few other firms bother to visit. The best identified prospects are still invited to their campus for the person-to-person contact. And as a result, the quality of applicants, the quality of hire, manager satisfaction, and hiring costs have all moved in a positive direction.

Insulting Recruiting Video – Competitive recruiting has moved to a new level of competitiveness since game creator Kixeye put together an outrageous recruiting video that insults and pokes direct fun at their product and talent competitors. The video literally mocks the age of EA’s approach to gaming by including the logo “EAARP Games” (a reference to the AARP senior group) and an aging executive with an oxygen breathing tank and heart monitor. They also mock another competitor, Zynga by transforming their famous dog logo into an inappropriate image. Kixeye’s CEO narrates the video himself and he uses expletives (something that endears him to gamers) in the video. To most, this mocking would definitely be in bad taste, but to candidates in the gaming industry, it may be considered cool and bold. Videos have also been used in lieu of résumés for applications. For example, Snapchat only accepted applications by way of a Snapchat picture or video; they received an amazing 2,000 Snapchats in three days.

Transforming Employee Referrals – Referrals have been around a long time and they are popular because they produce the highest volume and the highest quality of hire. But recently startup firms have taken referrals to a new level because they have found that offering outrageously high referral awards yields a great deal of media and social network buzz. Hubspot gave a $30,000 reward and numerous other firms have given between $10,000 and $20,000. In addition to the money, other innovations include allowing non-employees to refer and adding equally as large sign-on bonuses to encourage the preferred individual to accept. Thumbtack’s referral program has awarded the employee who referred an all-expense-paid trip around the world.

Non-employees who successfully referred received a four-night all-expense paid trip to Hawaii with a stay at the Four Seasons. Other firms have learned to “assign

a referral” using software in order to identify which of their employees is most likely to know a prospect that they want to target. Accolo’s referral community is a shining example because they have averaged an amazing eight referrals for every job.

Debunking Traditional Hiring Criteria – Many hiring managers and recruiters simply assume that they know the best criteria to use for selecting their new hires. Well, as the world of recruiting shifts to a databased decision model, much of what we thought we knew has proven to be untrue. For example, Google, the world’s only metric-driven HR function, has conducted internal research to find that GPAs, test scores, and brainteaser interview questions are simply worthless in predicting on-the-job success. This is especially interesting because Google, for years, required astronomical grades and test scores of its applicants. They found that many of their best hires not only did not have a college degree, but they had no college classes at all. Their internal research has also shown that even though “many managers, recruiters, and HR staffers think they have a special ability to sniff out talent, they’re wrong.” Google found that most unstructured interviews are “a complete random mess: We found a zero relationship (between interview scores and on-the-job performance).” And even though Google was famous for requiring as many as a dozen interviews for each candidate, they found that no value was added “after four interviews.” They also found the time-to-fill was essential in landing top college candidates. At least at Google, what they found in addition to technical capability was surprising for some, “learning ability.”

The Mobile Phone is becoming Dominant in Recruiting Communications – It’s no secret that most techies and innovators love their smart phones since they carry it with them 24/7. Because the mobile phone often has the highest response rate and response speed to a message, it’s becoming the dominant recruiting communications channel. Smart recruiters have learned to take advantage of the power of the mobile platform by tailoring their recruiting approach to take advantage of its features to include games, recruiting videos, and texting. The best firms like McDonald’s and Sodexo have also learned that you must develop an application process that allows prospects to apply from their phone directly to a mobile website. Firms like Starbucks and Carl Jr.’s are also placing phone card dispensers near their registers. These credit card sized cards contain a QR code that allows mobile phone users to instantly access job-related information about the firm.

Big Data Usage is Finally Impacting Recruiting – Although it’s still only for advanced users, many

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recruiting leaders have learned that if you can mine big data you can find and learn about almost every professional around the world. Using a combination of consumer data and social media profiles in complex Boolean Internet searches finding talent has moved from being difficult to the point that you can build or buy profiles of almost everyone you might want to recruit. In addition to finding prospects, sophisticated algorithms can now help you identify the right day and time periods that a fully employed prospect may consider entering job search mode. This capability allows you to find the right time when a prospect is unhappy or when their firm may be in trouble, even though this individual may have said no to interviewing even months before.

Prospect and Candidate Research is Finally Impacting Recruiting – As recruiting becomes more data-driven, firms learn to use market research techniques to improve recruiting. This type of survey, focus group, and interview research allows you to identify specifically where top performers might see a recruiting message and what must be in that message in order to garner their attention. Prospect/candidate research can also reveal who should make the initial call and what they should say in order to avoid an immediate hang-up.

This research can also identify the job acceptance criteria and the “knockout factors” that an individual is likely to use in determining which new job they will accept.

This research can also reveal who will influence their decision, so that recruiters can also reach out to these influencers. Finally, this type of market research allows you to understand and map the actual job search process of a targeted group of prospects including top performers, innovators, and diverse individuals.

Virtual Job Previews are Emerging – Recruiting has been slow to adopt simulations for attracting and assessing top talent. However, some firms like Starbucks and Marriott have begun to utilize online interactive exercises, which excite prospects because it allows them to get a virtual job preview of the work they will be asked to do. These exercises can also serve as an assessment tool. KPMG has also utilized a form of simulation in order to assess prospects.

Video Job Descriptions Turn Out to be a Powerful Selling Tool – We all know that the younger generation loves videos and hates reading dry material, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that de-emphasizing narrative job descriptions and providing an alternative video job description is an emerging recruiting approach.

Because the actual hiring manager and the team appear in the video, it allows outsiders to feel the excitement at your firm. Video job descriptions or VJDs are a 3-for-1 opportunity for measurably improving your recruiting

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results. First of all, they are an opportunity because they provide the job seeker with an authentic human view of the job from the team’s perspective that makes it easy for the prospect to see, hear and feel their excitement for the job and the passion that they have for filling it with the right person. VJDs are also an opportunity because by using video in this new way, applicants will see that your firm is bold, and that it is willing to use innovative approaches (even in recruiting) that include technology, video, and that utilize social media. And finally, video job descriptions provide you with an opportunity to re-examine the painfully dull 100 percent text job descriptions that most organizations currently use and to improve them so that they now provide a competitive advantage over the less compelling job descriptions of the same job at competitor firms. Vans, a retail store, created a VJD for all possible retail positons. The videos created by the VP of store operations walks you through “the life of a Vans employee” in that role while highlighting the company culture, the job requirements, job duties, and at the very end, adds a personal message of “I look forward to meeting you soon.” This not only captures the entire job description, but makes job seekers see, hear, and feel aspects of the company that are not emulated through plain text.

Boomerangs/Rehiring Previous Employees – Because so many quality employees have been laid off or departed during the last few years, now that the economy is improving, it makes sense to consider rehiring some of the best that “got away.” The best way to ensure a high-quality hire with a clear record of performance is to re-recruit performers that previously worked at your firm (i.e., boomerang rehires). Many of these individuals might now regret their decision to leave, but they may be hesitant to reapply. A simple note as they are leaving your firm or a phone call from a recruiter or an employee in their former department reassuring them that they would be welcomed back might be all it will take to re-land proven talent. Firms like DaVita have made this approach a mainstay, because as many as 16 percent of their hires have been boomerangs.

“Silver Medalists” are Worth another Shot – Because times have been lean, firms have rejected a high percentage of their candidates. But now that the job market is tightened, it’s also time to revisit previous high-quality candidates using a program known as “Silver Medalists.” The term comes from the Olympics where the silver medal winner may have just been a fraction away from winning. A “Silver Medalist” in recruiting may be someone who simply had the bad luck of applying for the same job that was eventually given to a superstar candidate. If they would have applied any other time, they would’ve gotten the job. One way

to save recruiting resources is to simply revisit the star candidates that “got away.” Reach out to candidates who voluntarily dropped out of the hiring process, turned down an offer, or who were finalists in a slate where a super candidate ended up getting the job. Not only are these candidates valuable because they have already been assessed and they have shown an interest in your firm but because they also now have even more experience.

Live Video Interviewing is becoming Mainstream – Managers have been in love with face-to-face interviews for centuries, but it is now becoming a standard practice to conduct many interviews live over the Internet. Obviously they save travel costs but another advantage is that people who are currently working have great difficulty scheduling and attending multiple interviews without placing their existing job in jeopardy.

Make interviews easier to attend by using live Internet video interviews that can even be conducted over a mobile phone. Using them will show candidates that you understand the value of technology, but it will also increase the numbers which are willing to participate in an interview.

The Powerful “Exploding Offer” has Returned – One of the most powerful tools in recruiting is the exploding offer, which can effectively close candidates who are likely to get multiple offers closed very quickly.

They are a form of sign-on bonus, but they work because they are offered contingent upon accepting your offer immediately. If the offer is not accepted right away, the bonus continually decreases over the next few days or it goes away completely. This bold approach can provide a powerful incentive for reluctant candidates to accept or make a quick decision.

Final Thoughts It’s only been recently that the recruiting world has snapped out of its years of being in the doldrums, but things are now moving as fast as they did during the last “war for talent” in 1999. Whether you work in the Silicon Valley or not, the steamroller of these aggressive changes is headed in your direction. So the time has come where you will be forced to raise your aggressiveness level…be prepared.

About the Author Dr. John Sullivan is an internationally known HR thought leader from the Silicon Valley who specializes in providing bold and high business impact; strategic talent management to large corporations. He is a prolific author with over 900 articles and 10 business books covering all areas of talent management. He has written more than a dozen white papers, conducted more than 50 webinars, dozens of workshops, and he has been featured in more than 35 videos. As a speaker, he has addressed more than 300 corporations and organizations in 30 countries on all six continents.

His ideas have appeared in every major business source including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Fast Company, and The New York Times. He has been interviewed on CNN, and the CBS and ABC nightly news. He served as the chief talent office of Agilent Technologies, the HP spinoff with 43,000 employees. He is currently a professor of management at San Francisco State University. He can be reached at johns@sfsu.edu.

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Feature

Virtual Job Tryout: Exciting Recruiting Technology in HR A cool and innovative new technology in HR and the area of recruiting is created by a company called SHAKER. Joseph Murphy, vice president and co-founder of SHAKER gives WSR readers an opportunity to learn more about its recruiting solution in this recent interview.

WSR: So maybe you could tell us a little bit about your background and SHAKER and how your company created the Virtual Job Tryout®.

Joe Murphy: Absolutely. SHAKER is coming up on its 13year anniversary. We were founded by a group of industrial psychologists and me, a 30-year-plus veteran of business and HR. So, how did we get into the Virtual Job Tryout? At the time we founded SHAKER, assessment providers were facing the migration of assessments to the Web. And at that time, as you may know, the initial practice was pure Web 1.0 – merely moving a bubble sheet from a Scantron form to radio buttons on the Web. We knew that that was grossly underutilizing the delivery medium the Web had to offer. So we explored ways of integrating the multimedia experience available through Web delivery. We looked at the speed of data collection that could be accomplished through instant remote and wide distribution. We looked at the mass customization and digital brand presence taking shape as each company developed its own website. It was pretty exciting digital frontier.

The Virtual Job Tryout emerged as we combined the power of highly branded realistic job preview, and simulated work activities along with more traditional assessment methods. This created a distinctive candidate experience that engaged and educated the applicants, delivered a multimethod assessment that mirrored the complexity of the job, all wrapped inside a highly scripted company career message.

The name was actually coined after we had our first few clients. We were asked to make a presentation about our work at a professional conference of industrial psychologists. It is widely known that job tryout is a strong predic-

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tor of success. However, it is expensive and lengthy. As we described what the candidate experience and what the company learns, the name Virtual Job Tryout emerged.

We are able to achieve similar levels of accuracy predicting on-the-job success at a fraction of the cost, and in minutes instead of weeks. It took off, people “got it,” and so we went on to get a registered trademark for Virtual Job Tryout.

Today, we have some pretty sophisticated proprietary technology as a result of tremendous collaboration with incredible clients. The engagements typically went something like: “That is really fascinating! Can you do this?” We work with market leaders with unique jobs that demand differentiated talent capabilities. Working together we have pushed the envelope of Web-based assessment. A few years back one seasoned executive suggested we were delivering Web 3.0 experiences in the Web 2.0 era.

We embed four to seven different types of assessment experiences. Through engagements we have created a wide range of simulated work activities: multi-tasking, inventory checking, cash handling, delegation and prioritization, rulebased problem solving, and more. In addition, more traditional evaluation tools such as situational judgment, work history, and work style questionnaires are included. The result is a whole-person, job-fit evaluation.

Over the years we have continued to innovate in the interactive space. We have proprietary exercises (in the Virtual Job Tryout) that involve open text brainstorming and idea generation and note taking. As an example, one of our clients is an insurance company. They hire phone-based claims adjusters. We can evaluate the quality of notes they (candidates) take while listening to a simulated call. We assess how well they can actually summarize key content from an insured’s call regarding information about the claim that they’re processing. This complex exercise evaluates listening, typing, detail orientation, and summarizing accuracy in one multi-tasking experience.

WSR: Okay, that sounds impressive. Can you tell us more?

If you can, tell us how you are able to assess text? I know there’s a lot of text analytics going on, and that sounds a bit like what you have (at SHAKER Consulting).

Murphy: Text analytics is just one element. Our approach also allows us to do things that traditional PC and/or paperbased assessment is not able to do. In a traditional assessment you might just give somebody a finite period of time to complete a task. We look at speed, accuracy, and we can evaluate navigation, time on page, etc.

The analogy that I use is the math teacher who would always ask you to “show your work” when solving problems. We are interested in the answer, but we can also look at how the candidate got to the answer. We explore the relationship with how an individual navigates the online exercises, and in some cases, we’re able to use their navigation patterns as part of our scoring routine. This is a form of big data analysis. The amount of data we collect from one

individual during the completion of a Virtual Job Tryout is pretty remarkable. After we collect data from thousands or tens of thousands of candidates we are able to refine scoring algorithms and increase the accuracy of our predictive modeling. Recruiters identify best-fit candidates accurately and quickly.

WSR: What have you been using the Virtual Job Tryout for? Is it something for high volume positions, high complexity positions, or something else? We understand you have a good sized client base.

Murphy: We say it delivers impact on three value streams.

Three areas where a company can calculate a return-oninvestment: 1. Administrative efficiency - less time and effort to advance candidates to the hiring decision; 2. Staffing waste and rework – reduced 90-day turnover and lower costs for training and assimilation; and, 3. Performance variation – faster time to proficiency and higher levels of productivity.

Job families that we address sometimes favor one or more of those impact areas differently. So we categorize jobs as high volume or high impact.

As an example, let’s consider a situation where you’re hiring hundreds or thousands into the same job, have a high applicant to hire ratio and a distributed recruiting model.

You know there is a great deal of efficiency added by allowing every recruiter or hiring manager involved in candidate flow and evaluation to get the best-fit candidate sooner.

Our clients (via Virtual Job Tryout) oftentimes see a significant reduction in the number of phone screens that they conduct and a significant reduction in the number of face-to-face interviews. Clients often get a 30-50 percent reduction in the interview to hire ratio. Their interview-tooffer ratio goes up.

For example, one of our clients is a high volume call center. They hire about 1,000 people a year. The year before we implemented, they started with about 14,000 candidates.

That is 13,000 applicants that had to be rejected via some form of evaluation. The year after we implemented, they conducted 2,000 fewer phone screens on roughly the same applicant count. Another of their gains was that they conducted 800 fewer face-to-face interviews to make the same number of hires.

One-way candidate flow is managed and is encouraging drop off. We use language and realistic job preview that empowers the candidate to take an active role as a decision maker. “This job isn’t for everybody, and as you go through this (Virtual Job Tryout), you may discover things about the job that are not of interest to you, and if that’s the case, stop the process, withdraw, self-select out.”

