My first pick is "Strategies: Diversity Wins" from Tom Peters' "Little BIG Things" video series on his blog.  In the clip below Peter's tells us that random groups of people have been found to provide better solutions to problems than groups that have been purposefully selected... really.

Are you an imposter?  That's the title of my second pick, posted by Andy Porter to the Fistful of Talent blogging community.

Porter urges organisations to decide the quality level of talent that they aim to employee (eg A, B or C players) and then stick with the decision rather than making opportunistic hires from higher levels when they are temporarily cheaper, arguing that:

"Every time an employee is hired for less than they believe they are worth by an organization that suddenly can “afford” top talent, as an employer we're on a slippery slope.  If an employer is legitimately underpaying an employee (emphasis on legitimately) they're essentially sending a message to this employee that they're being undervalued - we know it, you know it and we don't care.  And no one likes to be undervalued.  An employee might accept the situation for awhile but over the long term they're likely to put less discretionary effort into their work and will eventually go to work for an employer who values them more."

And:

"Maybe you're ok with this scenario, but as employers, we do pay in the end either in replacement costs, training, morale or actually paying employees what they're worth."

My final pick came via Skip Reardon on the Six Disciplines blog who posted Six Enemies of Post-Recession Performance which originated from The Corporate Executive Board.

The six:

1. Changed Customer Needs
2. Top Talent Dis-engagement or Flight
3. Increased Risk Velocity
4. Higher Levels of Employee Misconduct
5. IT Budgets Targeting a Shrinking Share of Enterprise Information
6. Misplaced and Untrained Leaders

Point 2 warns that:

"The average organization faces an imminent 7 percent productivity loss from the combination of departing top talent and undermanaged recruiting pipelines."

CE> You met with a number of Danish customers of StepStone Solutions at one of the community forums - what did you take from the event?

GHT> I've been part of this networking group for a year and a half and it has been good to meet with other members to share experience and knowledge and to discuss common issues.  In the most recent forum we really got into the International capability of EasyCruit.

CE> The past 12-24 months have been challenging for many HR practitioners.  What have you learned from this experience?

GHT> The downturn allowed us to change our focus from recruiting new talent to spending more time developing the talent that already existed within the organisation.

It also confirmed that China is an important market - recruitment activity there has been growing fast.

CE> What do you think the biggest challenges and priorities are for employers over the next 12 months?

GHT> Retaining and recruiting the best people will be the biggest priorities.  However it will be more difficult to forecast and plan because organisations will be cautious about growth and committing to hiring new people.

CE> How should HR approach these priorities?

GHT> When working with existing employees, HR Business Partners will need to focus on supporting line management in thinking of various ways to retain key people for example by finding challenging work within the department or redeploying them to other parts of the organisation which could involve cross-training in other disciplines or entering a development programme.

HR Business Partners will also need to assist line management in ensuring that employee performance is satisfactory and that those that consistently under-perform are dealt with appropriately.

Information about how members of the customer community use StepStone Solutions products can be seen in our case study library.

5 Things That Recruiters Should Stop Doing was posted to ERE by Linda Brenner. 

The five:  

1. Working Outside the ATS
2. Beginning a Search Without the Right Information
3. Not Using Questionnaire Functionality in the Applicant Tracking System
4. Taking a Passive Approach to Scheduling Interviews
5. Producing Manual or Customized Reports

The rationale for the five is described in the post which opens with Brenner's assertion that:

"By streamlining their work, recruiters will have more time to focus on the most valuable aspects of the hiring process. The results will be: 

• Better hiring decisions
• An improved candidate experience
• A more cost-effective approach to talent acquisition" 

On his SironaSays blog Andy Headworth asks Is this this the ultimate talent acquisition strategy? 

In the post Headworth discusses the practice of buying-up talent as part of a strategy to "crowd-out" competitors, prompting a number of interesting comments from readers about the ethics and business sense of the doing so. 

The approach can help organisations to establish and maintain market dominance in hyper competitive situations.  However, as several of the comments allude to, the strategy can only work whilst the talent acquired is engaged in employment that continues to meet their aspirations - in other words, the organisation remains their employer of choice.  When aspirations are no longer being met and employees see alternative means of achieving them, then the approach is at risk of crumbling.  I find this debate fascinating and am interested to see what others make of it. 

Sticking with talent strategy, Kim Lamoureaux posted Tackling Your Blockers to the Bersin & Associates blog in which she contends that:

"There are three common scenarios that companies face with blockers.

