In this post customer community member Gitte Halby Thomsen, HR Coordinator with Danish pharma and biotech engineers; NNE Pharmaplan, shares her views on the challenges facing employers in 2010.
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.
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."
"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"
"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.
Topsy turvy management, active dis-engagement and the return of the supervisor in this week's Three To See.
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.'
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".
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:
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.
In this post customer community member Gitte Halby Thomsen, HR Coordinator with Danish pharma and biotech engineers; NNE Pharmaplan, shares her views on the challenges facing employers in 2010.
This post comes from Matthew Parker, CEO of StepStone Solutions, who comments on the acquisition of 