In this particular case, about 24 percent of the candidates self-selected out. They did not complete the virtual job tryout. The client viewed that is extremely valuable, in that it took noise – uninterested or casual job seekers out of the system. It eliminated the need to evaluate and disposition thousands of applicants. Within that population, there

certainly were people who could have been very good candidates, but they expressed a level of non-interest. From this change, the client’s interview to hire ratio dropped by about 20 percent.

Think of fewer interviews with applicants where the recruiter or hiring manager, is thinking, “Why am I on the phone with you?” or “Why did I invite you in here?” Obviously and quickly deciding the candidate was not a good fit.”

WSR: Have you done any correlation work or predictive work with any clients to show anything to reduce turnover, better job fit, or engagement?

Murphy: The second category where clients can realize significant ROI is what we call staffing waste and rework.

In typical entry level positions, there can be early new hire turnover in a 60 to 90-day window. This can be caused from individuals who either are unable to learn the job, or have poor corporate citizenship behaviors regarding promptness, tardiness, unexcused absences, and things of that nature. They either quit the job or they are involuntarily separated. That is an expense separation. All the sourcing, recruiting, onboarding and training goes down the drain – in other words, staffing waste and then staffing rework.

We ask clients to document what we call a cost-to-proficiency. Cost-per-hire is an interesting thing, but you’re not buying somebody at the front door, you’re actually paying for proficiency, production, performance. Metric-oriented clients can calculate the investment in time and dollars to proficiency. In other words what did you invest in the recruiting cycle, onboarding, training and performance to get somebody to a level of production that’s acceptable.

If somebody quits or gets fired in the first 60-90 days, not only have you lost that investment, but now you have to repeat it. So to get somebody to day 60, for example, if you terminated somebody at day 59, you have two recruiting cycles, two onboarding cycles, and two payroll cycles through day 59.

Among our clients it’s common to achieve a 30-50 percent reduction in 90-day turnover in entry level positions.

One of our clients came back to us and said in the first year post-implementation, they saved US$1.7 million in their teller population by what amounted to close to a 50 percent reduction in 90-day new hire turnover in the teller population.

WSR: Okay, that’s impressive!

Murphy: And the third category is performance variation.

Any time there’s a job that has performance metrics; we do analysis on performance variation and show the impact.

Think about this: You hired your best performer, and your worst performer using the same decision criteria. So until you change your decision criteria, you still allow that much variation. What we do is work with clients to look closely at the impact of low-end variation. Nobody is concerned with how many high performers you let in. But, what’s the impact of that bottom 20-30 percent of performers?

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top 10-20 percent had territory sales of US$1.5 million while the bottom 20 percent only had territory volume of US$300,000 (on average). What that tells us is with every hiring decision, there’s US$1.2 million of territory (revenue) potential at play. With more objective candidate evaluation data they can make hiring decisions from a candidate pool similar to the top 80 percent. Eliminating poor-fit candidates increases the probability of a hiring candidate capable of producing in the US$1 million-plus category.

Here is another example. One of our clients tracked the completion rate and time lapse on a rigorous set of selfstudy courses that were mandatory. The knowledge in the courses was critical for achieving superior levels of performance. Our analysis identified the underlying drivers of faster training completion rates. The Virtual Job Tryout scoring was adjusted to advance candidates who were better learners. As a result new hires with high Virtual Job Tryout scores are completing those mandatory or self-directed learning modules 40 percent faster than people that scored less well on the Virtual Job Tryout.

WSR: How do you do that though? Normally, do you get the client to send you some additional data? And do you match it up with your Virtual Job Tryout data? Or is it some other process?

Murphy: Validation analysis is a form of calibration and predictive modeling to document the relationship among Virtual Job Tryout responses and job performance data. Our team is comprised of an industrial psychologist. This profession has been using big data analysis methods and skills long before the term became vogue. We begin with experiment design and craft a data collection plan.

The initial data might have between 100 and 1,000 existing employees in that job to complete the virtual version of the job tryout and calibrate it. To document on-the-job performance, we collect data on the three Os of quality of hire: 1. Opinions; 2. Observed behaviors; and, 3. Objective Metrics.

The first “O” is opinion-based measures. We ask the supervisors of existing employees their opinion in a very structured way. Is this the best person who has ever worked for you? Would you rehire this individual?

The second “O” of quality hire is observed behaviors, using their (client) competency framework. We use a behaviorally-anchored rating scale. We ask the supervisor to rate individuals’ performance on all the behaviors in their (the client’s) existing competency framework.

The third “O” is objective metrics performance. If the job has objective metrics controllable by individual behaviors, we obtain that data as well.

An initial analysis looks at performance of an existing sample of workers with this level of detail.

Over time, we collect more data. As such, we can make adjustments to the scoring algorithm so that it aligns the decision-making with the evolving corporate strategy for that job. In effect, the system gets smarter over time.

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WSR: So have you been able to document some of the efficiency savings and performance savings? You’ve mentioned one client that has saved over US$1.7 million. Do you have any case studies from companies that you could name or explain?

Murphy: Well, that particular client is Key Bank. They’re in about 20 states and have 1,000 retail branches. And, they actually won the Electronic Recruiting Exchange (ERE) most strategic use of technology award, a couple years ago.

That’s been written up and published. Not only by ERE, but it was also featured in SHRM’s HR Magazine.

We have a boutique retailer with 7,000 U.S. stores. They have Virtual Job Tryout systems in place for their store managers and their district managers. And, the candidate results correlate to store profitability and employee retention. So, candidates who score better on the virtual job trial have a 22 percent higher level of retention of employees who stay on more than a year.

Our clients include nine of the Fortune 50. We earn their trust and retain their business through documenting impact.

In addition to the business impact, candidates find the Virtual Job Tryout to be a refreshing alternative to the traditional job application process. All of our clients conduct candidate experience surveys. More than 90 percent of candidates state they are in a better position to determine if the job is right for them as a result of the experience. And, more than 90 percent of candidates are willing to refer others to apply based upon the experience. This is similar to a net promoter score, where willingness to refer others is seen as an indicator of a favorable experience. It is really a triple win. Candidates love it. Recruiters become more effective.

Companies get documented ROI. WSR: Joe, thank you so much for your time and for all of the information you have shared with us today.

Joseph P. Murphy is co-founder and executive vice president of SHAKER, a pioneer in online candidate evaluation and developers of the Virtual Job Tryout®, a simulation for pre-employment testing. He has more than 30 years of experience in human resources. The emphasis of his current work is on enhancing the candidate experience and improving quality-of-hire through the use of high-fidelity simulations that present an engaging day-in-the-life, multi-method assessment. As a result, his clients are able to document performance gains and achieve a return on investment through better staffing methods and metrics. Murphy is a published author on evidencebased hiring and has spoken on issues of the quality-of-hire, candidate experience, staffing waste, staffing metrics, and assessments to notable gatherings and events such as HRPS Global Conference, SHRM National Conference, HR.com/ VIEW, Kennedy Information, ERE Conference and Expo, SMA National Conference, HCI Webcasts, SHRM Metrics Forum webcasts, and numerous SHRM and SMA/EMA chapters. He can be reached at joe.murphy@shakercg.com.

Feature The Business Case for Onboarding

Onboarding not Working?

Learn from your Offboarding Practices.

Lessons Learned from Exit Interviews can inform Onboarding Programs that Promote Employee Engagement, Retention and Productivity.

By Gayle Norton, talentRISE

First Impressions Matter The expression, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” is one that a job seeker typically hears over and over again. But, the same mantra also holds true for employers wishing to attract the best possible talent.

As the labor market heats up and the supply of qualified candidates for certain positions dwindles, an organization’s ability to make an excellent first impression on a candidate becomes ever more important.

There is also another very compelling reason to ensure that your organization makes an excellent first impression, even after an offer has been made and accepted; the productivity of the new hire, and by extension, your organization, depends on it. You can hire the best person for the job based on their qualifications, education, and career track record, but that is no guarantee that the individual will thrive in your environment. The adjustments can be huge – from needing to understand the corporate culture of the new environment to building relationships with new colleagues.

In fact, a study by Bersin by Deloitte on strategic onboarding found that it takes between 8 and 28 weeks for a typical new employee in a clerical role to reach full productivity; 11 to 18 weeks on average for professional staff to reach productivity, and an astounding 24 weeks, on average, for executives to become productive. (Strategic Onboarding, Bersin by Deloitte, 2008)

Given this, there is no doubt that onboarding is both a strategic business initiative and accelerator of company growth and performance. Ultimately, it is in the employer’s best interest to ensure that the new hire is successful.

Allowing new hires to fend for themselves, while still a common practice, amounts to taking a huge risk that they will under-perform or even fail. On the other hand, well-intentioned organizations that offer short-term or ineffective onboarding strategies also fail to address key issues, such as productivity, engagement, and retention and, therefore, also tend to be ineffective.

Done right, onboarding is integrated within the hiring process and includes socialization, assimilation into company culture, and the use of technology to focus on both tactical (filling out required forms, tactical informationsharing), as well as strategic elements. Effective onboarding programs are consistent throughout the organization and incorporate a formal internal process to guide those who manage, as well as participate in the program. Key elements include consistent, standardized new hire messaging, manager and peer coach involvement, and a minimum 90-day onboarding experience roadmap for the new employee. These initiatives are invaluable, turning a new employee into a successful employee through team accountability, early rewards, and long-term career development. Best-in-class organizations begin onboarding upon acceptance of job offer and many forward-thinking organizations extend the programs as long as six months to one year.

Case Study Our client was a large service provider, in growth mode, operating in a highly competitive marketplace. Two key initiatives of the organization were to focus on a high-quality candidate experience and improve time-to-productivity for new employees. A review of their onboarding practices showed they were: • Utilizing manual processes that slowed candidate progress through the hiring cycle; • Focused on basic orientation activities alone without incorporating socialization and engagement of new hires; and, • Concentrating efforts on the tactical aspects only, neglecting the strategic aspects of onboarding that engages new hires and drives business outcomes.

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around time and the lengthy manual processes were also negatively impacting the candidate experience. The talent acquisition team realized that they needed to implement a more streamlined and effective system if they hoped to achieve their goals of continued enhancement of the candidate experience and improved time to productivity.

The Approach Following discussions to understand the client’s business needs and challenges the following steps were taken: • Implement an onboarding technology used in the recruiting process to automate and manage all hiring related paperwork and forms.

• Establish ownership of onboarding and extend to internal mobility.

• Revamp onboarding program to include automation of socialization components; improve candidate and new hire experience by engaging new hires in company culture.

• Develop 90-day roadmap for new hires, extend the onboarding initiatives to six months to one year.

• Integrate data from onboarding into new-hire development plans.

The Results • Significant improvements were made in the candidate management process and integrated access to background check status.

• All onboarding paperwork was automated and included electronic signature, improving the hiring cycle turnaround time and saving the client substantial overnight mail fees.

• There was improved I-9 compliance.

• This significantly enhanced the candidate experience.

• An enhanced onboarding program improved new hire engagement and time-to-productivity.

Over the past few years, as the focus on socialization and cultural immersion have become top priorities for improving onboarding initiatives, many organizations have neglected the tactical side, forms and task management, of onboarding. However, for a new hire initiative to be successful, both areas are necessary. Automation of task management allows new hire forms to be completed in a timely manner, many prior to the first day, allowing the new hire to be able to contribute to the business more rapidly. The tactical components critical to improving time-to-productivity and organizational performance should be viewed in tandem with enhanced, but not replaced by engagement strategies.

The Best Way to Proceed In our view, one of the best ways to determine how to design a new onboarding program or improve an existing

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onboarding program is to ask departing employees. Human Resources can learn a lot from the off-boarding process – or exit interviews – that ought to be conducted, particularly when well-regarded employees leave for greener pastures.

Of course, there are multiple reasons to conduct exit interviews, ensuring that they: • Provide an opportunity to potentially resolve differences with disgruntled employees; • Prove to existing employees that the company offers a positive culture; and, • Improve the performance of managers by uncovering ways in which their performance impacts employee retention.

But, most importantly, exit interviews provide valuable information on ways to improve recruitment, orientation, and onboarding of new employees. Assuming that the organization conducts interviews so that feedback is collected systemically, tracked in a useful way, and also shared internally, the organization can use the data to ensure that the onboarding programs: • Are relevant, meaning that the information shared is timely and pertinent to the new hire’s job and function; • Address the most common obstacles new hires have in becoming acclimated; • Position the company culture accurately and positively; • Give the new hire access to people and information within the organization to help them become productive; and, • Are structured in such a way that that the information is presented in manageable “chunks” and delivered in the most appropriate manner, whether through classroom learning, e-learning, or other vehicles.

So, what are best practices for collecting exit data that can help in establishing a great onboarding program? Here are the most critical ones: 1. The company should have a formal policy regarding exit interviewing and/or surveys.

2. Exit interviews should be reserved for voluntary separations, because issues raised by layoffs and “terminations for cause” require a special approach.

3. To encourage more employees to participate in an exit interview, employers should stress the confidentiality of the discussions or outsource the exit interview to an independent third party.

4. Utilize offboarding technology to provide a way to engage rehires, as well as ensure compliance.

What are the best practices for putting the exit interviews data to good use?

• Track it consistently – if you are using interviews, as opposed to surveys, have the interviewer fill in a form

where the answers can be quantified.

• Ask the right questions – particularly useful questions to ask in terms of improving onboarding are ones related to the employees first 100 days on the job. For instance: • Was the onboarding information you were provided with directly relevant to your job?

• Was the information related to company processes and procedures clear and accurate?

• What, if any, information provided to you in the onboarding process was misleading or incorrect?

• If you had a chance to improve the onboarding process, what features would you change?

• Have the people responsible for onboarding involved in formulating the questions?

• Disseminate the results from the interviews frequently; in a large organization, where dozens of people may leave each month, prepare a monthly report.

The following excerpt from a 2013 study by Aberdeen (Aberdeen Analyst Insight – Offboarding: Leaving a Lasting Impression, May 2013) illustrates the effectiveness of an automated offboarding strategy.

Case-in-Point: EMC

Founded in 1979, EMC is a global leader in enabling business service providers to transform their operations and deliver information technology as a service. With over 53,000 employees located in 85 countries, EMC is committed to recruiting, developing, and retaining its global workforce. As a result of a new model that allowed EMC to focus on the tools, strategies, and capabilities that would make them more efficient and better able to drive a global workforce, offboarding (or “resignation management”) became a key business initiative.

Key Drivers • Compliance – The most important driver was ensuring compliance when employees leave; • Relationship Building – EMC’s corporate leadership strongly believed that any employee leaving the organization (both voluntary and involuntary) could help drive business or would be hired back in the future.

Treating former employees well and engaging them when they leave became a top priority supported by senior executives; • Turnover – EMC recognized that a formalized offboarding program could provide insight into turnover

and help to improve retention; • Consistency – EMC had a consistent manual offboarding process in five countries. Through technology, they could create consistency throughout every region of the world; and, • Workflow – Automating the process would improve back office operation excellence and efficiency and would increase exiting employee survey participation.

Lessons Learned Investing in a more strategic approach to offboarding has enabled EMC to stay compliant, engage former employees, and create a consistent yet localized process across 85 countries. With the rollout of an enterprise-wide offboarding system, EMC shared several lessons learned including allowing additional time to question key stakeholders, empowering the solution design team with the knowledge they need, and accounting for cultural differences.

Summary People who leave their organization may be brutally honest about their experiences without fear of immediate repercussions. In addition, it’s likely that they have recently been job hunting and interviewing and can offer some useful intelligence on how the company compares with other employers.

