Friday 21 January 2011

HR Challenges in 2011

 

  I opened this short 17 question survey towards the end of last year and it temporarily closed last week.  However I’ve not had time to do analyse the results, and having missed my deadline, thought I might as well keep it going for another week.

The survey will now close on 29th January.

Internal HR practitioners who are in or can get to the UK this Summer have the opportunity to win a free ticket to the Economist’s Talent Management Summit in London on 9th June.

(The winner will, however, need to be wiling to engage in a short discussion about their responses which I will publish here along with the overall summary.)

If you can’t get to London for the Summit then you’ll still have my gratitude for completing the survey for me!

 

Picture credit: BotMultichillT

Technorati Tags: HR,talent,human capital,management,predictions,forecasts,2011,survey

 

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Thursday 20 January 2011

CIPD West London: HR and social media (HR 2.0): Interactive session

 

  I’m delivering an interactive session on social media for CIPD West London at 7.00pm GMT next Thursday (27th January 2011).

All CIPD members are welcome (not just those based in West London) and it would be great to see you there.

If you can’t be there, then do still keep your eyes on the twitter stream around then – hashtag #CIPDWL20 (CIPD West London 2.0).  We’ll hopefully be setting up and posting to a blog as well.

 

Also see this report from Rick at Flip Chart Fairy Tales.

 

 

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Friday 14 January 2011

Getting what you ask for (oh, and it IS a popularity contest)

 

   I posted earlier this week about one of my submissions for this Summer’s Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston: HR2.0 and the Future of HR (I also posted on some other submissions about Culture and the Social Business on my other blog).

In my HR2.0 post, I also noted that the conference’s selection process – using an enterprise 2.0 system from Spigit -  is something a lot more conferences should use: “It doesn’t guarantee a good conference,but it gets much nearer to this”.  It also establishes a lot of early interest in the conference, which those of you following the #e2conf twitter hashtag will have seen!

Of course, the process is wide open to gaming too (something that can be controlled within an organisation, but not, at least easily, in this sort of application).  And I was interested to see a call from the conference organiser not to treat the process as a popularity contest!

The thing is, it IS a popularity contest.  OK, the selection of presentations will not be down just to the voting, but there clearly is designed to be a link.  That being the case, people will want to get votes, and will take the actions they see fit to support this.

Now, personally, I’ve tried to focus on raising interest in my proposals, rather than directly asking for votes:

 


 Jon Ingham 
More on my social cultures / outcomes proposals for  -http://bit.ly/hTSc1I

  


 Jon Ingham 
RT @ @: Check out HR 2.0 - what it is and how it impacts E2.0. Voting underway! 

 

Or at least I started off that way, but as this week’s gone on, I’ve turned to my blogs, Linkedin, and the Spigit site as well, to promote my proposals as much as I can.  And of course, this post is also a dressed up request to ask for your VOTE!

And this behaviour is, of course, exactly what the conference organisers should expect!  It’s not about cheapening the process, it’s about getting what you reward.  If you ask for it, you’re going to get it, and shouldn’t be too surprised when you do.

I’ve written in my proposals about the need to get HR involved in Enterprise 2.0 – in this proposal in fact (please vote for it!!! (lol)).  And this is perhaps an example of this requirement.  HR people are used to designing effective compensation schemes to encourage the right behaviours, and ensuring we avoid getting the behaviours we don’t want.

We know in this profession that if we incentivise oil men and women to prioritise exploitation over safety and risk management that the result’s not going to be good.  We know that if we compensate bankers for risk taking they’re going to take actions that will have negative consequences for us all.  We know that paying hospital consultants £1000 for hour hours overtime is going to result in them finding more things to do within the day so that they can do more overtime at night.  Don’t we?

Perhaps not then.

If you reward certain behaviour, that’s going to be the behaviour you’re going to get back.  Why’s that so hard to understand?

 

 

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Thursday 13 January 2011

The Even More Essential Advantage!

