The Economist Intelligence Unit's report: Companies at a Crossroads is based on a December 2009 survey of over 400 senior managers in major organisations from across the world.

Amongst the findings of the report, which was sponsored by StepStone, it would appear that executives have identified economic recovery, credit availability and the availability of talent as the top three priorities for growth and are planning to tackle this by investing in Performance Management (46%), leadership Development (41%) and Training and Development (36%) in 2010.

• 41% of respondents agreed they have a shortage of talent in their organisation
• 44% agreed they find it increasingly difficult to recruit talented employees
• 50% plan to ramp up recruitment over the coming year; only 18% still plan to reduce or freeze headcounts
• Only 16% of line managers said that staff were fully engaged with the business, yet this is not recognised in many boardrooms, with 38% of CEOs saying that trust is ‘high’.

The report suggests that a workforce increasingly dominated by older staff, with changing motivations for staying with an employer, is compunding these issues, adding to talent retention problems for managers in companies that fail to recognise the different priorities of young and old workers.  For example 50% of younger workers cited career development as their biggest priority, but in the over 50s this dropped to just 1%.  Conversely almost 40% of older workers cited non-salary benefits as important, dropping to just 2% among 20-30 year-olds.

Matthew Parker, Managing Director of StepStone Solutions commented on the report:

"It is particularly worrying to see low trust among middle-level employees going hand in hand with low graduate recruitment and an ongoing demand for senior executive talent. Left unaddressed these problems constitute a perfect storm for businesses, as the most capable employees head for the exit and fresh talent is not recruited. These trends have serious, long-term implications for any business in a recovering economy and they require urgent attention."

The Coming Talent War: Young, Global, Diverse posted by Josh Bersin echoes some of these points suggesting that readers think about some of the factors that will influence what Bersin describes as the "new war for talent:”

• Age: Every single organization (of any size), is going to become squeezed by the eventual retirement of the baby boomers and the need to compete for young professionals and managers
• Diversity: Every workgroup, team, and leadership pool will be far more diverse than today.  This means that diversity must be included in our talent management strategy, not in some “compliance group” in the organization.
• Under and Un-skilled: More than 30% of the employers studied in a recent report by ASTD state that their new college graduates do not have the basic skills to enter their workforce without some form of remediation.  Typical skills they need include communication, critical thinking, self-learning, and writing.  We, as employers, are just going to have to deal with this and spend more time and money on remedial training, basic skills development, and partnerships with local universities and community colleges.
• Youth Orientated: The turnover rate among workers under 30 is nearly twice the turnover of older workers.  I do not believe this is because they are fundamentally different – rather I think our organizations have become too “old-oriented.” As we get older and have families we focus more on benefits, stability, progression, and other needs.  We need to “youngify” the workplace we create.

In this context, Seth Godin's post on schooling; It's easier to teach compliance than initiative was interesting to me, not least for the parallels that can be drawn with the role of HR.  Godin opines that:

"Compliance is simple to measure, simple to test for and simple to teach. Punish non-compliance, reward obedience and repeat."

He then goes on to observe that:

"The economy has rewritten the rules, and smart organizations seek out intelligent problem solvers. Everything is different now. Except the part about how much easier it is to teach compliance."

What do you think?

What the Hell is social media came via the Content Management Connection blog and provides 10 clear reasons why the social web is an emerging force.

Joe Shaheen posted The Recency and Primacy Effects in the Talent Acquisition Process to ERE.  It is a fantastic piece that looks into how subjectivity can creep into the selection decision making process.  Shaheen observes that:

"The recency bias error occurs when an assessor (i.e. recruiter, hiring manager, etc.) is overly affected by information that was presented later (more recently) rather than earlier in any given selection process. In contrast, the primacy bias error occurs when an assessor’s selection is made based on information that was presented earlier (primary information) rather than later in a process. And although the effects appear symmetrically opposing, the research shows that they occur because of different reasons, and that their implications can differ drastically. They are not equal but opposite."

He goes on to say that:

"The body of research points to two process models on how decisions are made in the interview process. The first we will describe is the step-by-step (SbS) decision-making model, and the second is the end-of sequence (EoS) decision-making model. We call those models response modes."

My third pick is Jon Ingham's post to Human Capital League: Developing New Talent Management Strategies for 2010.  In the post Ingham shares the highlights of two recent pieces of research; IRS Employment Review’s HR roles and responsibilities: the 2010 IRS survey and PWC's 13th Annual Global CEO Survey and provides some interesting anecdotes and stats such as this from PWC: "78% (of CEO's) plan to changes their talent management strategies in the wake of the financial crisis" .

PWC asserts that: "CEOs have begun to reshape not only their strategies, but also their capabilities. It takes strategic flexibility to address risk at a deeper level. And it takes organisational agility to respond to volatility. That doesn’t mean CEOs will become risk averse; rather, they may become more deliberate in examining alternatives, formulating a Plan B, and ensuring they can execute on it"

Ingham himself opines:

1. "I’m not sure HR appreciates the scale of the challenge (or the opportunity).  CEOs want you to make a difference, if you’ve got the ambition and imagination to do this!
2. The change isn’t all about restructuring and engagement.  CEOs want to increase investment in talent management, but they want to manage talent differently too."