Additionally, this feedback can also be utilized to effectively critique and improve the onboarding strategy. That is why the information gathered through exit interviews can be worth its weight in gold.

About the Author Gayle Norton, principal at talentRISE, co-leads the firm’s talent acquisition consulting practice and focuses her efforts on helping companies conduct current-state recruitment optimization and talent risk organizational assessments to identify and address process, technology and strategy gaps. Previously serving as the co-chair of the HR Management Systems committee, she remains an active member of the Human Resources Management Association of Chicago (HRMAC) as well as the Society of Talent Acquisition & Recruitment (STAR) Chicago and American College of Healthcare Executives. She earned a B.S. in Health Arts from the University of St. Francis, Joliet, IL, and her Nursing diploma from the Evangelical School of Nursing in Oak Lawn, IL. She can be reached at gaylenorton@talentrise.com.

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Feature

Accelerating Talent Development and Succession Planning through Technology

By Nancy Johnson, DeVry Education Group

The Challenge For the last six years, senior leaders at DeVry Education Group, a leading global provider of educational solutions, have been engaged in the assessment and development of talent through the annual talent review and succession planning process. The foundational elements of how to define colleague growth potential, assess talent, and build robust succession plans are securely in place and viewed as important elements to both the talent and business strategies.

The opportunity at hand was to continually improve the effectiveness of the assessment of colleagues and identify key talent from which to build strong and reliable succession plans that are credibly actioned against when a mission critical role becomes available. For example, when a mission critical role becomes vacant, are the near-term successors on the plan considered for the role? Are they ready to step into the role? If yes, are they successful? The organization was interested in measuring the effectiveness of these efforts. In 2013, the DeVry Group HR team, under the leadership of Nancy Johnson, VP Talent, and Deb Maher, senior director of HRIS and Analytics, set out to address these challenges.

The Context Each year, DeVry Education Group and its eight insti-

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tutions assess the top 1,000 leadership colleagues, which represent approximately 10 percent of the workforce. The process, while well-defined and understood, had been conducted and tracked manually – not captured in a system along with critical talent metrics such as performance, engagement, leadership effectiveness, or colleague turnover. Talent profiles, the 9-box matrix (a growth potential rating tool that evaluates colleagues based on historical performance and future potential) and other information, were provided in binders to participants in talent review discussions. All tracking and documentation occurred via Excel spreadsheets and Word forms. Finally, talent profiles were completed by colleagues, but not housed in a central database and not updated year over year.

Colleague data such as engagement survey results, colleague compensation, historical growth potential ratings, and individual development plans were not readily available for reference during talent review discussions, impacting the quality of the calibration conversation. Additionally, talent review meetings were historically conducted in person with the leader and their direct reports, facilitated by an HR consultant. This proved to be logistically challenging for DeVry University, Carrington Colleges, Chamberlain College of Nursing, and Becker Professional Education given that the combination of these institutions represented well over 100 locations nationally. It was also financially challenging as the organization was looking for ways to reduce operating costs.

Because there was no online HRIS tool, mining internal talent proved to be difficult. It involved looking up names on Excel spreadsheets and searching for the other data points in the HRIS. Aligning colleague information with the other important talent data to report on outcomes was time consuming and cumbersome.

The foundational elements of how to define colleague growth potential, assess talent, and build robust succession plans are securely in place and viewed as important elements to both the talent and business strategies.

The Solution DeVry Group partnered with cFactor Works to build a highly configurable Talent Review Process (TRP) Tool.

CFactor is the organization that DeVry Group has worked with to create its HRIS and colleague portal. The desire for a highly tailored approach to the TRP tool was critical so that DeVry Group could get the functionality it needed

without other distracting or complicated features that an off-the-shelf technology would provide.

• cFactor created an online TRP tool that enabled a robust talent calibration discussion supported by a 9-box evaluation matrix that could be modified in real time, provided access to top line colleague information via talent cards, detailed talent profiles, and organization charts with a variety of meaningful “views.” The features of the TRP tool in more detail include: • Talent profiles (including work history, career aspirations, education, and relocation preferences) created and stored on-line enabling, easy year-over-year updates; data on talent profiles is pulled from other parts of HRIS requiring minimal manual updates; and, • 9-box created with drag and drop feature to build real-time and in a customized fashion in a talent review discussion.

• Organization “talent” charts built with different “views” around topics like performance, potential, and turnover to see a full picture of an organization (and a colleague’s role in it) through different lenses.

The final 9-box placement each year and all colleague related talent information can be accessed by HR, including Talent Acquisition, throughout the year to enable the right talent decisions.

“This new tool was invaluable to me in running a high quality talent review process in my organization. The outcomes were better and we delivered this process to the organization in a streamlined and cost effective manner.”

The Implementation

• Talent cards (a quick reference tool like a baseball card) created for each colleague with top-line data on performance, potential, engagement, compensation, direct reports, turnover, etc. with drill down capabilities into the colleague’s full talent profile, performance plan and individual development plan. The talent card appears on the screen when hovering over the person on the 9-box.

During fiscal year 2014, all DeVry Group institutions and the home office used the new technology to run the annual TRP. This involved assessing over 1,500 leadership colleagues (sitting in over 100 locations) and identifying “key talent” (for whom extra individual development planning support and coaching was provided) to create succession depth for mission critical roles.

For large, dispersed institutions such as DeVry University, almost all of the talent review discussions occurred virtually. As a result of the new technology, facilitators had robust and accurate colleague data at their fingertips during talent review meetings and were able to toggle to reference real-time colleague data to make better talent assessment decisions and build meaningful succession plans.

Lori Davis, VP of Human Resources for DeVry University, commented that “This new tool was invaluable to me in running a high quality talent review process in my organization. The outcomes were better and we delivered this process to the organization in a streamlined and cost effective manner.”

The Outcome Among other positive outcomes, in the last calendar year, 250 key talent colleagues were identified with confidence and DeVry Group is accelerating the investment in their development through participation in leadership development programs, development plan creation, and short-term coaching. The organization has begun tracking engagement, retention, and placement of these individuals into mission critical roles.

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tial. Because meetings were almost completely virtual, printing and paper costs were nearly eliminated. Travel expenses for HR and leaders to attend in-person meetings were dramatically reduced. For example, DeVry University conducted 55 talent review meetings using this new tool, Adobe Connect, and Lync (online meetings). In previous years, the leader and participants would have had to travel to attend approximately half of these meetings. As a result of the new technology, travel expenses have decreased and HR consultants and meeting participants can now devote more time to other value-added activities.

The new technology tools have enabled DeVry Group to continue to improve the promotions from within target, which is one of its talent strategy measurements. Talent is regularly mined by HR leaders and the Talent Acquisition team as they access colleague historical information in this tool when considering internal talent for open positions. In January 2013, the promotion from within rate for mid-level leaders and above was 65 percent and in January 2014, it was 74 percent. While this tool was not the exclusive reason why DeVry Group beat its target of 70 percent promotions from within, Nancy Johnson and the team are confident that it will continue to have an important impact.

Given the great success of this new tool, the team will be broadening the application to include an online succession planning tool.

DeVry Group made a significant and positive step in the right direction with this work toward achieving its talent strategy. Given the great success of this new tool, the team will be broadening the application to include an online succession planning tool. That tool will include automating its manual succession planning process by pulling additional data (much of it housed in the HRIS that can be reported on along with the TRP data) such as engagement ratings,

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leadership effectiveness ratings, leadership competency assessments, and business/functional performance, and then using that information to identify ready successors for mission critical roles. Having the added succession planning tool online will round out this application and enable DeVry Group to track the effectiveness of its talent decisions in a more accurate and expeditious manner.

About the Author Nancy A. Johnson, VP, Talent Acquisition and Development, DeVry Education Group joined DeVry Education Group in November 2007.

She led the design and implementation of the DeVry Talent Development Strategy including the approach to performance management, succession planning, general learning and development and accelerated leadership development. She launched The DeVry Leadership Center, which includes a 30-course curriculum in addition to consulting and colleague resources all designed to improve individual and team performance.

She is responsible for DeVry’s FlexWork initiative and leads the enterprise-wide Talent Acquisition team with a focus on hiring the right colleagues who fit the DeVry Group culture. Under her leadership, the Talent Acquisition function has been centralized to facilitate the hiring of several thousand colleagues per year with strong hiring manager and candidate feedback on the quality of the experience. Prior to DeVry Group, Johnson was director of Global Talent Management for Sara Lee Corporation where she developed and implemented the Sara Lee Talent Management Strategy. She has more than 25 years of business experience with a broad background in Human Resources having worked in the areas of Talent Development, Organization Effectiveness, Learning, Staffing, Compensation and Business Partner roles. The Fortune 500 organizations she has worked for include Baxter, Caremark, RR Donnelley and Sara Lee. She holds a BS in Business Management with a Minor in American Studies from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and an MBA from DePaul University in Chicago.

Feature This ongoing socio-cultural trend has changed the way we live, and the way we work. Mobile has brought a level of flexibility and access to business that has enabled the emergence of the knowledge industries that dominate developed economies. But, the way workplace learning is delivered is yet to catch up with how our personal and working lives have been changed by our smartphones and the social networking apps they run.

Learning on the Go: Mobile Learning as it’s Lived How mobile technology and social networks are changing the way we learn

By Rob Keery, Brightwave 2014 is the year that mobile Internet usage is finally set to overtake desktop. This represents a fundamental shift in the way that we conduct our online lives – the already dated stereotype of the Internet user as a solitary shut-in will become simply unrecognisable. The new stereotypical Web user is not a maladjusted loner exploring arcane corners of digital lore, but a smart, connected individual – or organisation – in the office or on the street, linking via smartphone to their social network: posting updates, pictures, and finding out what they need to know to manage their home and working lives.

Figure 2. Internet Access and Session Time.

Figure 2 captures the major differences between the way learners use mobile devices versus laptop/desktop, and offers a real insight for designers of workplace learning: mobile usage occurs in numerous short, frequent sessions throughout the day. Learning solutions and interventions optimised for engaging mobile contexts should complement, not challenge these user habits.

Developing learning content for mobile requires more than understanding the basics of HTML5 or shrinking existing e-learning solutions to fit on a smaller screen. Mobile fundamentally changes the way learning intersects with learners’ workflows, behaviours and practices. Packaging learning to fit in your pocket and still deliver a memorable, valuable experience requires a new way of thinking about what learning might mean.

Figure 1. Internet User Projection, 2007-2015. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • November 2014

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Five Ways Mobile Changes Learning Design Examples of the way mobile reconfigures both the form and content of learning delivery as it has been traditionally understood: 1. Performance support – Twenty-four hour access to key data, placing essential facts, figures and notes on best practice at your learners’ fingertips; 2. Chunking – Micro-sized learning interventions accessed via mobile to complement a wider campaign of learning/organizational change; 3. Push learning – Targeted and scheduled delivery of brief organisation-wide announcements, updates and reminders; 4. Video – Size/configuration of mobile screens and user habituation privileges visual over textual information; and, 5. Responsive design – Online learning content design rethought from the ground-up in anticipation of its final home on a pocket-sized mobile screen.

can easily be scaled down to focus on a particular project or challenge, or scaled up to inspire cultural change across an entire multinational organisation. Enterprise platforms are now available that bring these benefits and advantages in-house, creating environments within the organisation where solutions to difficult problems can be worked out in collaboration, across far-flung teams and offices. Informational silos and expertise can be freed up by applying the principles of the PLN to localised micro-networks within the organisation, which cross team boundaries to bring disparate individuals and skill sets together, unlocking knowledge and experience to drive innovation and effective learning throughout the business.

xAPI – Connecting Our Online and Offline Lives The experience application programming interface (xAPI) – initially known as Project Tin Can – is an open source software specification for managing e-learning data. Released in 2012, the xAPI was designed to better manage the various forms of data not covered

by SCORM, the e-learning industry’s previous specification standard, and reflect the major, largely technology-driven changes in the way people learn in the workplace:

The Emergence of the Personal Learning Network

• Via multiple, usually mobile devices (smartphones and tablets);

How do we find out how to do our jobs? When you need that piece of essential information to overcome your current challenge, where do you go? There are several potential answers to this question. Perhaps it’s your organisation’s learning management system (LMS). Perhaps it’s Google or YouTube, or perhaps you rely on the colleague sitting beside you. All of these methods of discovery have their benefits, but also their limitations; the information they give you may be too task or process-oriented; or too “hard” and factual for situations requiring nuance and soft skills.

Increasingly, the best (fastest, most reliable, most diverse/unbiased) solution to these obstacles is found in the personal learning network (PLN). A PLN is an informal grouping of personal and professional contacts connected via an individual’s social platform(s) of choice.

When a problem needs solving, today’s connected mobile learner reaches out to their PLN and asks for their guidance, advice, or a good old-fashioned quick fix. The network responds to the learner’s query, offering a rich range of solutions drawn from their wide breadth of individual experience. The network is enabled by social and mobile media technologies, but sustained by mutual need and the powerful incentives of group recognition and reputation.

The members of the network might be on different continents or sitting right across from you. They might be a newcomer with a fresh insight or an acknowledged expert who’s seen it all; traditional communication/participation barriers collapse within the supportive environment of the PLN – a globalised study group that evolves from question to question, project to project.

These advantages do not have to be confined to the individual learner either – the principles of social learning

• Through a mix of formal online learning courses and informal, often learner-sourced resources; and,

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• In a variety of online and offline experiential contexts.

The experience application programming interface’s (xAPI) strength and potential for revolutionising learning technology lies in the simplicity of the format it uses to describe complex data. Whatever learning experiences you might encounter in your life – from a conversation at the water cooler to a multi-part massive open online course (MOOC) – xAPI condenses it into a simple string of code that can be stored, quantified and analysed.

Experience application programming interface data statements are formed of just three core elements: [actor] [verb] [object] or [I] [did] [this] For example: [John Smith] [attended] [a training seminar] From the starting point of this deceptively straightforward formula, xAPI can capture any amount of information about someone’s experiences and store for later analysis. The range of information is limited only by the sophistication of the capture and recording tools.

This means a training seminar can be recorded on the learner’s phone, turned into xAPI data and stored for later inspection and assessment.

In a world where learning is increasingly mediated by digital technology, xAPI makes the borders between online and “real” life more porous than ever.

Personal Learning Capture Perhaps the most significant application of mobile technology to the way we learn now and into the future comes from its potential to alter the learner’s place in the traditional top-down learning ecology. While we are already seeing the rise of bring your own device (BYOD) training events, reflecting the relative sophistication of learners’ personal mobile technology over that commonly supplied by their employers, the potential for disruption goes a step further.

The data capture and sharing capacities of the smartphone, combined with radical new learning technology standards like xAPI (see inset box), have the potential to rewrite the circuitry of learning, putting the learner truly in the driving seat. The technology in our hands today does not just offer us new ways to request the information we need – it empowers us to discover, capture, and share our own learning experiences, to decide for ourselves both what we need to know and how we wish to find it out.

Scenario

Let’s imagine a learner on their way to a meeting who needs to refresh their knowledge of email marketing.

Pulling out their tablet or smartphone, they log on to the corporate LMS to find an e-learning course that’s five years old – out-of-date and practically useless. But, of course, with their smartphone and xAPI, they can find their own learning resources.

A quick Google search gives them instant access resources from industry experts, detailing the most up-to-date email marketing methods – insider tips and hints honed by real testing and experience. Within a matter of minutes, the gaps in the learner’s knowledge are filled.

But, before they close their browser and put their new learning into practice, they click a button in the browser

toolbar. Experience application programming interface powers this new “bookmarklet” browser button – which is already hooked up to the company LMS or learning system – so as the button is clicked, a new learning experience is recorded and saved.

