This week Three To See features posts on individual and organisational performance and trends affecting the future of recruiting.
My first pick comes from the Harvard Business Publishing YouTube channel. Why Zappos Pays New Employees To Quit -- And You Should Too was posted back in 2008 but (I think) is very interesting and relevant to organisations operating in recovering economies.
In an economic environment where the contribution of each employee needs to count it is an interesting concept isn't it?
My second pick expands the theme from individual to organisational capability. Mark Vickers' post Ten Critical Performance Issues for 2010 draws on a recent study by i4cp in which they identified 5 domains of high performance; Leadership, Talent, Strategy, Market Focus and Culture.
Study participants were asked to rate the issues that are important to their organisation and the effectiveness of the organisation in addressing the issue. The result: It seems that this year organisations may be more likely to fail in dealing with important issues than they are to succeed, as illustrated in the table below:
My third pick complements Vickers' post by adding a macro-level perspective on factors impacting organisations. John Sumser's second post in his Five Scenarios series: Five Scenarios II: The Trends appeared on the Two Color Hat blog.
Sumser shares a host of (36) trends that he is basing his five scenarios on. The high-level categories:
Demographics
Organizational Design
Globalization
Technology
Social Media
Search For Better Returns
Energy and Sustainability
I featured the first post of the series in Three To See - w/c 11-Jan-10 and am intrigued to see Sumser's descriptions of the scenarios in future posts. What does he have planned for us?
Referral Schemes, Millenials and the Baby Boom generation in Three To See this week.
My first pick features Slyvia Ann Hewlett of the Center for Work-Life Policy in an interview on Harvard Business Publishing'sYouTube channel. In the clip Hewlett provides insight into What Motivates Gen Y and Boomer Talent:
Hewlett's explanation of why Boomer and Gen Y have more influence on the world of work than Generation X is interesting as is the description of the non-financial incentives that motivates them. Perhaps Hewlett's points help to explain Wally's offer to the Point Haired Boss in the Dilbert cartoon below:
It is a good gag but Wally also makes a good point - what can organisations do to sustain the contribution of talented Boomers?
"LinkedIn referrals are better overall then employee referrals.
The math and science of this comparison is pretty simple. Employees refer friends. LinkedIn contacts tend to refer people who do what they do for a living, because that's the type of network they build out on LinkedIn. As a result, on average, LinkedIn referrals are much higher quality that employee referrals."
Some of the talent crowd's big beasts feature in this week's Three To See with definitions of Talent Management, Social Capital and factors influencing the future of recruiting.
I stumbled across the video below from Jay Cross on YouTube. It features regular contributor to ERE, Kevin Wheeler and Murry Christensenresponding to the interviewer's question: "What the hell is Talent Management?" (a shortened version can be seen here).
Both interviewees provide useful answers - I particularly liked Christensen's emphasis on enabling talent to contribute to an organisation - a notion that is built on in Jon Ingham's recent post to his Strategic HCM blog: Social networks and organisations hierarchies.
In his post Ingham shares opinions as to whether informal organisation structures are becoming more relevant than formal hierarchies and offers a different perspective - that its not the structure but the "recognition that ‘social’ is important". He goes on to say:
"To me, the social revolution that I believe is starting to impact organisations is about recognising the importance of – and then investing in – the relationships between people, as well as the people themselves."
He develops his thesis with the observations that:
"The people revolution puts human capital at the centre of business strategy, the social revolution extends this to social capital too.
The social revolution is potentially an even bigger revolution than the people one for two reasons:
The point of performance in most organisations is the team, not the individual – so social capital has even greater value than the human sort
Most organisations manage their people very poorly. They use up human capital rather than accumulating it. But at least the management of people is something that they try to do. Managing or even just influencing relationships is something that most organisations have not even thought about as yet."
John Sumser offers-up a summary of 16 factors that he suggests will influence the destiny of talent acquisition in his post; Five Scenarios for the Future of Recruiting 1 which appeared on the Two Color Hat blog.
Amongst the factors:
The profession is 30% to 50% smaller than it was 18 months ago.
Many more HR Generalists are filling the recruiting role.
Sourcing is simultaneously separating from the selection process and transforming itself.
Social Recruiting is grabbing a foothold.
Budgets are trimmed to the bone.
Other industries are in peril creating a sea of displaced, disrupted workers.
I'm looking forward to the other articles in the series that he has promised.
In his post Random Promotions on the New York Times website Clive Thompson reported that three Italian scientists...
"...created a computer model of a 160-person corporation and programmed it with Peter Principle-like logic: the best performers were promoted, but they had only a random likelihood of being good at their new jobs. Sure enough, the firm was soon cluttered with incompetents, and its efficiency plunged. But then the researchers tried something different: they reprogrammed the firm so that it promoted people entirely randomly, and the overall efficiency of the firm improved."
What do you make of this? Personally I think this underlines the importance of clearly defining the job, the attributes of the "best-fit" candidate and an appropriate selection method for every vacancy in order that each selection decision contributes to the performance of the organisation.
"Their research shows that luck alone can account for above average performance for many years. They conclude that many of the best selling management books of recent years aren't really identifying high performing companies but instead are studying firms "with performance profiles that are statistically indistinguishable from fortunate random walks.""
In setting out to "explore the problem of distinguishing between luck and skill in corporate-level performance" Deloitte has been deliberately provocative in an attempt to spark debate and, from the comments on McCarthy's blog, it is an attempt that appears to have worked.
My final pick: Why You Should Fire Yourself by Ron Ashkenas was posted to Harvard Business Review. A timely contribution for those of us returned to work with a head full of plans for 2010. Ashkenas asks us to do two things:
"First, take a deep breath and fire yourself. That's right — take yourself out of your job so that you'll get some distance from it.
Second, consider what you would do to reapply for your job. What are your qualifications? What would you say in an interview about the changes you would make and the improvements you would engineer? What unique "stamp" would you put on this new job? How do you feel about the business strategy and the quality of the leadership team? What would you change?"
A difficult but useful exercise to kick-off the year.