Interesting stuff.

There is a touch of levity in my first pick which comes via Andy Headworth's blog Sirona Says:  Xerox's Information Overload Syndrome video raises some serious points on productivity and performance wrapped-up in genuine comedy (although I'm not comfortable with the dart scene at the end).

Gartner analyst, Jim Holincheck's post to his personal HCM Software blog is more sober but no less interesting as he asks What If Performance Appraisals Did Not Exist?

Holincheck skims the touch points in the employment lifecycle where performance factors (Hiring/Onboarding, Learning/Development, Career Path/Planning, Succession Planning and Compensation) and determines that:

"The answer, to me, is not to get rid of the performance review.  It is to do a better job of appraising performance and communicating with employees."

He goes on to share the following options:

1. Get rid of forced ranking, but keep calibration
2. Make sure that total compensation alignes with performance, value delivered, and the market
3. Find other ways to recognize the highest performance other than just compensation
4. Keep an ongoing performance dialogue going

Before concluding that:

"The bottom line is that I do not think performance reviews will go away because the feedback loop is critical to talent management success.  What needs to improve is the performance conversation.  Technology can help in some respects, but managers and executives need to step up their game."

Kevin Wheeler's post to ERE: Why Recruiting Good People Will Get Harder and Harder explores the changing attitudes to work of some professionals who are choosing blended careers over full-time work with a single organisation.

This phenomenon, fuelled by recent experiences of the recession, see's some workers engaged in multiple jobs, partial self-employment or other self-sustaining activity that acts as a hedge against economic uncertainty and engenders lifestyle resilience.

Wheeler observes that:

"Individuals are finding new freedoms and exploring their own capacity and taste for change and entrepreneurism. Some organizations are looking for ways to adapt to all of this without endangering their own success, but it may be that these two different needs are not compatible. We will find out over the next 10 years or less. Certainly manufacturing firms and companies where hands-on work is required will not be able to flex to these changes. They will face friction between the workers whose jobs allow them to be virtual or part-time or flex-time and those whose work does not."

What do you think of this week's Three To See?

My first pick comes from NBC's comedy The Office: An American Workplace (which I prefer to the British original).  Episode 8 of Season 2 is a classic and deals with Dunder Mifflin's annual performance review day.  One of the characters, Dwight Schrute, delivers this stunning line:

"Would I ever leave this company? Look, I'm all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I'm being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I'm going wherever they value loyalty the most. "

Superb.

My second pick is Steve Roesler's post to the All Things Workplace blog: Talent & The "Misunderstanding Maslow" Factor.

Roesler shares some interesting observations on how Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs model has been mangled by some managers and suggests that:

"1. Physiological and Stability/Safety needs are met through corporate policies: adequate pay, benefits, and safety procedures. These are satisfied when organizations who claim "People Are Our Most Important Asset" back up the statement by ensuring that these needs are met as a matter of policy and philosophy.

2. The higher level needs can only be satisfied by assignments, development, and solid day-to-day management. This means that "Managers are the Mediators of Meaning" for their people. Surveys and research data consistently show that the immediate supervisor has the most impact on one's performance, productivity, and feelings about the workplace."

My third pick Succession Planning: More Than Just a Replacement Strategy was posted by Tony Kubica and Sara LaForest to ERE.  The post opens with the statement:

"There are three reasons to do a succession plan, and identifying a replacement for the CEO and select top executives is only part of one of these reasons. The three reasons are:

• Replacement for key employees
• To support anticipated growth
• To address and deal with talent shortages"

Kubica and LaForest expand upon each of these three points and make several recommendations to managing succession:

• Assign responsibility for succession planning to the executive team members (and make its success part of their evaluation process)
• Identify needs/key roles currently and in the future that reflect several layers deep
• Develop and use methods/tools/techniques for identifying employee competencies and aspirations
• Implement a structure for developing potential successors
• Implement a structure for transitioning successors to and in new role(s)
• Identify and emergency or interim process to fulfill a role if for some reason the potential successor does not work out.
• Align your recruitment initiative to succession planning by forecasting key needs and interviewing for growth orientation and adaptability
• Evaluate plan effectiveness and update the plan as required, at least annually

I hope that you enjoy this weeks Three To See.

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There is a feast of social media in this week's Three To See and posts on Social Capital and the impact of redundancy programmes on organisations.

My first pick this week came from Mashable.  Matt Silverman posted 5 insightful TED Talks on Social Media in which he shares five great presentations:

1. Alexis Ohanian: How To Make a Splash in Social Media
2. Clay Shirky: How Social Media Can Make History
3. Evan Williams: Listening To Twitter Users
4. Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet Enables Intimacy
5. Seth Godin: The Tribes We Lead

My current favourite among these has to be the fifth, featured below.