The meeting goes well, and the client says something about the way they’re using the product, which stops our learner in their tracks. The learner asks them to repeat it, but this time they have their phone ready and they film the client saying it. The learner uploads the video to the LMS and shares it with his enterprise PLN, and the whole team understands this new, previously unheard-of-insight before our learner has even returned to the office. They have a whole new perspective on their work, which in a pre-mobile learning world, would have been impossible to capture and harness in a meaningful way.

This scenario isn’t fiction. Next-generation learning systems are already supplying this kind of functionality, allowing learners to generate and share their own learning resources. The technology we all carry around in our pockets changes not only the way our learners learn, but empowers them to take control of their learning and become creators, consumers, and curators of the best learning content to support and optimise workplace performance.

About the Author Rob Keery is community manager with nextgeneration learning experts Brightwave. He’s interested in the intersection of social media, online communities and digital marketing; and how their common principles of engagement, interaction, and contribution can be applied to workplace learning. He’d love to hear from you at rob.keery@brightwave.co.uk.

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Feature

compliance side, as well as increased consumerism. Employees need support to make informed choices about their health care needs and then help to make the best use of their choices. I remain firm in my belief that point solution systems are best suited to address both of these challenges.

Compliance and Consumerism Drive Demand for Benefit Point Solutions

By Rhonda Marcucci, Gruppo Marcucci

I

n 2012, I wrote an article in Workforce Solutions Review on point solutions and why I advocate their use for health and welfare benefits enrollment and administration.1 I argued that point solutions are best for engaging employees and providing more support around the benefit selection process. I also argued that point solution providers were more likely to focus on regulatory compliance, which would become increasingly important as health care reform was implemented.

I stand by my position on the strength of point solutions for benefits administration. The advent of the U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA) has put the spotlight squarely on two key issues for employers: compliance and consumerism.

The rising cost of health care, along with the much-hyped exchange marketplace, has strongly influenced employers to consider a move to a Defined Contribution model and to offer employees a much wider array of health and welfare benefit choices. With choice, comes the need to provide decision support – not only for how to choose health and welfare benefits, but also how to effectively use those benefits.

In 2012, I wrote, “We must consider the impact of health care reform. Where it’s all headed, no one knows for sure, but most agree that health care reform will continue to shape the benefits administration market and how health and welfare benefits enrollment and administration are managed.”

We now clearly see the impact of health care reform and the role of technology in helping employers manage the

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Impact on HCM Systems Human capital management (HCM) systems (or ERPs) play a vital role in most employer organizations. Human capital management systems that support the “recruit-to-retire” life cycle are appealing as they allow all individual modules to interface smoothly with one another. The challenge with HCMs for benefits stems from the fact that benefits is not (nor likely to be) the core competency of HCM system providers. In fact, the rise of point solutions in the benefits administration arena exists primarily because HCMs failed to effectively provide the necessary functionality for benefits enrollment and administration. The increased complexity of benefit programs, associated with government regulation, and the need to better engage employees in their choices, have caused many companies to look to point solutions to manage their benefits process.

“Employers are open to trying something new,” says Jon Shanahan, president and CEO of Businessolver. “Benefit point solutions were aided by other module point solution providers beating down employers’ doors to offer an HCM alternative for a specific application. We’re the beneficiary of their success. At the same time, the ACA fueled the fire with record keeping and reporting requirements that were difficult for HCMs to quickly add to their systems.”

Integration Bifurcation Defined Contribution has opened the door for employees to select the best coverage for their needs. No longer are they choosing from one or two basic health plans. They are choosing from a wider array of medical plans along with numerous ancillary plans, ranging from dental to pet insurance. Most benefit modules within an HCM system don’t handle ancillary services, including common ones such as COBRA administration. Point solution providers are far more agile and provide a higher level of functionality and administration services. The good news in all this is that HCM systems are increasingly integration-friendly.

Human capital management systems understandably advocate for a single application and vendor to minimize com-

pliance risks. “This avoids the ‘what if one vendor updates a solution, then what happens to how the rest of the system operates?’ issue,” says Jayson Saba, vice president of Strategy at Ceridian. “If this is not possible, it will be critical to opt for point solutions with very strong integration capabilities, such as the ability for the customer to easily configure them.”

Jon Shanahan finds HCM providers are more open to integration than in the past, stating, “One HCM we work with has embraced a partnership program for easy integration when clients say they need something more than can be provided through the HCM platform.”

Companies such as CloudMills have sprung up to help with data integration, allowing separate applications and processes to be accessible immediately to one another via the Cloud. “The HR world has reached a bifurcation point,” says Dianna Sheppard, CEO of CloudMills. “If you’re a bundled solution, you have to play nice with point solutions and vice versa. As best-of-breed point solutions gain momentum, clients want to take advantage of them, but don’t want to give up their HCMs or do manual entry. Point solution vendors know companies make big investments in their HCM systems, which they may keep for as long as 15 years.”

CloudMills reports that the average company has six different applications and replaces one every seven years. Existing HCMs can continue to act as the system of record with point solutions providing the discreet solutions to a unique business problem.

Bill Roth, area vice president for Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.’s employee benefits division in the Mid-Atlantic region, sees the integration of benefit point solutions and HCMs to be increasingly common, “Our brokers also report that employer groups are less resistant to point solutions than in the past, due to the ever-changing landscape of benefits administration and the limitations of many of the HCM systems.”

Compliance isn’t new, but it has gotten more complex, thanks to the ACA. Compliance and Point Solutions Compliance isn’t new, but it has gotten more complex, thanks to the ACA. Moreover, 2015 will bring a whole slew of new compliance requirements as the employer mandate ceases to be voluntary. The Department of Labor’s (DOL) audit scope now includes ACA compliance. Employers (plan sponsors) need to maintain records of all the ACA compliance steps and procedures put into place in a readily accessible format.

So, what are the odds of being audited? Apparently, they are improving. It’s been widely reported that in 2013, the DOL added some 1,000 new enforcement officers. Further, don’t be too confident that you’re in compliance. In 2012, the DOL closed 3,566 compliance reviews with 2,570 (72.1 percent) resulting in US$1.2 billion of fines and penalties.2 Affordable Care Act compliance for employers falls into three categories: 1. Tracking and calculations – Employers must carefully manage the number of employees for “large group” status, as well as initial and ongoing individual eligibility measurement and management. Other calculations include W-2 and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) fees. For eligibility measurements, employers must know the number of hours worked, which is likely to be managed most thoroughly in a benefits point solution or a separate ACA tracking solution.

2. Education and communications – While employers have long been required to inform employees about benefit offerings, the ACA expands the requirements, including an annual Summary of Benefit and Coverages (SBC) and notice of availability of exchange offerings.

Proof of notification must be documented. The complexity increases with multiple plan offerings because SBCs (and some exchanges) are plan-specific.

3. Reporting – The ACA requires reporting on eligibility, affordability and proof of offerings to the government and to employees. Internal Revenue Service reporting must include offer and acceptance or waiver at both the employee and employer level. This same information must be provided to employees.

Of the three areas of compliance, tracking and calculations is the most significant to benefit point solutions. The ACA requires companies to calculate and report “look-back” or measurement periods for each employee. Companies with different types of employees, e.g., variable-hour, temporary, part-time, or seasonal workers, may find determining eligibility to be extremely perplexing. One small error can expose your organization to significant risks and substantial fines.

Many benefit point solutions include tools to help manage eligibility status of each employee depending on full-time criteria (30 hours/week). Tools are available to help employers accumulate, monitor and alert at the employee level according to their standard measurement period, administrative period and applicable stability period; and to determine if coverage is affordable. These tools also support the offer (and documentation) of coverage to eligible employees in a timely manner.

Managing compliance is a natural extension of point solutions’ strengths. Benefit point solutions typically have a good understanding of the complexity of the benefit landscape, because they focus only on benefits, compared to HCM solutions that strive to provide end-to-end solutions.

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Consumerism and Point Solutions

Affordable Care Act compliance may be the biggest driver for employers to look for new and better technologies to manage employee health and welfare benefits, but consumerism is the far more complex and multifaceted reason to embrace point solutions that effectively engage employees in choosing and using their benefits.

The shift to consumerism in employee benefits is difficult for most employers to grasp. When you consider the employee recruit-to-retire scope, the only “buying experience” is when we buy our benefits. “People tend to buy the most expensive plan, because they think they need it,” says Gallagher’s Bill Roth. “The reality is most claim cost is clustered, with 80 percent of the cost associated with only 20 percent of the population.”

Research from Businessolver compared buying benefits to buying a computer. Consider that the average cost of a computer is US$650 and the average amount spent annually by the employee on their benefits package is US$4,000. One in three shoppers spent several days considering the purchase of a computer, but spent only 19 minutes enrolling in their benefits program.

Roth is not surprised at these figures, saying that, “Even with decision-support tools, employees don’t always spend enough time considering their options, and that indicates a need for easier and more intuitive tools. Look at what consumer technology has done for online shopping. There’s no doubt that decision-support tools will continue to get better and engage employees more strongly through improvements in user interface design.”

Helping Employees Choose and Use The ACA and the Defined Contribution model are not the only drivers for consumerism. Public and private exchanges have significantly raised awareness of the need for more informed health care consumers. There is an overall demand for more cost and quality transparency in the market.

Choosing plans calls for the employee to be educated on a variety of topics related to health coverages, e.g., government subsidized coverage, insurance concepts and plan option features. Interactivity allows for plan comparisons and selections, and guides employees through health plan decision trees: in short, a better “shopping experience” to support right-sized coverage. Predictive applications provide employees with out-of-pocket cost projections based on actual prior cost and usage from multiple sources. Benefit administration point solutions are advancing their tools in these areas to support the “how-to-choose” aspect of benefits.

“Employees are largely disinterested in benefits until they need them,” says Businessolver’s Shanahan. “Choosing benefits is never going to be reprioritized as ‘fun.’ Given we’re not likely to significantly modify how they think about choosing benefits; we have to use technology to help them avoid making poor decisions. It’s got to be simpler. We have

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to ask questions and then offer recommendations based on their response, and also based on others like them – the Amazon model of others like you purchased….”

The same is happening on the “how-to-use” side. Employees must have reliable data to compare/select a physician, facility, or treatment based on cost, quality and outcomes.

Pricing must be more transparent within and across networks, which will encourage efficiencies within the overall health care system. Employees also need support to effectively manage their medical spending, while improving their health and wellness.

Employers are increasingly looking to reward or incentive programs to assist in this area. As benefit point solutions become more sophisticated in the area of wellness, e.g., managing wellness credits, increased consumer support will be needed; support typically not available with HCMs. “We’re in a generation of tool and technology development to help employees be smarter about how to choose and use benefits, and to self-serve – bringing it all to them through desktop and hand-held devices,” says Shanahan.

“Everyone has a mobile app today, but is it useful, is it functional…what does it do?”

Mobility and Consumerism Mobile technology is fast becoming a leading strategy for engaging and educating employees due to its market penetration, creative tools and options, and relatively low cost.

It is also quickly becoming a de facto requirement when sourcing technology platforms for employee health care selection and management. Employers and industry broker/ consultants increasingly view mobile applications as a basic criterion to making the first cut in a benefit point solution provider selection process.

While most end-to-end HCM platforms are working to integrate mobility, only best-in-class products bring their full capabilities to mobile devices. Unfortunately, some providers treat mobility as a “check-in-the box,” delivering limited functionality.

“Everyone has a mobile app today, but is it useful, is it functional…what does it do?” asks Amy Osterhagen, vice president of Channel Sales for Mobile Health Consumer. “In many cases, it’s just a static view of information on a mobile device. In my world, that’s not mobile. Mobile is driving behavior by pushing information to a mobile device without the employee having to do anything.” According to Osterhagen, the better benefit mobile apps in the market right now all come from point solutions, which can respond quickly to

market demand.

“A lot of solutions are not yet feeling the push to have a strong mobile application, but they will soon,” says Osterhagen. “There is more and more talk about the need for mobile along with the buy-versus-build discussion. The competition will definitely get fiercer in the next couple years.”

Choosing the Right Point Solution While I believe point solutions are currently the best approach to help employees smartly choose and use their benefits while ensuring compliance, they must be pursued with due diligence. Not all are equal. Given the many changes underway in the industry, new point solutions are popping up everywhere. Not all are well-designed or well-funded.

Unlike large HCMs, you can build point solutions with minimal capital, but you want to ensure that sufficient resources will continue to be invested in the product to monitor ongoing regulatory changes and make platform modifications accordingly. An inattentive, unfunded point solution is no better (and perhaps worse) than a large HCM system whose core competencies exclude health and benefits enrollment and administration.

Look for Great Partnership Integrations When thinking about what I might be writing about HCMs and benefit point solutions a few years from now, I would say both will evolve in response to the management of health care costs and consumerism. I expect some great partnership integrations between strong HCM platforms and strong benefit point solutions platforms out of necessity to meet market demand.

In the not-so-distant future, the vast majority of employees will be digital natives. They will have only known a world where technology drives and supports nearly every aspect of their lives. Services using technology and mobility (think telemedicine, mHealth) will expand as entrepreneurs take advantage of high-quality bandwidth paired with smart phones or whatever the next device is that comes our way.

Employers will continue to shift cost and accountability to

employees, but employees will have become smarter consumers. Information will be more transparent, allowing for ease of making informed choices about benefit coverage and usage.

Health care reform is here to stay, but there will be ongoing modifications to employee health and welfare benefits, requiring the industry to remain attentive and agile – something at which good point solutions excel. When easily integrated with HCMs, it’s a win-win for the employer and the employee.

Endnotes 1 Rhonda Marcucci, “The Benefits Point Solution Stepchild Has Come Home to Roost,” IHRIM Workforce Solutions Review, pp. 12-15, February/March, 2012.

2 Peter Lewenson, “DOL Fines of $10,000+ Common in 32% of Health Plan Audits,”ComplianceBug.com, September 2014. (http://learn.compliancebug.com/learn/ erisa-dol-fines-are-common/)

About the Author Rhonda Marcucci, MBA, CPA, is a partner and consultant at Gruppo Marcucci (GPM).

Within five years of setting her sights on the HR and benefits administration technology outsourcing marketplace, Rhonda Marcucci established Gruppo Marcucci as a go-to source for anyone wishing to understand, enter, or penetrate the benefits administration market. GPM is recognized for its well-researched and unbiased sourcing advice and service provider capability audits, including in the fast-growing exchange marketplace. Gruppo Marcucci works directly with brokers/consultants, employer groups, insurance carriers, service providers, investors and exchange sponsors. A deep working knowledge of the market and its many players, coupled with professional independence, allows GPM to bring together the right players to provide the right solution for the client’s needs. She can be reached at Rhonda@gruppomarcucci-usa.com.

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2014 Compensation/Benefits Buyer’s Guide The 2014 Compensation/Benefits 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 2014 purchasing decisions.

Product Categories

COMPENSATION

General Decusoft HCR Software Compensation Administration HRN Performance Solutions Compensation Consulting HRN Performance Solutions Deferred Compensation Decusoft Executive Compensation Decusoft Incentive Compensation Decusoft

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Paid Advertising

BENEFITS

FMLA Administration WorkForce Software

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2014 Compensation/Benefits 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.

HRN Performance Solutions

Decusoft 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

38695 W. 7 Mile Rd. Ste. 200 Livonia, MI 48152 Russell Gerrard 800-940-7522 734.793.6390 russell.gerrard@hrperformancesolutions.net www.hrperformancesolutions.net HRN Performance Solutions provides compensation administration and employee performance service to a growing list of over 2,000 clients. HRN’s Compease program is a complete solution that manages budgets, establishes competitive pay rates, aligns compensation to performance and is updated annually. HRN consultants customize Compease to fit each client’s industry, location and size.