• He is a high performer, however the role would give a high potential a critical experience.
• He is a good performer, but there are other individuals who could do the job better.
• He is an underperformer and is blocking others from promotion."

Lamoureaux then goes on to offer useful recommendations for dealing with each of the three scenarios before sharing the following insight:

"There are positions in every company that are either critical to certain career paths or that provide high potentials with a key experience.  If you can identify what those roles are, you will be able to treat them as “rotational” assignments and set the expectation accordingly.  For example, at ARAMARK, the safety leader role is designed as a 2-year rotational assignment.  The role offers employees with the opportunity to develop core leadership competencies and exposes them to senior business leaders. It is also recognized as a career builder for high potentials." 

What do you think of these Three To See?

My first pick is Matt Alder's interview of Kevin Wheeler for the Social Future blog.  Wheeler paints an interesting picture of the informal nature of organisations in the future. 

For obvious reasons, Gartner Says the World of Work Will Witness 10 Changes During the Next 10 Years is my second pick this week.

The 10 changes?

1. De-routinization of Work
2. Work Swarms
3. Weak Links
4. Working With the Collective
5. Work Sketch-Ups
6. Spontaneous Work
7. Simulation and Experimentation
8. Pattern Sensitivity
9. Hyperconnected
10. My Place

There is some very interesting content in the article and is well worth looking at. 

The previous two posts link tenuously to my third pick.  In It's Not About ROWE posted to the Three Star Leadership blog, Wally Bock comments on the Flexible Work and Well-Being Study by Phyllis Moen and Erin L. Kelly of the Flexible Work and Well-Being Center at the University of Minnesota.

Bock asserts that the study does not really reflect ROWE (a Results-Only Work Environment): 

"Folks, this is not exactly a landmark study. The findings are that a program designed to give workers control over their schedule and work methods (hence, "results-only") gave them more control over their "schedule and decisions about where and when they work."" 

On goes to state that:

"The best source for a review of all the issues is Chris Ferdinandi. He wrote a great post last year titled, "Why I don't like ROWE." Don't believe the title. Read the post and comments. And check Chris' slide show, "Smashing the Clock" on Slideshare."

What do you think of Jon's points?

The relationship between Performance Management and Employee Engagement is neatly illustrated in the Dilbert cartoon below - my first pick of the week.

My second pick, Facebook Is None of HR's Business, was posted by Frank Roche to the KnowHR blog and is entertainingly forthright.  The snippets below give a flavour of Roche's rant:

"I have some news for you, HR. You have no business looking at your employees’ Facebook posts. Ever."

And:

"Stop being little Facebook Stalkers and get back to the real work of HR. Solve problems. Help managers be good managers. Then get out of the way. Being an HR Voyeur is just so icky"

Are you an HR voyeur?  Is Roche right?

My third pick came via the bNET blog.  In HBR Ideacast: The Science of Human Capital, a 14 minute audio interview,  Julie Devoll interviews John Boudreau, author of “Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital.” about the pivot points that link corporate strategy to talent strategy.  Boudreau does a good job of bringing the concept to life by describing how Disney Corporation has adopted this thinking. 

Please note that some of the content in this interview appeared in a video clip selected for Three To See - w/c 12-Apr-10  and the concept developed further in a post picked for Three To See - w/c 19-Apr-10. 

This post comes from Matthew Parker, CEO of StepStone Solutions, who comments on the acquisition of MrTed.

Yesterday I was very pleased to announce the acquisition of MrTed, a company that I have long admired, both for the quality of its people, its TalentLink product and enthusiastic customers.  I'd like to welcome both its staff and customers to the StepStone Solutions community. 

The acquisition is a big move for StepStone Solutions - it's been just three months since we became an independent business after the HgCapital-financed Management-Buy-Out and we're delivering on our plans to expand and develop the organisation (as our second quarter performance and this acquisition demonstrates), so that we can continue to enhance customer experience and the interactions that employers have with talent.  We're already hard at work on integrating the StepStone Solutions and MrTed businesses whilst maintaining a focus on continuing to deliver the best possible service to all our customers.

We've been very pleased with how well this news has been received, and I wanted to share some of the comments that have already been posted:

Jason Corsello from Knowledge Infusion wrote on the KI OnDemand blog: 

"Knowledge Infusion views this acquisition as positive for both StepStone and MrTed customers.  StepStone customers now have a forward path to modernize their technology investments leveraging a multi-tenant SaaS model.  For MrTed customers, the increased investment from StepStone and their private equity backers allows the company to expand its offering and accelerate new capabilities."

