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T+D August 10 // Talent Management // |
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Talent Management Gaining Inches?
By Ann Pace |
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Like any weight-management program that depends on regular measurement of inches lost or gained, the success of talent management efforts depends on metrics. However, only 25 percent of companies have systematic talent management practices in place, according to a recent survey by i4cp.
The “Talent Management Measurement Survey” asked respondents what talent applications their organizations used, how they reported talent management metrics, and in what ways these measures supported the organization’s overall strategy. High-performing organizations—those companies that have outperformed their competitors in profitability, revenue growth, market share, and customer satisfaction during the last five years—were more than twice as likely to emphasize talent management measurement as low performers
(37 percent versus 16 percent).
Mary Ann Downey, human capital management practice leader at i4cp, notes that only one criterion was a predictor of both talent management success and market success—measuring leadership success. “The next question we’re going to have to ask is how do we measure leadership success? How do we get it to be more objective rather than subjective?” Downey asks.
Reporting talent management metrics is also vital. Only 26 percent of human resources staff regularly receives workforce metrics reports. Metrics reports cross the desks of a mere 23 percent of line managers and 17 percent of finance employees. “The study found that just getting the metrics out there is the start of having a solid talent management program,” Downey says. “It doesn’t matter who calculates them. You just need to start measuring and getting the data out.”
The study showed a disparity between companies’ current use of metrics to manage talent and the extent to which participants reported that they should use metrics. This gap was especially large when measuring high-performing employee separation rate, return-on-investment per employee, time to full productivity, and controllable separation rate.
Of the 426 participants from a variety of industries, including financial services, healthcare, business services, government, and manufacturing, 70 percent were HR professionals, and 30 percent were non-HR employees.
These two groups placed a fairly equal emphasis on all talent management metrics except two: cost-of-hire and quality-of-hire. “Cost-of-hire didn’t have the importance for managers that HR was giving it,” Downey explains. “The reverse was true with quality-of-hire: managers gave it more emphasis than HR staff.”
Downey predicts that talent management metrics will gain inches in the future. “As [talent management] matures, we will see a stronger correlation of talent management activities that predict high performance.”
But at the end of the day, the C-suite has to believe there is a business case for talent management. “If it’s coming from HR, ultimately it will fail,” Downey says. “This driver will differentiate the high-performing from the low-performing organizations.”
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T+D August 10 //Global Business // |
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Gaining Control of the Remote Workforce
By Aparna Nancherla |
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Are employees today working virtually or virtually working? Mostly the former, though the lack of in-person interaction comes with its share of challenges.
Only 60 percent of participants on these virtual teams consider them fully successful, according to “Virtual Teams Survey Report 2010—The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams,” released by intercultural training consultancy RW3 CultureWizard, even though 80 percent of corporate managers work virtually at least part of the time and 63 percent consider themselves members of global virtual teams.
“In other business situations, we would never take that as a successful percentage of a behavior or activity,” says Charlene Solomon, executive vice president of RW3 CultureWizard. “The fact that 40 percent of respondents believe that virtual teams are not successful is pretty stunning.”
The survey isolated the main challenges of virtual teams into three areas: time zone and language difficulties, communication styles, and cultural differences.
Eighty-one percent of respondents indicated time zones as an obstacle when working on virtual teams, and 64 percent said the same of language, whether it be accents or dialects.
“Time zones and languages are things that you can’t change,” says Solomon, but she advises training around them by addressing aspects that are more flexible. For example, if a U.S.-based team is used to holding its meetings with a team in India in the morning—meaning the participants overseas are convening during nighttime—then the meeting time could be adapted as part of a compromise. In terms of language, Solomon suggests having a printed agenda so everybody can follow along during meetings, and a recap typed up at the end so everyone is on the same page and can refer to the notes if there were any confusion.
In terms of communication, 94 percent of participants found the inability to read nonverbal cues challenging while another 90 percent said the lack of face-to-face contact interfered with the ability to build relationships. In addition, 81 percent cited that it was more difficult to build trust and rapport while working virtually.
Solomon suggests practicing active listening skills, as well as holding informal water cooler–type meetings to form connections and build community within the team. She also recommends using a webcam or Skype when possible to pick up on visual clues.
Cultural barriers include slower decision making (80 percent of respondents) and frustration with different leadership styles (77 percent). Another 75 percent reported the challenge of nonparticipation by some colleagues.
Solomon emphasizes building a process and structure around meetings to include a set schedule and predefined work rules and roles. “You need to allow time for team members to think,” she says. “It requires awareness and practice to become comfortable with it.
“When it comes down to it, people really do prefer being able to see each other,” adds Solomon, explaining that face-to-face communication will never go out of style.
But virtual teams are time-efficient and cost-effective, and are a manageable challenge given time and training.