 

   I’ve been reading Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi’s new book, the Essential Advantage (and Mainardi and Art Kleiner’s Strategy+Business article, The Right to Win both of which build upon their earlier article in Harvard Business Review, The Coherence Premium).  Given that all three texts are focused on ‘winning with a capabilities-driven strategy’ which is largely what I write about here, I had high hopes for these – which haven’t quite been delivered…

I do like the articles and particularly the book – it’s definitely one of the best recent books on business strategy, providing a very comprehensive treatment of existing strategy models - for example, in the detail and case studies supporting different strategic ‘puretones’ and ‘hues’.

And I agree completely with the book’s central premise about the need for coherence.  I also like the way the authors describe how this can be developed through coherent structures, innovative talent systems and informal conversations (although there’s a lot more that can be done here which they gloss over – even organisational structures become simple hierarchies – and there’s nothing at all about culture).

One thing I didn’t like was the authors’ choice of terminology which I found rather annoying.  So basically, the book argues that three things need to aligned: an organisation’s products and services, its ‘way to play’, which most readers will know as competitive positioning, and its ‘capabilities system’ which are really its core competencies:

Leinwand and Mainardi

 

For a book on coherence, it’s also surprisingly incoherent.  For example, “Having the same way to play as your competitors can work out advantageously if you have a better capabilities system”.  Where’s the coherence premium in this sentence?

I also don’t think the book’s suggestion that coherence starts with a focus on capabilities ie through a capabilities – or core competencies -driven strategy (“we prefer the phrase capabilities-driven, although other capabilities are involved, because the term recognises the significant role that capabilities play as an engine of value creation”) is correct.  That’s because these capabilities, ie core competencies, as both these authors and Hamel & Prahalad before them define them, do involve the skills of the workforce, but end up mainly being about business processes and technology.

But the authors note that:

“Patents and copyrights expire.  Business processes prevail until more proficient competitors appear… Technological monopolies are thretened by new innovations.

At the same time, most organisations are ‘sticky’: their identies, cultures and relationships are by nature slow to adapt to changing conditions.”

 

So if this is this is the case, why not start strategy development here, with real organisational capabilities based on an organisation’s people, their relationships and its culture -  as described by Dave Ulrich, and by me.  And then, also ensure that these real capabilities are coherent with the capabilities system (core competencies), way to play (competitive positioning) and products and services in the book’s model.

But that’s not all, there’s an internal need for coherence too.

So if you take each of the three elements in Leinwand and Mainardi’s business-focused / external model, they each have an equivalent from an organisation-focused, internal perspective too (what Julian Birkinshaw describes as ‘management’ vs ‘leadership’):

  • The way to play / competitive positioning’s equivalent is a set of internal, organisational capabilities.  Both competitive positioning and organisational capabilities are the outputs of the business / external and organisation / internal systems in a company respectively.  This actually comes through in the book when the authors write about Ulrich’s leadership brand.
  • The capabilities system / core competencies’ equivalent is the organisation’s HRM,or HCM, architecture.  These are the inputs to the two systems.
  • The equivalents to the organisation’s products and services are its people.  This is what is transformed between the input and output into business / organisational value.

 

The HRM architecture, organisational capabilities and people also need to be coherent with each other, as well as with the three elements described by Leinwand and Mainardi too.  So the model actually needs to include two concentric circles, like this:

Leinwand and Mainardi (adapted by Ingham)

 

And this leads to my main criticism of the book.  The stuff on the outside is the easy bit.  It’s time to focus more on internal coherence now.  And there’s nothing at all on this in the book.

 

 

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Wednesday 12 January 2011

Retention Reflections from Doug’s Dad, and others

 

  I’ve had some great comments on my last couple of posts about retention.