Naomi Lee Bloom (Bloom & Wallace) posted to the In Full Bloom and Enterprise Irregulars blogs saying: 

"StepStone now faces a much less challenging European talent management landscape.  It also picks up considerable new competitive strength against it's US-centric talent management suite competitors as well as the opportunity to sell its broader talent management applications to MrTed's customers."

 Before going on to say:

"I think this is a very good and strategic acquisition for StepStone Solutions"

On ERE, John Zappe said:

"The sale gives StepStone Solutions a stronger presence in the U.S., where London headquartered MrTed has been gaining brand awareness and growing its foothold"

And over at the Hire Strategies blog, long term colleague, Peter Gold commented:

"I think this is a VERY smart move by Stepstone."

Obviously I'm delighted by the positive response of these influential analysts, commentators and independent consultants (and thanks to them) -  and I look forward to sharing our progress with you all. 

Onwards and upwards!

Hans Rosling's talk for TED on Global Population Growth is my first pick this week because of the way he artfully illustrates the shift in demographics - those in "the West" should watch the blue box. 

How might Rosling's modelling affect your organisation's talent agenda?   

Dr John Sullivan posted my second pick to ERE:  Measuring the Quality Of Those You Didn't Hire - Are You Missing The Best?

The post opens with the paragraph below:

"The quality of those not hired is the most valuable recruiting metric that you have never heard of! It informs you how often your organizations is failing to hire the highest quality applicants."

Sullivan goes on to describe the implementation of this metric, which compares selection decisions to the initial rankings of applications, to provide an indication of the frequency (in percent) with with those that were initially top-ranked are actually hired.  Armed with this information recruiters should then review the candidate experience with a view to identifying the parts of the recruitment process that need to be enhanced in order to improve the probability of hiring top-rankers.

The practice of reviewing the volume or rate of "drop out" at defined stages in the recruitment process will not be new to many practitioners but the added dimension of "quality" is what makes this interesting to me. 

My final pick is the New High-Impact Talent Management Framework below, posted by Josh Bersin (Bersin & Associates) to his blog.  I think it is a useful at-a-glance view of the key components of Talent Management (Ctrl+ to zoom in).

My first pick is Put Your Employees First, an interview with Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies Ltd, for Harvard Business Review in which he talks about engaging employees by 'inverting the management pyramid.'

Staying on-topic, my second pick, published by Gallup Consulting, is Employee Engagement: What's Your Engagement Ratio? 

The paper explores how top-performing organisations have adopted the systematic improvement of employee engagement as a core strategy to achieving critical business outcomes and suggests that the Engaged/Actively Dis-engaged Ratio has a significant bearing on this.

There is some interesting content here, including a comparison of the distribution of engaged employees in average and world class organisations:  

• Engaged: 33% in average organisations compared to 67% in those considered to be world class
• Not Engaged: 49% in average organisations compared to 26% in those considered to be world class
• Actively Dis-engaged: 18% in average organisations compared to 7% in those considered to be world class

Paul Hebert posted my final pick to the Fistful of Talent blog: More Supervision, Less Management is a wry reminder of the difference in emphasis of the two in which Hebert urges us to "Quit Managing".

I hope you enjoy Three To See this week.

My first pick; The Voice of the Business Leader on HR and Talent Needs, comes from Bersin & Associates analyst Stacey Harris.

Harris shares insight from interviews with business and HR leaders conducted as part of recent research into high impact HR organisations, noting that:

"When senior business executives think of their most critical business challenges we found that they were looking at tomorrow, not today. HR Leadership is often (and rightly so) focused on business challenges organizations are facing today."

The table below, which comes from the post, highlights this difference in priorities.

Harris goes on to say that business leaders have expressed a need of four things from their colleagues in HR:

1. Reducing missed Talent opportunities, creating Bench Strength
2. One Stop Shop, Single Point of Contact
3. More Strategic HR
4. Answers and Options, versus data and reports

My next pick came via Chris Young over at the Maximize Possibility blog.  Dan McCarthy made an interesting post to his Great Leadership blog: Managing the "Toxic High Performer" in which he discusses the importance of taking an approach to performance management that values both the results AND behaviours of employees.

My final pick, 15 Competitive Intelligence Tools for Recruiting, was posted to the Talent Buzz blog by Jason Buss and lists resources that can be used in "the systematic gathering of open information and analysis to provide a better understanding of a competitor firm’s structure, culture, behavior, capabilities, and weaknesses."

There are some great tools catalogued in the post that can be used not only to understand competitor organisations, target potential hires and build talent pipeline, but also to inform your organisation's employer brand protection and development programmes.