Workforce Software 38705 7-Mile Road Livonia, MI 48152 Sales Department 877-493-6723 734-542-0635 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.

CompensationXL HCR Software 13400 Sutton Park Drive South, STE 1102 Jacksonville, FL 32224 Jamie Davis 904-838-5470 sales@hcrsoftware.com www.compensationxl.com CompensationXL is a flexible and affordable compensation planning software which enables effective pay-for-performance strategies. It simultaneously reduces the administrative burden and cycle time while improving process integrity and regulatory compliance. CompensationXL automates merit and variable compensation without requiring changes to your process or retraining of your managers.

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Extended Workforce Talent-as-a-Service: How to Navigate the New Workforce Ecosystem

by Nicole Dessain, talent.imperative

Introduction Our employment model is undergoing a seismic shift: In the U.S., 34 percent of the workforce are now working as freelancers.1 And, at a global scale, the contingent staffing market is valued at US$422 billion in sales.2 Our current processes, systems, and siloed operations are not suited for managing the large increase in the free agent workforce. This article will attempt to bring transparency to this complex topic and provide tactical tips so organizations can build a scalable approach enabling them to create competitive advantage by efficiently and effectively attracting, recruiting, analyzing, and managing their extended workforce.

A global increase in the contingent and freelance workforce is fueled by economic uncertainty, advancements in virtual collaboration technology, skill shortages, the sharing economy, as well as Millennials’ expectation of a more flexible employment model. These challenges demand that we rethink the total talent pool available to an organization. Companies are increasingly hiring just-in-time workers, and talent is marketing their services to multiple employers at once. We call this phenomenon Talent-as-aService (TaaS), and it is one of 10 talent trends we identified as critical for 2014 and beyond.3 Organizations are experiencing an evolution from the initial stages of the extended workforce model (which was mainly concerned with cost-cutting) to a far more strategic position.

According to a recent Accenture study only 39 percent of executives stated cost savings as a primary benefit of an extended workforce strategy. Two-thirds (64 percent) of respondents cited the ability to flexibly adjust to changing demands for skills as a key benefit of using project-based workers, and 48 percent rely on this workforce to quickly supplement internal skills gaps.4

Companies are increasingly hiring just-in-time workers, and talent is marketing their services to multiple employers at once.

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Figure 1. The Evolution of the Talent-as-a-Service Ecosystem.

Growth in the free agent workforce-related vendor, compliance, and technology landscape will require organizations to scale processes and structures to support the attraction, recruitment, management, and analysis of this talent pool.

This means closer collaboration between HR, Procurement, Legal and IT, as well as taking a data-driven approach to evaluating alignment opportunities.

According to a recent study conducted by the Human Capital Institute, business leader satisfaction levels were significantly higher among organizations with standardized tools and processes to manage contract talent and among those that were able to identify the highest-performing contractors.5 Based on our client work and research around the TaaS trend, we have compiled a few lessons learned for how to get started with creating standardization: Lesson #1: Identify your key stakeholders and their sense of urgency early in the process. These leaders are the ones who will need to reinforce any new processes, so if they are not fully on board you’ll have a problem. Gather data and get clarity on the following questions to identify and influence key stakeholders: • Which departments, business units, and functions are frequent users of the free agent workforce?

• How important are process improvements in this area to their leadership team?

• What are their key pain points with the current process?

• What other strategic initiatives does this effort align to?

• Is this the right timing for a comprehensive overhaul considering other business priorities?

Lesson #2: Form a cross-functional project team to craft the business case.

Combine the financial and analytical skills of Procurement, the HR experience of the Talent Acquisition team, and the operational perspective of key customers and you will be on track to comprehensively identify qualitative

and quantitative business case levers. Make sure to review the business case with Finance – every organization has a slightly different perspective on what would be considered as valid drivers of a business case. Table 1 showcases sample levers for a managed service provider (MSP) implementation: Lever

Description

Calculation

Rate Standardization

Ensuring a set of universal terms and conditions with suppliers.

Consistent bill rates, mark up, conversion rates, pay policies.

Volume Price Analysis (individual rate of agency x volume)

Discounts

Various supplier discount opportunities – local and nationally leveraged.

“Volume allowance”

Lost Revenue

Reducing individual candidate sourcing and hiring cycles. Increased fill and time to fill by selection of the “right” supplier base.

Average revenue per employee x retention rate

“Renegade” Spend

As part of the introduction of the MSP policies will be created that provide guidelines for use of internal TA resources vs. external staffing agencies.

Reduction in $ spent on third party staffing

Productivity

Increased productivity from contingent labor through supplier scorecarding and management as well as contingent worker management.

Reduction in ramp up time

Reduction in turnover and associated cost.

% of budget allocated to recruiting and training

Turnover Cost

activities you want to consider consolidating your various suppliers through a MSP supported by VMS. Staffing Industry Analysts provide a good overview of the various MSP/VMS programs and vendor landscape. Procurement should take the lead in facilitating the vendor and technology selection process. Talent Acquisition, IT, and other key stakeholders provide input and evaluation with a weighted ranking scorecard.

Table 2. Sample MSP/VMS Vendor Selection Scorecard Criteria.

Table 1. Sample Business Case Levers for an Managed Service Provider (MSP) Implementation.

Lesson #3: Take your time to tease out the business impact.

In our experience, most organizations don’t have great visibility into their contract workforce. Don’t underestimate the time that it will take to identify various categories of spend, e.g., temporary workers, independent contractors, consultants, offshore workers, data compilation, and answering even simple questions. The story that will emerge from the data is most likely worth the effort. The surprisingly high variance of temp agency markup rates and the black hole of the independent contractors (ICs) are just a couple of examples of some of the findings you may uncover.

Lesson #4: Keep the CFO and CHRO in the loop.

The more you dig into the data, the more inconsistencies and opportunities for improvement you will find.

Keep key executives informed and ask for guidance as the implications of your findings may be larger than initially expected. Make sure both sponsors know that the Procurement and Talent Acquisition teams are collaborating and all recommendations are co-created.

Lesson #5: Evaluate Managed Service Providers (MSP) and Vendor Management Technology (VMS) as a team.

In order to support scaling of your free agent workforce

Lesson #6: Assess whether your organization has the skills to manage contract talent.

Take an honest look at the skills available in your organization – this emerging field requires knowledge at the intersection of procurement/vendor management, recruiting, compliance and analytics. Do you have the skills and experience necessary to manage the complexities of a free agent workforce program? If not, what kind of training can be provided, e.g., Staffing Industry Analysts’ Contingent Workforce Professional Certification? What external partners will you need to complement your team with, e.g., independent contractor engagement specialists?

Lesson #7: Clearly define future processes and accountabilities.

In order to run a successful extended workforce program beyond the project, you want to map out the new process and clearly identify accountability for each step.

Key questions to answer: • Who will be accountable for: • Creating policies and guidelines; • Monitoring compliance/co-employment risk; •D efining and quantifying demand of the free-agent workforce; • Defining position requirements; • Managing vendors; • Tracking and managing costs; and, • Reporting to leadership on key metrics?

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• How will new processes and policies be enforced?

Lesson #8: Create a comprehensive transition and change management plan.

It is critical that key stakeholders understand the benefits of the program, (i.e., meeting of hiring demand in a sustainable manner, alleviation of administrative burden, creation of better controls) and learn how risks, i.e., business disruption, will be mitigated. Ensure that hiring managers understand how to get trained and how to provide feedback about the new process. Feature success stories and leverage executive messaging to incentivize adoption.

Use the power of better reporting to showcase how much savings were accomplished or how quality was improved.

Lesson #9: Pilot your new approach.

Pick the area with the least impact or the client with the most urgent need as a pilot, learn from initial mistakes, gain support and endorsements, and move on to other areas.

Conclusion

Shifting towards an integrated Talent-as-a-Service organization is essential for most organizations, but it is no small feat. Getting ahead of the curve by starting to set the stage now is critical. Here is a quick readiness check list to help get you started:

lysts, p. 6, November 2013. (http://www.staffingindustry.com/eng/Conferences-Webinars/Webinars/ European-Buyer-Webinars/Archived-Webinars/2014forecasts) 3 Nicole Dessain, “Talent.trends 2014,” Talent.Imperative Inc., p. 6, January 2014. (http://talentimperative.com/ resources/talent-trends-2014/) 4 David Smith, David Gartside, Colin Sloman, Breck Marshall, “Managing the extended workforce: A skills strategy for business agility,” Accenture Outlook Point of View, pp. 1-2, March 2014. (http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/ PDF/Accenture-Outlook-Managing-the-extendedworkforce-talent.pdf) 5 Alan Mellish, Amy Lewis, “When Worlds Collide: Procurement and HR Managing Contract Talent,” HCI Research, p. 21, 2013. (http://www.hci.org/files/field_ content_file/AGS%20Research%20Paper_040114.pdf) 6 Tony Gregoire, Jason Ezratti, Bryan Pena, “VMS/MSP Landscape – A Comprehensive Review of 2013,” Staffing Industry Analysts, December 2013. (www.staffingindustry.com/content/.../131212_BuyerWebinar.pdf)

FURTHER READING Justin Fox, “Breaking Down the Freelance Economy,” HBR Blog Network, September 2014. (http://blogs.hbr. org/2014/09/breaking-down-the-freelance-economy/) Nicole Dessain, “The next wave in the free agent marketplace: Crowdsourcing consulting and analytics talent,” talent.imperative inc., May 2014. (http://talentimperative. com/2014/05/crowdsourcing-consulting-analytics-talent/) Annie Lau, “How To Handle Independent Contractors for Global Organizations,” TLNT, July 2014. (http://www. tlnt.com/2014/07/18/how-to-handle-independent-contractors-for-global-organizations/)

About the Author

Figure 2. Quick Readiness Check List.

Endnotes 1 Freelancers Union, Elance/oDesk, “Freelancing in America: A National Survey of the New Workforce,” p. 3, September 2014,.(https://fuweb-storage-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/content/ filer_public/7c/45/7c457488-0740-4bc4-ae450aa60daac531/freelancinginamerica_report.pdf) 2 David Papapostolou, Matt Norton, Sean Garbett, “2014 Contingent Market Forecast,” Staffing Industry Ana-

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Nicole Dessain, M.A., PMP, CPT is the founder of talent.imperative, a next generation talent management consultancy that guides our clients in surfacing their most pressing talent questions, crunches data to answer them, and customizes solutions to realize value through talent. Dessain is an Accenture-trained consultant and talent management practitioner with over a decade of global experience advising HR and business leaders on their talent strategy and people programs. She is dedicated to sharing her passion for talent insights with the HR and business community by serving as speaker, writer and trainer. She published the innovative white paper talent.trends 2014, and is a co-author of Springer’s upcoming Handbook of Human Resources Management.

She holds a master’s degree in International Information Management from the University of Hildesheim, Germany.

She can be reached at nicole@talentimperative.com.

Global Mobility Using Technology to Optimize Global Mobility Management

By Ed Hannibal, Yvonne Traber and Paul Jelinek, Mercer You’ve undoubtedly heard buzz about newer, faster, more elegant technology intended to automate every aspect of managing your expatriate workforce. From strategic talent management on the front-end to repatriate satisfaction surveys on the back-end, shiny new products abound. But when should you seek out new technology, and when should you keep using low-tech methods? Let’s look critically at what parts of the expatriate management cycle are most amenable to technology solutions, then consider when and how to implement them to optimize your processes.

Staff responsible for managing an employer’s expatriate workforce uses a wide range of technology to help them with expatriate administration, from simple Excel spreadsheets, word-processed templates, and email messages to robust suites of integrated databases, calculators, employee websites and monitoring tools that can turn almost any aspect of the expatriate experience into data.

The following figure illustrates the many tasks to consider when managing an expatriate:

Factors affecting technology adoption When looking for a solution to help manage the expatriate process, there are several aspects you need to consider.

Many factors affect where your HR function falls on this spectrum of “homegrown” spreadsheets to robust expatriate management software suites: • Workforce size – The first and most obvious factor is the size of your globally mobile workforce. Clearly, a multinational company with only a handful of employees working outside their home countries has much different needs from an employer with thousands of expatriates to manage.

• Duration – Another factor is the age of your expatriate programme. If you have begun placing employees abroad only in the last few years, you may have fewer concerns with long-term strategies for expatriates careers, or for expatriates with multiple moves from one host country to another. Conversely, if you have cohorts of expatriated workers with a decade or more of time outside their home country, you need to address complex issues of managing retirement benefits, tax liabilities, housing in home and host countries, and long-term career trajectories for repatriated employees. Robust software support makes more sense in the latter case than in the former one.

• HR staffing – The more HR personnel you have dedicated to managing your mobile workers, the less you need a sophisticated suite of expatriate management

Figure 1. Tasks to consider when managing an expatriate. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • November 2014

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tools. But, that does not mean you can substitute more personnel for a robust, technology-based strategy for managing these important human capital assets.

• Attitude towards outsourcing – Some corporate cultures embrace outsourcing of HR tasks, from payroll management through to full global mobility management. If your company tends to manage all aspects of HR management internally, you may find that you need to rely more on data, metrics, software, and processes that can be managed in-house. But, if your company already outsources other aspects of human capital management, you may be more likely to rely on outside providers to handle your mobile workforce – from relocation agencies that manage foreign moves to attorneys who facilitate visas and work permits, to consultants who continually monitor expatriate workforce attitudes with surveys.

• Attitude toward centralization/decentralization – Employers exhibit a wide range of practice on their degree of centralization. We see everything from complete centralization and control at headquarters, to decentralization by region, to decentralization at the home country level. In addition, the degree of centralization can be combined with the use – or non-use – of shared services, outsourcers, or co-sourcers for the entire menu of expatriate needs (see Figure 2). Each of these configurations presumes slightly different staffing to manage them. And, depending on where employers are on these multiple continuums, they may have very different attitudes toward adopting technology, developing “homegrown” solutions, or relying on standard office software such as email, Excel and Word.

• Industry – The use of technology to support expatriate management varies by industry. Some employers, such as financial services firms and retailers, have more predictable patterns, with most of their expatriates assigned to positions outside their home country for two to five years. Other employers, such as energy exploration firms, may have many workers on remote rigs for years at a time – with much more syncopated terms on-site, off-site, moving between sites, and R&R time off. Tracking compensation to more complex patterns may require more technical power than an Excel spreadsheet can provide easily.

• Technology sophistication and ease of use – Whether employers choose an outside technology product for any part of their expatriate management depends in part on the software’s complexity, its modularity, its ability to integrate with existing HRIS systems – and, of course, its cost. Simple, modular programmes get adopted more quickly than complex, fully integrated ones that require customization before they can work with existing technology. From the employer’s perspective, the risk of adopting new technol-

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ogy increases with that technology’s difficulty and cost.

(Of course, the risk of not adopting new technology also increases with the cost of potential errors resulting from ad hoc, homegrown systems.)

Integration – The great challenge today and in the future is to ensure that corporate systems of record track the following: who was an assignee, how long he or she was away, the number of additional assignments, whether he or she was accompanied, and his or her performance/success. These are critical talent skills tracking demographics that organisations desperately need to do a better job at mining.

“What tools do you use to track and manage assignments and their related costs?”

What are employers doing in practice?

Mercer’s 2012 survey, Worldwide Survey of International Assignment Policies and Practices, has been conducted biennially since the 1950s and is the largest in the industry, used by multinational employers to benchmark their programmes. Here are the survey results responding to the question, “What tools do you use to track and manage assignments and their related costs?”

