An eclectic offering in this week's Three To Read: After looking at performance management and employee engagement in the last two weeks, we turn to the 'chicken and egg' of corporate Culture, then on to some observations about the stickiness of Generation-X and finish up with more on 'social'.
For the first 'find', I wanted to bring the slideshow below to the attention of the community because of the compelling description of the desired culture at Netflix.
I find the way that the Netflix culture is articulated so that it is explicitly linked to talent acquisition and management practices, such as hiring, performance management and compensation, very interesting and useful in bringing talent strategy to life. I wonder how close the organisation is to living 'the dream?'
In our second post, Erin Green urges us to consider cost-effective alternatives to retain Gen-X. Green cites research conducted by Deloitte Consulting that suggests that 49% of all employees are either planning or are actively seeking to leave their current employer - for Gen-Xers, that number rises to over 60%.
It seems that career progression is driving 40% of Generation-X to seek a move and, with tight training budgets and fewer opportunities for internal mobility, looking outside their current organisation is the obvious option. This seems to tie-in with the comments made by Jason Corsello of Knowledge Infusion when he spoke about the jobless recovery and the shift from acquiring to engaging talent.
"Out of 438 management, marketing and human resources executives polled, 81% saw social media as being useful for both brand-building and enhancing customer or client relationships. Just under 70% see it as a valuable recruitment tool, 64% think social media is useful for customer service, and a lower sampling at 46% saw it as improving employee morale."
Sixty nine percent see social media as a valuable recruiting tool. On anecdotal evidence I have to agree that, in one form or another, social recruiting appears to becoming main-stream - indeed members of StepStone's customer community have provided a clear indication of this intent. What do you think - is 'social' a valuable means of acquiring talent in your organisation?
In this week's Three to Read we have a rebuttal of The Surprising Science of Motivation, best practices for implementing Performance Management and a controversial take on interviewing candidates.
Hebert makes an interesting contribution to the debate and presents the case for extrinsic motivators supported by research other than that referenced by Pink.
Mindset - Performance management as a technique not an administrative task
Competence - Managers as competent coaches
Reinforcement - Managers demonstrating the importance of an individual's performance
The post, based on research conducted by OnPoint Consulting, offers useful insight for organisations implementing performance management. For example of the 500+ respondents 49% believe that managers are more focused on administrating rather than managing performance but in organisations that have successfully implemented performance management technology 90% say that managers have the skills to manage performance and 77% have a culture of reinforcement where managers regularly meet with employees to discuss performance.
Over to Seth Godin for our third find: Godin recently proposed two ways to hire (and a wrong way). The first way is to hire people on a contingent basis so that managers can assess them in the work place - OK, nothing too controversial there. Then, in his second suggestion, he drops the bomb - 'the five minute sniff test'. In the sniff test Godin recommends bringing people in to have a look at them and see if they'll fit in rather than wasting time 'going through the motions' in longer interviews. What do you make of that?
This week I found some interesting posts on beating the War for Talent, why you shouldn't always hire the best person for the job and the hierarchy of employee engagement.
Talent Management published a post by Harold Stolowitch ‘The Unneccessary War For Talent' - that explored the permanent/contingent worker model as a means of opting out of the War for Talent.
What I found most interesting about this was the description of two types of organisation; those that are talent-critical - depending on the majority of staff to out-perform competitors and those that are talent-intensive - depending on a defined minority of high performers to do so.
In the piece Stolowitch argues that talent-intensive organisations may benefit from using seasoned ‘free agents or consultants' as a way of filling talent gaps and boosting performance more cost effectively than ‘growing your own'. He later goes on to advise that a mix of both approaches - improving the performance of permanent employees whilst also using contingent workers - is the best way of avoiding participating in the War for Talent.
This mix of performers is fairly typical - sometimes it's a deliberate strategy and other times a response to circumstances, however, can organisations ever really avoid getting involved in the War for Talent? If an organisation is working to retain and develop talent or bringing in new permanent or contingent workers isn't it participating in that war?
Speaking of participating - do you agree that Recruitment Is A Non-Rational Process? I thought that Charles Van Heerden's post to RecruitingBlogs.com was interesting because he makes a distinction between hiring the best person and the right person.
The next post 'Employee Consumer Engagement - Its All Connected' came via Brad Federman at The Engagement Factor Blog, and is a great video of Will Marré talking about the 4 levels of employee engagement.
Brian Chappell of Ignite Social Media shared geographic, demographic and traffic data from the 2009 Social Network Analysis Report's look at more than forty social networks. The data is displayed in a series of easy to understand charts with brief analysis on each of the social networks included in the report - useful information for anyone using 'social' for talent acquisition.
Staying with social, if you are thinking about using social media for pre-employment background checks then Steve Bruce's post to the HR Daily Advisor blog; Background Checks on Myspace - Dangerous or Due Dilligence is worth reading - not least for some of the sensational examples of what employers have found when conducting internet searches.
I hope that you enjoy this weeks Three To Read - if you'd like more, please see what else I've bookmarked at http://delicious.com/craigendicott.
Surely one of the most profound moments in living memory - the first Moon landing on 21 July 1969 was a major feat of technological innovation and of human ingenuity.
NASA has achieved many successes since it was established in 1958, of course the most high profile of those tend to be the missions and the innumerable inventions however, it is NASA's accomplishments in acquiring and managing talent that I want to talk about.
2 year evaluation period after acceptance onto the programme
2-3 years after evaluation period recruit becomes mission ready
Its incredible to think that in its fifty year history, NASA has selected an average of just 6 Astronauts per year and that a little more than one in a million citizens has "the right stuff".
Personally, I think that NASA is an awesome brand with a compelling purpose: "To pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research."
However, I've learned that despite its unique status it has not been immune to the effects of the War for Talent. NASA employs around 18,000 people, approximately 60% of whom specialise in Engineering or Sciences. The increasing demand from private industry and a shrinking supply of talent in those disciplines has made the competition fierce. These underlying labour market conditions impacted recruitment and retention at NASA. Add to this the demographic pressures of an ageing workforce and NASA has faced truly mission-critical talent challenges.
