With the realisation that many of my weekly picks are video, I decided to kill off "Three To Read" and rename the series "Three To See". It seems to make more sense and, given the comments in one of this week's posts, I think it is a timely change. This week we have research on retention, thoughts on who is responsible for quality of hire and flash forward five years to the future of the web.
My first pick is an article by Elizabeth Craig, John R Kimberly and Peter Cheese which appeared on the Wall Street Journal website: How to Keep Your Best Executives. It has an interesting, if somewhat counter intuitive subtitle - The key: Make it easier for them to leave.
In the piece the authors draw on findings from their research that "executives intend to stay longest with those companies that offer the greatest opportunities to enhance their employability."
The table below however, shows the "discrepancies between what executives want in the way of professional development and what their companies are giving them."
It is a thought provoking contribution in which Adler gives five reasons for HR taking responsibility (below) and three recommendations for how to pull it off.
Maximizing quality of hire is the most important strategic role HR/recruiting can play.
The CFO is responsible the capital acquisition process, so why shouldn't HR/recruiting be responsible for the talent acquisition process?
Having responsibility means the process is adhered to, not the decision itself
There is huge tactical and strategic cost to making mistakes
The post contains a 6 minute TubeChop clip taken from the full 45 minute interview (below) which is available through the Gartnervideo YouTube channel.
After skipping last week because I didn't find anything that I wanted to share, I'm glad to say that, Three To Read is back this week with posts on "group think", the changing role of "brand police" and insight into how candidates are promoting themselves online.
David Logan's talk on Tribal Leadership for TED provides a fascinating perspective on the way that people interact, form attitudinal groups and how those groups impact their environment.
In the clip Logan contends that there are five tribal stages:
Life sucks (2% of tribes)
My life sucks (25% of tribes)
I am great and you're not (48% of tribes)
We are great (22% of tribes)
Life is great (2% of tribes)
He also suggests that:
Great leaders are fluent in each stage and able to move members from one to another.
As tribes move from point #1 through to point #5 they have a more positive impact
Logan's thoughts have obvious connotations for the work place; employee engagement, managing change, productivity etc. Well worth the 17 minutes.
Dr Sullivan lays-out how organisations employment proposition's are being impacted by bloggers, tweeps and anyone with access to a social networking account because of the ease by which individuals can post views about an organisation that then become associated with it. With the increasing amount of user generated content, and number of users generating it, the internet is becoming a massive referral enginewith "peer review" an important part of comparing "the promise" with "areality". This type of valued content gets mixed in with that produced by the marketers and has significant influence on the decisions of internet users.
As if to underscore the growing importance of "social media" in marketing, Penelope Trunk's post to Brazen Careerist;4 Lies about social media, offers guidance to candidates on how to make use of social tools to build their personal brand by challenging the common beliefs that:
LinkedIn is for networking
Twitter is for conversation
Blogs are personal journals
Social media is no place for business
Interesting that on one hand we have employers marketing to candidates and on the other candidates marketing to employers and in the middle... validation by peers.
As part our coverage of HR Executive's HR Technology Conference & Exposition 2009, I interview William Tincup, Principal with Starr Tincup the Human Capital marketing specialists, about his views on the conference this year and what is in store for HR practitioners over the next 12 months.
CE> Why did you attend the conference this year? WT> The conference is all about having conversations - whether it be looking back at what happened during '09 or looking forward to 2010 - there is an immense amount of thought leadership at this conference - be it in the presentions, panels or informal conversations. Its also good to walk the floor, meet people, make connections and see and hear the innovations of vendors and practitioners.
CE> What was good? WT> It is the one time each year that we can all get together to discuss the same topics. Last year the recession dominated the conversation - the fear of the unknown was the underlying theme where as this year there is a hint of optimism and the talk has been about economic recovery. I think there was a real atmosphere of having shared an experience over the past year.
CE> What are the priorities for employers over the next 12 months? WT> Well, I think we have to rewind 18 months to two years and dust off the priorities at that time, they haven't really changed, but organisations needed to shift focus to react to the economic situation. Back then the priorities were:
Engaging and incentivising employees
Retaining key staff
Succession planning for the gap between current leaders and those that are nearly ready
I'd add a new one to these three though - the need to displace inefficiency by integrating talent processes with the organisation's "System of Record".
CE> How should HR approach these priorities? WT> HR needs to switch gears and be more pro-active than it has previously. In 2010 reactivity is not going to benefit employers, HR leaders will have to look at the biggest weaknesses they have in their organisations and develop a plan to deal with them.
Next they'll need to work out how much its going to cost and where the return will come from - they will then have to build and present a business case to their CFO. In 2010 they'll be fighting for budgets and so it will be important to think about how to present the case and show the return on investment. They should involve their vendors in this - vendors that help HR to build the case and can share what is happening in the market and what other customers are doing will be the most successful.
As part our coverage of HR Executive's HR Technology Conference & Exposition 2009, I interview Josh Bersin, CEO and Founder of Bersin & Associates, about the conference this year and the priorities for HR practitioners over the next 12 months.
Why are you at the conference this year?
What has been interesting at this year's conference (1m 03s)
What else are you interested in? (2m 48s)
What will be the biggest priorities for HR over the next 12 months? (4m 31s)
Social and economic data, next-generation strategic factors and social media policy in this week's Three To Read.
My first pick comes is Hans Rosling's recent talk for TED entitled Let My Dataset Change Your Mindset. Rosling is currently with the US State Department and has shared his fascinating work on socio-economic modelling in several TED talks - great material for anyone involved in strategic workforce planning.
Staying with strategic concerns, on Harvard Business Publishing, Umair Haque posted Apple's Next Revolution - And What You Can Learn From It. I think Haque offers some interesting thoughts on next-generation strategic factors:
Markets, networks and communities as engines of disruption
Context is king
21st century economics = acceleration
My final pick comes from Jennifer Van Grove who posted 3 Great Social Media Policies to Steal From on Mashable. This is a very useful post with links to actual policies from real organisations:
As part our coverage of HR Executive's 