We use an in-house application 13%

We use outside vendor software 18%

Other 5%

We use mainly Excel and Word 64%

Figure 2. Sources used to track and manage assignments.

Source: Mercer’s Worldwide Survey of International Assignment Policies and Practices, 2012 (N=735)

While almost two out of three employers surveyed (64%) still rely on Excel and Word to manage their programmes, that percentage is down from 71% in Mercer’s same survey two years earlier. Use of outside vendor software varied significantly by region, with the percentage of surveyed employers using outside vendor software ranging from a high of 25% in North America to 16% in Europe, only 7% in Asia-Pacific, and 0% in Latin America.

How to decide whether to adopt new technology to manage expatriates We would not advise the continued heavy reliance on simple MS Office tools to manage complex expatriate assignment programs, as those tools carry innate risks.

One “unflagged” calculation error or failure to update an exchange rate or tax rate could result in costly and hardto-undo allowance mistakes. It could also impair the reputation of the HR team responsible for managing an employer’s assignee population. There are numerous solutions available on the market to help manage expatriates, and these products are designed to greatly decrease the manpower and inevitable margin of error that is inherent with a haphazard solution such as MS Office tools.

Psychologists are fond of saying that people change only when the pain of staying in the same mode is greater than the pain of changing. The same can be said of oganisations – including multinational employers and HR functions.

Sometimes it becomes obvious when it is time to add more staff to manage the expatriate function. Sometimes, an acquisition that significantly expands the pool of expatriated employees will force the issue. And, sometimes, a change of personnel – anywhere from the CEO level down – can lead to a change in the level of technology that an employer is willing, or able, to adopt to manage this important part of the workforce.

With or without a triggering event, whoever man-

Psychologists are fond of saying that people change only when the pain of staying in the same mode is greater than the pain of changing. ages your company’s expatriation administration should periodically ask themselves the following questions to help determine whether your company is using technology appropriately in this area: 1. What is our head count for expatriated employees? Has that number changed recently? Obviously, the smaller the number, the less likely it is that you need the latest, high-end technology. And, as noted above, different employers have different tolerances for ratios of management to staff, for outsourcing, and for centralization. But, at some point, it is prudent for employers to at least consider getting regular data updates from third-party providers and also to consider tracking and automating parts of their expatriation administration process. We suggest that the threshold is between 50 and 100 expatriates working in five or more countries.

2. What is the cost of an error compared to the cost of technology? The cost of an error in managing even one major expatriated executive can reverberate loudly. Expatriates talk to each other – both within your company and within the expat enclaves they often live in. So, they often have a clear idea of how their total remuneration packages – including base pay, housing, cost-of-living adjustments, quality-of-living adjustments, retirement benefits, etc. – compare with those of other expats. A large error can mean years of overpaying for a portion of their stay, or paying the wrong amount of tax, embarrassing backtracking, or even audits to get those expats back in line with company norms. That cost could exceed the cost of the technology you have been putting off.

3. What is the ROI of our expatriate program?

Most multinational employers are looking critically at the costs and benefits of the employees they have assigned outside their home countries. If your company has not relied on technology to provide objective, consistent data to support the major elements of expatriate compensation, you may have numerous, significant exceptions to stated policies. If you compute each expatriate’s compensation using a common Excel spreadsheet that does not tie in to your other HRIS systems, you will be hard pressed to identify and justify total costs when asked.

4. How many types of expatriates do we have? Are we segmenting the elements of expatriate support appropriately among those types? Globally, mobile employees come in more and more forms, from frequent business travelers to “global nomads” who never return “home.” Newer companies with fewer, younger expatriates will have different needs from multinational employers with larger, more mature expatriation programmes. Whatever their size and stage, mobility programmes can make useful distinctions among skilled positions needed urgently to get a project underway in a new market, versus developmental positions needed to train future leaders for senior roles.

In each case, technology can help you craft, articulate, and maintain specific expatriate remuneration profiles tailored precisely to the goals of the assignment.

5. Are we keeping good track of our expatriates?

Compared to domestic employees, expatriates can be difficult for HR to track. You should know who is on assignment, exactly where they are (including specific addresses), what dependents are in country, how long visas are valid, countries of origins, and even medical coverage. Particularly with unexpected perils such as an international health crisis like the Ebola virus, knowing where your employees are is essential to managing risk. If you can’t produce accurate reports on that information quickly, you may need better technology.

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6. Are our expatriates happy? Periodic simple attitude surveys can help determine how satisfied your expatriates are with their assignments – and that information can help you determine whether to invest in more technology. If some of your expatriates are about to jump ship because they are not getting paid on time, their families are miserable, or their taxes are fouled up, it may be time to move beyond Excel and email to manage these valuable human resources.

It’s absolutely essential to find ways to keep expatriates engaged and connected while on assignment . . .

And, what exactly are the benefits of going through this technology assessment and implementation? Here are two examples that help illustrate what additional technology can bring to the table for your company: Mercer Belong Mobility established a new single connection point and face for an organization with over 500 internationally mobile employees covering 50 countries.

The solution literally transformed the need for countless emails and PDFs while removing any lag in turnaround time. It’s absolutely essential to find ways to keep expatriates engaged and connected while on assignment, and Mercer Belong Mobility has helped accomplish this objective. Today, line managers, the HR community, assignees and their families, as well as potential candidates can interact with the firm’s mobility portal.

Another of Mercer’s Talent Impact solutions, AssignmentPro has recently transformed the global mobility program of an established multinational organization with 300 traditional expatriates, 80 short-term assignments, and 200 cross-border transfers with manual processes.

Prior to the launch of this technology, teams around the globe utilized Microsoft Excel to create each compensation package, calculate in-house cost projections, and track employee rosters. Now, mobility leadership can run payroll updates, full population costs for the C-suite, and immigration status reports in a matter of moments. Organizations are able to manage the entire expatriate process using only

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one automated system.

In conclusion, when assessing your company’s needs, it is suggested that you ask yourself the questions addressed in this article, carefully weigh the benefits of the technology to your overall business challenges, and consider the products available that can help you more easily manage the expatriate process for your organisation. Once you have examined the issue from these angles, you can determine whether your company is using technology appropriately to manage your globally mobile workforce.

About the Authors Ed Hannibal is a partner in Mercer’s Information Products Solutions business and leads Mercer’s Global Mobility practice. With more than 18 years of experience, he advises clients on international pay policy and conducts seminars on international compensation. He has presented on expatriate compensation at many forums around the world. Ed is based in Chicago, and you can reach him at edward.hannibal@mercer.com.

Yvonne Traber leads Mercer’s Global Mobility Technology Solutions for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region. She helps employers to resolve global mobility issues and challenges. She develops and designs international compensation solutions and cost-of-living approaches for multinational firms and governments, and presents regularly at Mercer’s Expatriate Management seminars around the world. Yvonne is based in Geneva, and you can reach her at yvonne.traber@mercer.com.

Paul Jelinek is a principal and Global Mobility product line leader in Mercer’s Technology Solutions group. He is responsible for defining the product vision, roadmap, requirements and go-to-market plans for Mercer’s Global Mobility technology solutions. Paul is based in Atlanta, and you can reach him at paul.jelinek@mercer.com.

Social Enterprise Cool New Uses of Big Data for HR The following discussion and interview was conducted

by WSR magazine with Michael Beygelman, CEO of Joberate, on their unique big data analytics for social media that predicts employees at risk of leaving.

As HR struggles to understand and leverage big data, one leading edge company that is successfully leveraging big data in social media for predictive analytics is Joberate.

Joberate is a company with roots in Finland, which now is based in New York but still maintains software development offices in Lithuania. In 2012, Joberate developed a technology platform that measures job seeking behaviors of individuals based on their digital footprint. When combined with a patent-pending predictive analytics engine, Joberate says they can accurately predict who is likely to change jobs, and when.

The output from Joberate’s big data social media analysis is called a “J Score,” which is an index that is represented in a non-linear score from 4 (lowest level of activity) to 70 (highest level of activity), as a measure of the job seeking behaviors of any individual or group of individuals in the global workforce. The J Score predicts changes based on the job-seeking behaviors of individuals or groups, their drivers, timing, location, and enables myriad actionable analytics. In simple terms, the higher the J Score the greater the job seeking level of activity and the higher the likelihood of departure.

Joberate is led by CEO Michael Beygelman, who originally ran the global recruitment outsourcing for the Adecco Group during the early days of the HR outsourcing industry. He was originally a Joberate client, which at the time was an Internet and social media-based staffing agency, who joined first as an advisor and later as CEO to help them transition to be a more of a technology-focused company.

The genesis of this work or the underlying thesis that the team has had is that organizations and individuals lack understanding and transparency about big data, social media, and the true implications of engagement as they might relate to job-seeking behaviors. According to Mr. Beygelman, “I essentially wanted to actually solve problems and get involved in big data and the Web, and Joberate had some exciting potential and need to transition into more of a digital new business.”

He also stresses, “We don’t look at what is called PII, (Personally Identifiable Information). We rely on what is in the public domain in terms of social media.”

Initially, Joberate had a thesis that the best information about people was external to a company’s databases in the Web, and that the way to know more about a person’s job-seeking behaviors, as well as more about them as an individual, was by looking at the specific digital Web footprint they leave behind. Over time our team created a pretty cool prototype, which became the backbone of our core technology and initially measured changes in people’s social Web activity. By doing that we began to see some really interesting patterns and we realized we would need a lot of computers and a lot of people to analyze all this data – truly a big data problem. So from there we invented a machine-learning approach that is used in things like Amazon.com, credit card fraud systems, and Netflix. Essentially we measure and track the information and train the engine to make a decision, and then we give the engine more information and it updates its decisions, etc.

From there the company has been able to extrapolate and predict things like how likely someone is to leave their current employer, where they might be likely to go, and we can also benchmark one company versus another in terms of employee engagement and relative percentage of workforce that is at risk of leaving.

J Scores and analysis can aggregate to a department or entire company so as to classify and report by individual, department, or company-wide trends (see Figure 1.) On Joberate’s scale, scores that are above a J Index Score of 30 are considered “exploring,” and those who are even higher are classified as “at risk,” and are basically saying to the company with their footprint, “I want out.”

In fact, Joberate.com has listed on their website what they call the Joberate Employment Topology, which includes the J Index Score as an aggregate index score being used to assess relative engagement and strength of job-seeking behaviors at 100 companies on the Fortune 500 list. The companies on the list are ranked in terms of their J Index Score performance from lowest (meaning most satisfied and lowest level of job seeking) to highest.

According to the company’s website, the highest or worst scoring company of the 100 listed is Walmart Stores with a 14.96 J Index Score.

According to Mr. Beygelman, “What is interesting is that we have been running the J Index Score for a while and the same people (companies) that were at the bottom are generally still at the bottom. In fact, the next version of the J Index coming in October 2014 will enable the user to click on a company and get more detailed information.

What we are beginning to track, which is really cool, is the correlation between employment volatility and stock price.

So when this is live, one will be able to look at 30, 60 and 90-day employment volatility as represented by the J Index Score and correlate that to stock price. Based on what we have seen it becomes very interesting. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • November 2014

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A sample of a Joberate Dashboard available via a SaaSbased subscription is shown below.

Figure 1. Joberate Dashboard.

The overall result is a new measure and tool for transparency into the potential for voluntary attrition and engagement across a wide range of companies globally.

Mr. Beygelman states that the trends can be dramatically different depending upon the industry. For example, in some industries the higher the J Index Score or employment volatility and related voluntary attrition, the better the company does, which seems entirely counter-intuitive.

Conversely, for some companies the lower the J Index Score the worse that company may perform in terms of stock price. The story seems to be based on specific industries and sectors.

Current customers are using this technology as a micro view to measure the job seeking behaviors of their employees with the idea of identifying hot spots of likely future turnover so that they (the company), can implement some sort of intervention. Essentially, as a tool to spot at-risk groups and conduct interventions, or address pain points that may reduce or prevent turnover.

Mr. Beygelman tells the story of one case study example with a life sciences company in the Boston area who started seeing more voluntary leaves from the company but was unable to put their finger on the problem. “They started measuring the job-seeking behaviors of their workforce. From this they identified one IT organization that seemed to represent a disproportionate amount of the voluntary turnover. At that point the company had a

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potential ROI but chose to keep investigating. In talking to the manager for the area, HR at the company established that the manager was aware of the problem but did not know the underlying issue or root cause. So the company then was able to use heat maps and dashboards provided

by Joberate to overlay geography with the turnover. From this a trend emerged, which showed that the turnover was happening in one geographic area. In fact, by integrating data from Google on traffic patterns they discovered that this area had the worst traffic problems getting to and from work every day due to ongoing construction. From this, the company was able to implement more flexible working arrangements with the employees impacted by the construction, enabling them to work from home some days and to come in later or earlier in order to miss peak traffic commute hours.”

According to Mr. Beygelman, within 30 days after implementing more flexible work policies, the forecast attrition rate dropped by half.

About Michael Beygelman Michael Beygelman is CEO of Joberate, a technology company whose mission is to quantify and measure job- seeking behaviors of the global workforce. The company has a global vision for a more transparent employment environment, in support of which Joberate recently launched the publicly available J-Index that measures jobseeking behaviors of Fortune 100 employees. Prior to Joberate, he built Adecco Group’s global recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) business into a recruitment powerhouse that spanned more than 48 countries and 100 clients. Under his leadership, the company earned the #1 industry ranking by Outsourcing Institute, and was responsible for one new-hire nearly every seven minutes, touching more than 60,000 new-hires annually. He was named to the 2013 Staffing 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the recruitment industry as nominated by companies, advisors, and industry analysts and is the recipient of the HRO Super Star recognition awarded by HRO Today magazine. He is a monthly columnist for HR publications, frequently speaks at HR conferences, and is a former executive director of the HR Services and Technology Association. He can be reached at michael@joberate.com.

Strategic HR? Employees are Like Peanut Butter and Napkins A Story of HR not yet at the Strategic Table

By Jeff Higgins, Human Capital Management Institute The problem exists today that HR may believe they are partners at the strategy table without realizing that, in fact, they are not. If HR is only invited to the table after strategic decisions have been made, then the strategy part is over and HR is there to do operational work, not be strategic. The following is a story based on actual events at a real company in the U.S.; however the company and other names have been changed.

In August of this year, Natalie Sun, chief human resources officer (CHRO) of TechSoft and Sheila Brown, director of Workforce Reporting and HR Information Technology (HRIT) were summoned to CEO Dennis Tanaka’s office to meet. Natalie and Sheila were met by CFO Andrew Darwin and two partners of McBrain Consulting, dressed in matching grey suits, who were already in the CEO’s office waiting.

As Natalie and Sheila arrived, CEO Dennis Tanaka got right to the point, “Natalie, you are being brought in on an initiative critical to the future success of TechSoft. As you know, the market has been slowing this year. Without steady growth in our top-line revenue, TechSoft will not meet its goals or shareholder expectations this year or next.

Andrew here has assured me that we can pick up some profit gains in tax savings. However, the big impact has to come from our workforce. What I mean is; how do we know we have the right number of employees? What is our productivity? How do we know our employees are as productive as our competitors? I believe we may be overstaffed.”

“What is our productivity? How do we know we have the right number of employees? How do we know our employees are as productive as competitors?”

Before Natalie could respond, Dennis continued, “McBrain has done some analysis and recommended offshoring

some manufacturing and key product support infrastructure in software technology services. This will result in the closure of our hardware manufacturing operation in Oregon, as well as one or more North American research and tech support centers. I believe in this proposal. I know TechSoft needs strong action to achieve its profit goals. It’s a bold plan. Let’s make it work.”