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T+D August 10 // Generations// |
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The Time Has Come to Embrace Millennial Perspectives
By Alexandra Bradley |
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As the 20-somethings enter the workplace, they are armed with ambition and creativity and are destined to change the way businesses run—that is, according to a recent study by New York–based integrated marketing agency Mr Youth and market research consultancy Intrepid.
The goal of the study was to anticipate what businesses would look like if Millennials were already in charge.
“The next decade will require that businesses make large-scale changes to the way they operate, especially when it comes to embracing the perspective of a Millennial and wanting to move ahead of the curve,” says Misia Tramp, co-founder of Intrepid.
The six-month study, conducted in both the United States and the United Kingdom, identified major themes using a three-tiered approach: digital ethnography (an online community created to attract Millenials from around the world to a single place to discuss various lifestyle topics); virtual companies (which identified the Millennials’ main approaches for creating and managing a successful business); and quantitative surveys (of more than 800 individuals to confirm the study’s findings).
The study focused on three major areas of business (the organization, the product, and the marketing) and how the Millennials felt about each area. When it comes to the organization, Millennials prefer a collaboratively led enterprise. According to the quantitative survey, 82 percent of Millennials think it is important that businesses have a staff capable of doing each other’s jobs. Additionally, 54 percent prefer to make decisions by consensus—a number that shoots up to 70 percent when respondents are among their peers.
In developing the product, Millennials look to technology to “make their lives more human.” They appreciate personalized and tailored products and value quality. While Millennials are perceived as eco-conscious, the study found that the product’s impact on the environment was not a critical driving factor in product choice—only 20 percent of respondents worried about the effect their lifestyle has on the environment.
Finally, the study addressed marketing and found that the Millennials—“a generation that innately consumes, creates, and participates in media”—responds negatively to one-way communications and brands that do not fully interact with them. Also, Millennials trust word-of-mouth recommendations more than any other channel of marketing.
“Millennials clearly have a different view on business, marketing, and communication—much of which stems from being immersed in social technologies from a fairly young age,” says Brandon Evans, managing partner and chief strategy officer for Mr Youth. “These strong differences in attitudes and behaviors are still very underrepresented in how most companies approach their consumers.”
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T+D August 10 // Fast Fact // |
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Work on Strengths or Weaknesses? |
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Despite the fact that 78 percent of workers believe this is the worst job market they’ve ever seen in their careers, workers of all ages are beginning to explore new job opportunities according to a new study by Adecco Group North America.
One of the basic questions facing everyone creating a personal development plan is whether to focus attention on correcting faults or building strengths.
The answer to the question depends on the competencies of the person involved, and those can vary over time according to a new report, “Developing Strengths or Weaknesses: Overcoming the Lure of the Wrong Choice,” by Jack Zenger, CEO and co-founder of Zenger Folkman.
The report analyzed more than 6,000 leaders on the dimension of possessing strengths or weaknesses (fatal flaws), and from there, arranged the leaders into three categories: those having one or more fatal flaws, those having neither strengths nor weaknesses, and those leaders having one or more strengths.
“Those leaders who have fatal flaws should not spend time working on developing strengths,” notes Zenger. According to the report, it is extremely important to first correct the obvious flaw. Therefore, for one-third of the leader population, the focus should be on identifying the weakness and fixing it.
“Much of our work in counseling, coaching, and behavioral therapy has been to get people who are in negative territory up to ground zero,” says Zenger. “We can’t overemphasize the need to get that done. But never forget that such work only gets you to ground zero. Now the focus has to be on the “positive deviance” side of the equation where the real payoff comes. That is when building strengths come into play.”
Leaders believe that they know their weaknesses and their strengths, but according to the report, “people are not accurate in their perception of their weaknesses or their strengths. Using 360-degree feedback ensures that people have more accurate data, which provides both guidance and motivation in the improvement process.”
Zenger Folkman data on tens of thousands of leaders shows that
- 64 percent have no strengths
- 11 percent have only one strength
- 15 percent have from two to five strengths
- 10 percent have six or more strengths.
“If you possess a profound weakness, then work on that,” Zenger explains. “Working on strengths is relatively futile until that is rectified. Once the serious weakness is corrected, instantly begin to work on developing strengths. It is the presence of a handful of strengths that will make you the strong leader your organization needs.”
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T+D August 10 // Infograph //
Benefits of a High-Impact Learning Culture
Based on responses from 426 organizations, the Bersin & Associates study “High-Impact Learning Culture: The 40 Best Practices for Creating an Empowered Enterprise” found that leadership and management play a pivotal role in learning culture, and most best practices focus on informal approaches to learning, which further reinforces the need to expand the concept of "learning" well beyond formal training.
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