Josh Letourneau's post to the Fistful of Talent blogging community: The War for Talent is Dying: Re-Thinking Individual Talent from a Network-Aware Perspective provides a clear and simple introduction to "Social Capital" and the potential value to employers.

Letourneau contends that:

"Our old reality focused on the individual.  Our "New Normal" focuses on the 'network', or the collection of individuals, as well as what flows between them.  Where the "War for Talent" is dying, "War for the Network" is emerging."

I was a little concerned when Letourneau introduced Newtons' 2nd Law, "Force equals Mass times Acceleration" (F = MA), as a means of explaining the thesis (Physics has never been one of my strengths) but it proved to be a useful device:

"Let's say Force (F) correlates to the ability to get things done.  Mass (M) correlates to "Human Capital", while Acceleration (A) speaks to "Social Capital", or the ability to quickly mobilize the network.

Let's look at 3 candidates:

• "Candidate A (M = 8, A = 4).  F = MA, or F = 8x4 = 32.
• Candidate B (M = 5, A = 7).  F = MA, or F = 5x7 = 35.
• Candidate C (M = 7, A = 5).  F = MA, or F = 7x5 = 35."

I think its a helpful contribution to the conversation that some in the HCM community, such as Jon Ingham, have been engaged in.

Libby Sartain posted Academic Evidence: Layoffs Are Bad For Business! to the Brand for Talent blog.  In the post Sartain shares recent work by Jeff Pfeffer, a professor of organisational behaviour, whose research indicates that:

1. Layoffs do not reduce costs
2. Layoffs do not raise a company's stock price
3. Layoffs do not increase productivity
4. Layoffs do not increase profits
5. Companies do not permanently get rid of the employees
6. Layoffs do nothing to strengthen the organization

Sartain adds an observation of her own: "Layoffs weaken an organization's employer and consumer brand."  Interesting opinions - I wonder how they compare with the recent experiences of many HR pros?

My first pick this week is StepStone's Performance Management business impact tool which is a free resource in the same vein as the Talent Strategy Assessment released in 2009.

I completed the Performance Management Assessment in under 5 minutes and was immediately presented with a traffic-light scorecard based on my response (pictured) showing the areas that are good (Green), those that are intermediate (Amber) and those that require urgent attention (Red).  I also received an email with recommended actions tailored to my organisation and a report on Performance Management drawn from a wide range of research providing a wealth of information and interesting stats such as:

• On average organisations with cascading goals experienced a 39% increase in productivity
• Of 22 talent management processes, cascading goals are the 6th most powerful
• Employee engagement levels amongst high performers dropped 25% in 2009
• 40% of people that rated their managers performance as poor will look for another job
• A 5% increase in retention can lead to 25-85% increase in profitability

Sharlyn Lauby, the hr bartender, is responsible for my second pick: Optimizing talent in the new worforce.  In the post Lauby asks a great question on talent strategy:

"If the new workforce is a hybrid composed of employees and contractors, then do companies still need to focus on hiring A-level players? "

She goes on to offer two options:

• "Companies could focus on recruiting and retaining B-level (or C-level) talent and then bring in the A team only for projects that require it.
• Or should companies still focus on hiring A-level talent and, when they need an extra set of hands, then the contractor doesn’t necessarily have to be top notch?"

I'm particularly interested in how organisations would manage the performance of both types of employee in either context and how this would impact the capability and culture of the business.  Lauby makes another good point here:

"if an organization employs B and C level players, this could impact customers and the front line delivery of products and services.  If external consultants are brought in to create programs and/or processes, they would need to realize the capabilities of the staff they’re working with."

My final pick for this week, we know next, was produced by the Society for Human Resource Management and features controversial commentator and author Daniel Pink sharing his thoughts in 4 video clips titled:

1. the new bargain
2. talent wins
3. row, row, ROWE
4. what's next

I thought that the comments were interesting, especially in the fourth clip where Pink shares his observations of the "T-shaped employee" - those individuals with a depth of skills, knowledge and experience in a particular subject combined with the ability to connect their specialty to what is happening in the organisation, industry and the wider world.

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?

My first pick features Slyvia Ann Hewlett of the Center for Work-Life Policy in an interview on Harvard Business Publishing's YouTube 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?

My third pick comes from Fistful of Talent where Kris Dunn posted Referrals: Better from Employees or LinkedIn Contacts? In the post Dunn suggests that:

"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."

What do you think of this week's Three to See?

I stumbled across the video below from Jay Cross on YouTube.  It features regular contributor to ERE, Kevin Wheeler and Murry Christensen responding 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:

1. The point of performance in most organisations is the team, not the individual – so social capital has even greater value than the human sort
2. 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.

Sticking with randomness, Dan McCarthy posted Management Best Practices or Just an Illusion? to his Great Leadership blog.  In the post McCarthy comments on a 2009 report by Deloitte: A Random Search For Excellence, which examines the "success study" genre of management research.

"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.