Dennis gestured toward Andrew the CFO, “HR needs to partner with Finance, identify exactly how much reduction in the workforce will achieve our goals, where and who it will affect. To impact this year’s results I need all analysis presented to me in 30 days. Then we announce and implement immediately.”

Ever composed, CHRO Natalie bravely responded, “Of course, Dennis. I wish HR had been brought into this sooner but we are team players. In 30 days we can deliver what you need. However, TechSoft’s growth and multiple acquisitions without any workforce realignment in years might give us other options to consider.” Sheila clenched her jaw to mask her surprise at all this, but noticed Andrew Darwin’s smile and the McBrain twins giving each other subtle nods, like mental fist bumps. She tried to take a sip of Diet Coke to calm herself.

“Natalie,” Dennis responded already distracted by paperwork on his desk, “If there are other options to meet our goals, I’m open. But we still announce in 30 days.”

“Okay! We’ll need a copy of the McBrain proposal and supporting analysis from Finance,” Natalie responded with as much zip as she could muster.

“Andrew, get them what they need,” Dennis said and started tapping on his keyboard signaling the end of the meeting.

After the meeting with the CEO Natalie and Sheila met to plan their actions. “No matter what numbers we give the business they still treat HR like financial simpletons,” Sheila fumed as she thought about how this started. “Perhaps top management thinks employees are disposable, like napkins to be used up and then discarded as needed and replacements hired on a whim.”

In Natalie’s mind, Sheila needed more experience with corporate reality. HR often didn’t have the luxury of implementing only decisions that they agreed with.

Sheila, for her part, was trying to put on a brave face but frustration just kept seeping out. She was pretty sure Natalie felt the same way but somehow her boss had the strength to deal with corporate “BS” like a superhero. Sheila’s current frustration was that TechSoft’s CFO, Andrew Darwin, had sold a McBrain Consulting business case proposal to the CEO without input from HR. Sure McBrain had a reputation for saving money and building outsourcing programs with large organizations, but when she was at a previous company, Medical Products Co., she had been tasked with cleaning up a McBrain outsourcing mess. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • November 2014

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McBrain’s proposal for TechSoft recommended cutting 10 percent of the workforce based on a high-level benchmarking exercise. Using that, TechSoft’s CEO and CFO had decided the pain of cuts was to be shared across the company, effectively spreading many reductions evenly across the business like peanut butter. This solution was both fair and at the same time unfair, since no one knew where or how much fat existed in TechSoft’s business units and support functions.

30 Days Later Shelia had spent the last 30 days finding truck-sized holes in the darned McBrain business case – yet the changes were still going to be implemented. How could the otherwise brilliant CEO not have been open to more of HR’s alternative recommendations and consider the risk factors?

The CEO meeting had been just one dizzying month ago.

Now Sheila was focused on Natalie’s pep talk.

“Sheila, let’s keep in mind what’s best for TechSoft. We presented good alternatives. We demonstrated that we have the goods to be at the decision table. Sure, they didn’t buy all our recommendations but that’s why being professional now really counts to implement the CEO’s decisions.

All eyes are on us. Do you see what I’m saying?”

Sheila smiled faintly and said, “Yes, I’ll play nice, Natalie.”

Natalie smiled. She didn’t think it would be constructive to admit how much she agreed with Shelia. Sheila was an excellent manager and had done an amazing job under difficult circumstances in the last 30 days. The hard truth was that diplomacy was never easy with Finance looking down their nose at you.

At this point Tony Collins, the Finance-designated project manager arrived in Natalie’s office and extended a hand, “Good to meet you,” Natalie said with authenticity and then introduced Sheila.

“I understand HR did a lot of work to shape the total workforce reductions,” Tony whispered workforce reductions to show his tactfulness as a freshly minted MBA. “Let’s start at the beginning,” Natalie said directing Tony to a chair. “So when Dennis called me to his office a month ago, I had thought it might be regarding a proposal HR made to truly integrate and streamline lines of business due to TechSoft’s many corporate acquisitions. That proposal included targeted elimination of duplicate jobs and early retirement offers. However it seems HR’s costefficiency proposal was stuck in Finance’s review process.”

Looking visibly surprised, Tony said, “So you are telling me that HR recommended cost-efficiency changes that would save millions and Finance, the savings and efficiency people, held it up? That sounds like a Dilbert cartoon.”

Sheila couldn’t resist chipping in, “Yes, Finance basically said, sorry we can’t get to your savings proposal, we are too busy paying millions to someone else who knows little about our business to do the same thing. Dennis has been quoted saying that employees are the true source

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of value creation and most valuable assets at TechSoft.

However, employees are also the largest cost and therefore greatest cost reduction opportunity. So here we are getting ready to implement McBrain’s peanut butter and napkins program.”

“They didn’t want HR’s perspective, just our rubber stamp on McBrain’s work.” Sheila added. “I guess this is a good point to introduce you to the team. We can give you all the details you want.”

Key Points of McBrain Proposal Goal: Drive long term growth and increased market share:  Meet shareholder expectations of 9-10% annual revenue and profit growth  Continue to meet customer needs in product quality and performance Issues:  Flat demand in a tough economy has led to slow growth and reduced profits.  New products underway will not launch in time to impact this year.  Acquisitions led to bloated infrastructure, taking focus from innovation and new products Profit Improvement Projection Impacted Annualized Profit % Headcount Gain $ 1.5% 1.0%

-

$ 000's in millions

$60.0 Tax (offshoring), & procurement cost savings $40.0 Selected software/hardware price increases

Off-Shoring and Job Cuts 1,000 2,000 2,000 1,000 650 350 -

$40.0 $100.0 $175.0 $40.0 $55.0 $25.0 ($140.0)

Offshore MFG to China, close US plant Offshore technical consulting + top tier customer service to India Close open job requisitions for new/replacement positions Cut temps and contractors Job cuts in R&D from new products Job cuts in corporate and administration less Restructuring costs (plant closing, severance, training etc.)

7.5%

7,000

$295.0 Subtotal Offshoring, Job Cuts and Closing Open Jobs

10.00%

7,000

$395.0 TOTAL SAVINGS AND PROFIT % IMPACT

As Sheila left with Tony, Natalie flashed back to that final recommendation meeting. Now it was D-Day, thirty days after HR learned of the restructuring based on McBrain’s proposal. Dennis and Andrew were there as were the McBrain partners. HR was represented by Natalie, Sheila and Goran, Sheila’s analytics manager. Dennis started with the ultimatum, “Today – decisions. Tomorrow – changes. So Natalie, give it your best shot.”

Before Natalie even started, Andrew leaned forward on the attack, “Finance just got HR’s numbers yesterday.

I think we desire more than one day for review – after all you’ve had 30 days to get this together.”

Sheila thought, ‘just like you gave HR time to review McBrain’s data before presenting it to Dennis,’ but said nothing.

Natalie put up a PowerPoint comparing McBrain’s proposal to HR’s findings. She discussed some of the value of outsourcing but also the unaddressed problems. “India has great talent but compared to our service center there are major experience, training and communication gaps. Plus India has a 100 percent turnover rate versus our domestic service center’s 20 percent turnover rate which compounds the hiring and training issues, as well as negatively impacting service delivery.”

Natalie continued, “The director of Customer Service’s research shows an inverse relationship between customer sat-

isfaction and customer up-sells when offshoring customer service on our most complex products. In other words, the higher the level of service skills offshored, the lower the rate of customer satisfaction and product up-selling. I strongly recommend delaying offshoring of our most complex, toptier service and support jobs until further research can be done.”

Natalie was talking fast to keep Andrew from stealing Dennis’s attention, “Also we found 1,000 more contractors and temps than were included in the Finance total head count. We recommend those as reductions. You can show a positive revenue impact in our consulting units by continuing to recruit on open consultant positions that we fill with internal candidates. The company was built by hiring the best from the top schools, so now do we abandon our cornerstone? Just for software developers alone, there is a projected need for 150,000 additional developers over the next 10 years. That means steep competition, even in a slow market, to get the best in a shortage situation and retain our technology edge. McBrain proposed to freeze all searches – even the most critical ones, which delays new product launches and we’ll lose revenue due to open billable consulting roles.”

Natalie paused for a breath and, Andrew, took over. He peppered Natalie with questions, demanding details then questioning each spreadsheet line item. Over time, Dennis seemed to be listening to Finance.

Andrew circled in for the kill, “Your lost revenue numbers are unsubstantiated by the senior vice president for consulting, so wherever you got that information it is not real.”

Sheila interrupted, “That information came from a direct report to the senior VP, the consulting director with the open consulting positions, who is much closer to the work.

He briefs the senior VP.” Andrew resumed, “I repeat, without senior management sign-off those numbers are speculative. Your risk items have all been addressed in a different McBrain study. Finally, the cost savings from internally filling jobs is unsubstantiated or worse yet, invented by your own department. Closing open positions and locations are concrete savings.”

Natalie argued back, “Moving talented personnel from positions scheduled to be outsourced to open positions does reduce cost, protect internal knowledge and help smooth over dramatic change. Cutting engineers and programmer positions we will later need to rehire may save today at the expense of tomorrow. Are we really that short sighted?

Numbers, like employees, need to support our core values.”

Before Andrew could reply Dennis cut them both off.

“Natalie, I appreciate the obvious effort you and your team have made, but I must have real savings falling to the bottom line. Under different circumstances I might be inclined to entertain more of your recommendations or give you more time, but we are up against a deadline and market expectations.

What I will do is agree to reduce terminations by 1,000 based on your contractor findings. Also, you have approval

to fill the 500 most critical engineering, development and consulting roles internally – provided the business unit leader signs off on each position that it is critical. The rest of the job cuts will need to happen ASAP. This meeting is over!”

Back in HR, Sheila continued briefing Tony, “The biggest surprise we found was an unexpected savings in the temps and contractors. We had 1,000 more contractors than McBrain thought were there and our quarterly spend was millions more than McBrain had estimated. So we annualized that number for comparison purposes. It seems contractor costs hide in many places so it took a special analysis to really find and cost them out accurately. With more time we could have quantified trends and forecast needs.”

Sheila leaned forward and said, “Here is an overview of an ad hoc database we put together for open positions, turnover, and hiring activity. We also compiled HR costs relating to recruiting, training, and retention, and examined Finance’s methodology for making return on investment (ROI) recommendations – their standard business case template. It included TechSoft’s standard ROI, net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). Nice worksheets but they don’t work with people investments like internal promotion versus external hiring, lost revenue due to open positions, or the impact of great service on customer retention and revenue.”

Sheila added, “The best human capital modeling and management methods, not to mention cost management, comes from using workforce planning metrics that Finance doesn’t incorporate, so human capital ROI is essentially lost because it doesn’t fit Finance’s outdated accounting model.”

As Sheila walked back to her office she thought about what Natalie said after they lost the battle but overall made a positive but frustratingly incomplete difference: ‘Sometimes even great analysis and charts are not enough to stop management from a committed course of action. Like walking up a sand dune, three steps forward and two steps back, but making a point is still progress and maybe, just maybe, Finance would include HR next time.’

About the Author 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.

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Executive Interview This interview was conducted by Shawn Fitzgerald, lead editor for this issue and co-managing editor of IHRIM’s Workforce Solutions Review (WSR) publication. Shawn interviewed three very special guests to talk about an international HR optimization project for METRO Cash & Carry, which was named “The Blue Sky Project.” METRO Cash & Carry is a sales brand of METRO AG headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany. We begin with introductions of our three guests.

for private and commercial customers: 1. METRO Cash & Carry: the world’s market leader in cash & carry; 2. Media Market and Saturn: Europe’ s leader in consumer electronic retailing; 3. Real hypermarkets; and, 4. Galeria Kaufhof: The market leader in the department store segment in Germany and Belgium.

Udo Stauber: I am Udo Stauber, director, HR Processes, Analytics & Projects and have been with METRO for more than 12 years. I’m responsible for organizational development, HR analytics, and mobile services within the HR community of our sales line, METRO Cash & Carry. Before I joined METRO I worked for DuPont, as a HR manager. I’m a certified coach and mediator.

Elke Nigge: My name is Elke Nigge and I have been with METRO for six years and in my current position I am responsible for projects focusing on HRIT, the HR organization, and HR processes. Prior to METRO, I worked for more than 15 years as an HR consultant, some of that time with IBM, on mostly large international projects. My role on the Blue Sky Project was project manager.

Wolfgang Taumann: I have 18 years of international HR and organizational consulting experience. Since 2005, I have owned a small consultancy, and before that I was employed with some leading HR consulting companies like Renaissance, Hunter Group, Cedar, and Booz Allen. I’ve worked in the U.S. and Europe.

Since 2004, METRO AG has been one of my largest clients and I have worked with them on various HR projects. One of the largest projects with METRO AG has been the Blue Sky project for METRO Cash & Carry that we’ll be talking about in this interview.

I supported the project design, setup, and also the execution in the first two rollout waves.

The focus of the Blue Sky project was on the sales line, METRO Cash & Carry. METRO Cash & Carry is the leading international player in self-service wholesale: it is customer-focused, international, and innovative. The concept is oriented towards helping customers successfully run their own businesses and, therefore, focuses on professional customers, such as hoteliers, restaurant operators, caterers, and independent retailers. METRO Cash & carry is the largest sales line of the METRO Group, and also by far the most international sales line with about 120,000 employees working in 28 countries and 762 locations.

WSR: Thank you. Let’s get right to the questions. What was the state of HR METRO Cash & Carry and what was the need for the Blue Sky Project?

Stauber: At first I would like to introduce you to the METRO Group and METRO Cash & Carry, in order to understand the context of the project. METRO Group is one of the world’s leading retail and wholesale companies with around 250,000 employees working in more than 2,200 locations in 31 countries in Europe and Asia, with an annual revenue of about 66.7 billion euros (in 2012). The portfolio of METRO Group’s sales brands offers a wide range of services

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Now onto the Blue Sky project. Before the project, METRO Cash & Carry completed an enterprise-wide reorganization and optimization program in which we analyzed how we were spending our time in HR. What we discovered was that we were spending around three quarters of HR’s time fulfilling administrative tasks only, such as data entry, personal accounting, and time and attendance management.

The rest of our HR resources were used for HR content areas such as talent management, leadership development, and change management. The HR directors of our 28 country divisions felt that their time should be spent on more value-added work. It was quite clear that we had to change the time spent on administrative tasks and had to invest more on topics critical to our organization.

Nigge: Before we started the Blue Sky Project, the HR organization was decentralized. Each country used their own IT tools and had their own HR processes, but we were improving. Most of the HR administrators’ processes were maintained by local HR. Much of the HR work was done manually.

Lastly, we needed a clearer and more standardized definition of roles and responsibilities in the HR organization. As result of all this manual work and decentralized organization work, we were caught in manual processes with many redundancies within, and also across multiple countries.

WSR: What was the mission and scope of the Blue Sky Project?

Taumann: As you can see from our current state, there was a need to optimize the HR administration processes and reduce the HR costs, in order to shift the focus of HR to more value-added tasks.

Based on this clear need, the mission of the project was to streamline and downsize HR administration and reinvest the freed-up resources into what we call the HR content areas, with the goal to strengthen the value of the HR function to the business. These HR content areas were performance and talent management, employer branding, supporting business expansion, and new organizational development models. The project was executed within three years from the start of 2011 to the end of 2013.

The project scope consisted of three elements: processes, IT solutions, and organization.

The standard approach for this project was “fitto-standard.” Compared to the traditional “fit-gapanalysis approach” this technique is not meant to specifically analyze all the process gaps across the organization compared to the global standard that we developed. Instead, when we went out in the field and

presented this global standard, we purely asked for justification on deviations. The only exceptions accepted were specific country legal requirements or a significant business reason. This fit-to-standard (FTS) approach enabled us to realize an accelerated rollout that proved to be very successful.

Another key point was to centralize all administrative and payroll tasks from all store locations.

Further, we completed a detailed HR organization assessment of each country, meaning we looked at each employee and what they were doing in their processes and tasks. Based on that, we designed a streamlined HR target organization with three defined organizational roles, which we will introduce.

At the end of the organizational component of the project was the transition to the target HR organization, which included head count reduction and also reinvesting in the HR content areas.

Stauber: METRO Cash & Carry has operations in 28 countries and at that time we included around 20 countries in the Blue Sky Project. Due to resource limitations, our approach was to complete the project in waves, and we decided to have five waves within a total time frame of three years. We built a centralized expert team and a dedicated rollout team, and this team was located at our headquarters. What was new for the international HR organization was that we developed a complete knowledge tool kit to enable an effective project realization. That pre-work paid off in the end.

WSR: What were the processes or enabling technologies that were implemented, and why did you select those technologies?

Nigge: We looked first at selected processes with a high administrative volume and ability to standardize across countries. For example, we examined processes in data and document management and processes in attendance and absence management. In some cases, we centralized and optimized the payroll operations. The processes in the to-be state are supported with the implementation of a workflow-based, decentralized data entry system, which is based on SAP, but the maintenance interface was developed in-house. As a result, basic data entry is done by the store HR admins and finalized by central HR. That was not possible before we started this Blue Sky Project. In addition, we implemented a workflow-based digital personal file. We extended our self-service functionalities for employees and for managers and created a new self-service tool enabling processes such as, data changes, vacation processing, team views, and in some countries, time data changes. That is very helpful in the store environment.

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WSR: How did your organizational structure change and what were the drivers for that reorganization?

Nigge: On a country level, we defined key roles during the Blue Sky Project. The first role is store HR, the second is central HR administration and payroll, the third is role regional HR, and the fourth role is country head office HR. Store HR is responsible for administering the digital personal files, for local hiring, maintaining data and start workflows to the central HR team, but almost everything related to payroll has been moved to the central HR and payroll team.

Central HR payroll is responsible for finalizing the workflows initiated by store HR and is responsible for complex HR matters, for example, ensuring quality and compliance for HR data and payroll data.

The third role is regional HR. Regional HR is a business partner, and responsible for multiple stores and for performing operational and business-focused HR activities like workflow planning, recruiting, personal development and health and safety.

The last role is the country head office HR. This role is located in the head office and focused on valueadding HR tasks like HR strategy, performance and talent management, compensation and benefits, legal and labor relations, and HR communications.

Taumann: I will cover the drivers for the reorganization and explain this through the perspective of one country project and how we approached the reorganization. First, we did a detailed assessment of the country organization, including what we called an employee baseline, which captured each employee and how much time each employee was spending in the different HR areas and processes.

The second step was to design a target organization for the country based on the four standard global HR roles that Elke Nigge just mentioned. The third step was to calculate the possible target ratios for each of these roles.

We also considered local legal requirements that might require more resources. For example, in some countries, some parts of the personnel files have to be maintained on hand-written paper or, in Turkey, pay slips need to be signed by both HR and the employee.

These local requirements we definitely took under

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consideration.

In the fourth step we took our calculations and we had an open and trust-based discussion of this proposed target organization with the HR director and the senior HR staff in the country. The discussions included staff reductions, but also what could be reinvested into value-added HR activities.

The fifth point was to have a formal sign-off of this target organization by the country HR director and the corporate HR executive at METRO AG. In summary, the key discussion point in most of the country projects was the exact number of HR resources needed for every store, and if it was possible to combine the tasks of HR with some other store operation tasks. We had very detailed discussions and managing change was crucial because a lot of countries were afraid of losing their personal contact to HR in the stores.

WSR: What was your approach to change management with staff and employees and what seemed to work best as you were going through all these changes?

Taumann: Let’s focus on the important tools and not the usual ones that you have in every project like clear communications. We can organize change management into five headlines. The first one was to gain buy-in and trust. We had a central kickoff by the HR executive team at headquarters for all countries with all key stakeholders where we clearly communicated the urgency for the project and also the benefits, but we also did a road show before the start of each country project. In the road show, we met not only with the country HR director, but also with the managing director of the country, explaining again the targets, scope, and benefits of the project.

Actually, it was quite an effort to put the kickoff and road shows together. We had a project video trailer, which was made during one of the big HR conferences where all the HR managers globally were invited and the project was first launched and explained.

I think buy-in and trust are not granted unless you are present, locally, on-site so we conducted in-person detailed workshops over multiple days. Further, we did all the training in the countries together with the HR staff to explain the new processes and solutions.

Lastly, we went out for dinner with the local team or engaged in other social events and we really created a strong bond with them.

The second headline is the importance of hard facts, especially when it came to the reorganization.

Hard facts mean that we did a detailed assessment of the current situation of each country’s HR organization, so we knew what we were talking about, and we came with target ratios based on internal best practices by comparing countries and also external benchmarks. This gave us convincing arguments for headcount reductions as part of the reorganization.

The third headline is clear and detailed documentation of our project work. Any time during the project we could always explain exactly what we were doing, what we had done, and what was next. That included a very detailed milestone tracking system. For example, as we got close to the go-live in each phase, we had a 90-day go-live plan so the entire country team always knew what to do at what time. It didn’t always work out perfectly, but it was a good tool to keep the project on track. Included in the detailed documentation, were all the process exceptions and work instructions in the local language to support a smooth transition to the new way of working.

The fourth headline was our fit-to-standard approach for all countries as explained earlier. We achieved our target of 90 percent standardization across all countries.

The fifth headline is transparency and ongoing follow-up. We went in with targets and as part of the reorganization, we also did the employee transition with each country. We tracked where each employee would go after the project was over. Six months after the project we would follow-up, get an update of the employee list to determine if everything has been done as agreed on and signed off.

We also had our IT department review how well or how much the new IT solutions were being used by tracking and measuring transactions.

Stauber: Very often, we have projects where you look only from an IT perspective, or you look only from a process perspective, or you look purely at restructuring units. Within Blue Sky we had all three levels.

I think that was a very good basis in order to have a deep and sound overall approach.

I would like to point out success factors. The first one was the definition of a common approach and supporting tools.

Second was the fit-to-standard approach. For all countries, whether small, medium, or large, they all had to follow this approach. Especially in larger countries, it was quite a challenge because larger countries already had an infrastructure for themselves and were not looking for corporate support.

Third, we followed up after go-live and made sure that all reorganizations that were discussed during the project had been achieved, and new processes and IT solutions were being used.

Next, target ratios were taken from internal discussions, but also from extensive external benchmarks as well. They were all accepted in the organization, which was, of course, very helpful for us.

Lastly, we had the capability to communicate in eight languages within our central global rollout team, and being able to speak in the home country language made it easier to create bonds and good relationships with colleagues. In many international corporations like ours, colleagues speak English and sometimes language capability is limited; we felt that

we needed a different approach and wanted to use local languages. That was quite an important success criteria.

WSR: What were the project results? And, please tell us about an outcome of the project that happened that you weren’t expecting.

Stauber: First, when we discussed the business case internally, we assumed that we would save around four million euros, (around five million U.S.), and we reached that.

Second, at the start of the project, we had an HR ratio of 1 to 77, which means 1 HR person served 77 employees. With the Blue Sky project, we increased this ratio to 1 to 101.

In terms of FTE savings, we saved around a very low three-digit number of FTEs in the administrative area and we reinvested – and that was an important part of the project – we now have a significant number of FTE’S in the so-called content areas – organizational development, change management, and personal development.

The payback period of the project was 2.5 years; quite a good time period compared to other projects on an internal level at least.

Nigge: Yes, the Blue Sky project had further impacts because we reached a lean and streamlined HR organization with efficient HR services. Furthermore, we expanded the number of qualified regional HR business partners driving HR value to the organization.

WSR: What were the biggest keys to success of the project?

Taumann: In summary, now that we look back on the project, we had five to six success points: • A qualified and well-trained global, central project team with a mix of project leaders, and process and organization experts, all fully integrated with the HR IT system experts.

• A very stringent execution and transition plan with clear milestones.

• The commitment and support from the HR executive team, which in some cases when we had conflict discussions in the countries, was very important to come to quick decisions.

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the use of target ratios for the HR roles, and hard facts and numbers in the discussions.

• Fifth was the creation and usage of a comprehensive knowledge tool kit where we had ready-to-use standard materials, which included road-show materials, an assessment and transition tool, the standard processes, and a change management tool.

The last point I would like to add is that the project was not overloaded with external consultants. Actually, I was the only external consultant in the project and we took the approach of building and training an internal team. That was a big advantage since all the knowledge and experience gained on the project is remaining within the organization. Although I was an external consultant, I felt more internal, and after two years working together with the team I also made some very valuable friendships.

Stauber: When we started the project we didn’t start with the idea of saving costs. The idea was to save resources in the administrative area and to reinvest in the content areas. That worked in the first part of the project, but then based on an increasing challenging business environment putting immense pressure on profits and costs, management in the countries started to argue about the need to save resources and that hit HR. Another valuable development was that we discovered a lot of talented HR staff in the countries. Those we identified would be very suitable for future pilot projects, which we have done already. Some of the HR staff in the countries were in the limelight and that accelerated their HR careers based on the work they contributed to Blue Sky.

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WSR: Thank you so much for sharing this information about your successful Blue Sky Project with our readers.

Udo Stauber is the global business process owner for all HR Processes within METRO Cash & Carry. He has the responsibility for Organisation Development within HR and for HR Analytics and Mobile Services. He reports to the CHRO of the METRO AG. Before joining METRO, he worked as HR manager in a global U.S. chemical company. He is a certified Coach and Mediator. He can be reached at udo.stauber@metro.de.

Elke Nigge is the head of Organization Development and Processes. Within METRO, she is responsible for the standardization and optimization of HR processes and the implementation of HR IT solutions across all countries. Before joining METRO, she worked as HR senior consultant for multiple global consulting companies.She is certified in SAP HR and Project Management and author of the book Organization Management with ERP SAP. She can be reached at elke.nigge@metro.de.

Wolfgang Taumann, MBA/MBI, director and senior specialist is a recognized expert for global HR transformation and service delivery, organisation restructuring, and talent management and has led multiple large-scale, international HR transformation programs. Within his 18 years of consulting experience, he has worked for many renowned strategy and HR consulting firms around the world. He can be reached at wolfgang.taumann@spirdom.com.

The Back Story Looking for Technology that’s in it for Life

By Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte We can see from the articles in this issue that today’s software indeed can touch every part of employee life — from the proverbial hire to retire/fire. This brings to mind one of the most overused phases in tech talk: “endto-end.” It has meant that the software did everything possible in a business cycle (order to cash, for example), everything possible in an entire company (raw materials to billing and beyond), or in the case of employees, everything from the time they applied for a position to their afterlife upon leaving the company.

While today’s software providers may shun the cliché, the movement to integrated talent management has reignited the concept of a virtual cradle-to-grave people management environment at work. Originally, the concept of life-cycle management went from the point of hire to the point of exit – rather an “inside-the-four-walls” concept of the employee.

Today that has changed. Let’s look at “end-to-end and then some” and the data management ramifications for HR professionals.

Companies — via technology — begin collecting information about people long before they may even consider becoming an applicant to that company. And given the transparency to information available on social networks and through search engines, a great deal can be known – and maintained— about potential future employees. In the past, the candidate application was the first point of data collection about an employee — now it is not only much earlier, but often far more informative.

Social networking continues to collect information about the individual once an active employee. While LinkedIn profiles will still likely be eyed and perhaps saved, organizational networks prove vehicles for collecting interests, gripes, collaborative tendencies (or lack thereof), engagement, and much else. Participation in informal groups is likely captured somewhere in some form or another (the video of the company rock band or the winning baseball team), adding to our ability to make judgments about the engagement and sociability of the employee.

We have never had more data about our employees – and it seems to be growing dramatically. Yesterday’s “employee self-service” applications have morphed into systems of engagement, once-a-year performance reviews

have become a continuous coaching and feedback loop, and anything that was once a static “event” – such as, for example, an annual survey, is rapidly being replaced by a wide variety of real-time feedback, social sensing, and analytics systems that can gauge and measure employee feedback quickly. The ability to get the pulse rate of the entire population in real-time will appeal to HR, and mean more inbound data more often, all to be stored and analyzed.

In today’s corporate world, the contact with the employee may be never ending. Once, employees who quit (especially if they were going to a competitor) were walked out the door and virtually banished from the company forever as a traitor to the cause. Today that too is sometimes different: companies are often willing and even encouraging to talent that leaves, maintains contact with them during their “sabbatical” at another firm, and consider them positively should they seek to return. They see (and likely maintain) their contact and communication information with the now ex-employee, any Yelp or Glassdoor comments or feedback that may be posted, and watch for an updating of his or her profile on LinkedIn to indicate that the individual may be back in the job market.

Likewise, retirees are now treated like emeritus professors, communicated with on an ongoing basis, often with continuing corporate email accounts, which allow them to mentor and give advice to current workers, and as with the employee who voluntarily quit for another position, both ex-employees are regarded as a source of referrals to the company.

The result? Concerned about a pipeline of talent, an engaged workforce, and a positive employment brand, today’s HR collects more and more information about all members, not-yet-members, and ex-members of its workforce. Is this big data? No, but it’s lots of data — a high and growing volume of both structured and unstructured data.

Gathering, analyzing, storing, and reanalyzing…. more data, more often. Real-time data generally requires real-time responses. Think about it: your employees come in to the office and send frownie faces in response to a computerized “mood ring” on their smartphone or computer (several programs today support this). How is HR to respond? Does 700 frownie faces mean a crisis? Does 20? Will HR now receive engagement-related data that it is ill-equipped to respond to? Each smiley and frownie “happiness” indicator, each kudo or reward badge from one employee to another is a data point to be kept, analyzed and saved for longer-term trend analysis.

And in our integrated talent management world, each

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data point relates to something else: the kudos may relate to a performance goal achieved, the badges may indicate an internal social network of “go-to“ employees HR wasn’t aware of, the smileys to employee satisfaction, the frownies to retention risks or overstressed, overburdened workers.

There are several impacts from this literal life-long association with the individual – vastly more data is collected, and the storage and retrieval mechanisms must be there to support it. Unstructured data of many types will be added to the already-large amount of structured data maintained today (think applications, performance reviews, compensation information, etc.) as videos from interviews and coaching sessions are stored; YouTube data demonstrating the employee’s skillsets are added to traditional dashboards listing skills; biometric data is created and maintained for use with secure access devices – and much of this may be stored into perpetuity. Not only issues of the volume of data stored, but the policy issues of “who has access to what” over time require careful consideration.

Look at the many areas of employee-related technology discussed in this issue of Workforce Solutions Review.

Each will not only assist in the functional task at hand — each will add data to your ever-growing knowledge store, to be saved, reported upon, analyzed and likely reanalyzed. Managing the uber life cycle of an employee?

A great concept – just prepare to manage the onslaught of information that goes with it.

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November 2014 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

About the Author Dr. Katherine Jones is a vice president, focusing on human capital management (HCM) technology research at Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP. She analyzes 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 cloudbased 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.

IHRIM’s CORE Community: Ask Questions - Get Answers - Shar Knowledge!

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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

Make Plans to Join Us in Atlanta as We Celebrate Our 35th Anniversary!

September 15 – 19, 2015 Omni Hotel at CNN Center - Atlanta, GA

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IHRIM is making exciting changes to the 2015 Conference

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