Andrew Marritt provides just about the most comprehensive comment I’ve had on this blog in his response to my post on ‘Exit as the Keystone’ and I agree with most of his points:

  1. Yes, some organisations are doing something like this.  In fact, the original idea came from an organisation I spoke to about being a case study in my book, and which then decided they did not want to be featured in it, as they saw the approach as part of their competitive advantage.  But I still don’t think any organisation does quite what I’m proposing.  Which is why I’ve suggested it as a ‘hack’.
  2. Yes, there is a risk that the career partner (individual) won’t come back.  They key, I think, would be identifying the right individual whose own interests and motivations fit the organisation’s mojo and strategy.  Then there’d be a really good chance that they would come back.
  3. Yes, relationships are important (see my other blog, Social Advantage!), and part of this approach would need to focus on maintaining these relationships during the ‘out of employment’ phase.  I do write about this at the MIX.  And I’m not suggesting allowing an company’s best people to go to its competitors – companies want to limit the other organisations involved in these relationships – and perhaps set up some form of syndicate to support this.
  4. Yes, loaning is definitely an option.  Actually, I’m not that fussed about the form of employment contract used to support this.  The key point is that an employee would spend a considerable amount of time over a number of different periods working for one ‘owning’ organisation and other times for other organisations.  There are a number of ways in which this could be accomplished.

 

I also recommend Andrew’s blog which I’ve not come across before, although I’m not a big fan of data mining, and plan to come back again shortly and discuss why.

 

Commenting on my previous post on this, Euan Semple thinks back to his days at the BBC, and in this separate post on his own blog, Doug Shaw reflects on his experience at BT – and his dad’s in the civil service.  I love this post.

I also love the fact that we’ve now got to career partnership from three separate angles – from a visioning / intuitive perspective (what would am HCM approach to retention look like?), from a business process design one (what would a true retention process look like?), and from an introspective one (how would I have liked to have been treated?).

Put all of these together and I think you’ve got something much more solid than you’d ever get from an ROI calculation, or from mining your data!

 

 

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Tuesday 11 January 2011

HR 2.0 and the Future of HR

 

E2.0 Boston 2011  The other thing (*) you can vote for me for is another submission to the Enterprise 2.0 conference.  This is basically the same as last year’s submission to Boston (which didn’t get through) and Santa Clara (which did).

But this time, I’ll be talking with Courtney Hunt of SMinOrgs, as unlike Peter Cappelli and others, I don’t like doing the same presentation twice, and co-presenting is much more fun.  Plus the conference is about collaboration, and collaborating just feels right.

You may be wondering why I want to talk there again at all?  - particularly with the rigmarole of having to submit a proposal and being voted in to speak.  And then, they don’t pay me!

Well the reason is that this conference, and in the organisations presenting at this conference (as well as a couple of my clients!), is where I think the future of HR is being made.  As I wrote above the focus of the event is on making organisations work collaboratively together, rather than just people performing as individuals – which is what I think the HR agenda should have always been about.

And actually, I think this selection process is something a lot more conferences should do.  It doesn’t guarantee a good conference,but it gets much nearer to it.  And btw, well done to Techweb / Spigit for calling what were ‘spigs’ the much simpler ‘votes’.

 

See my submission and vote here.

See and vote for my social business focused submissions to the conference here.

 

* Vote for my management hack here.

 

 

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Monday 10 January 2011

Exit as the Keystone to a Retention / Partnership process

 

  As I noted in my previous post, both my workshop group’s thinking on retention processes, and my previous notes on career partnership, suggest that retention / partnership consist of a series of sub-processes, particularly head hunting; delivering the deal; proactive exit and alumni management.

I find it interesting that I came to the same conclusion about retention through by a process perspective and a more intuitive one.

But what I find yet more interesting is what the process perspective suggests about the role of the proactive exit sub-process, supporting points I’d already made in response to my earlier responses to comments on my hack at the MIX.

And that is, that out of all four sub-processes, it is the proactive exit one that is key.  In fact, I’ve begun to think about this as being like the keystone in a bridge.  All of the other sub-processes stand on their own – the proactive exit one only makes sense when placed within this cyclical retention /  partnership process (this is the reason that the proactive exit sub-process seems so odd).  But it when this sub-process is combined with the others that the whole retention / partnership process starts to really work (becoming more strategic and proactive).

 

Thoughts?

 

And also please note that, as of today (Monday 10th January), you’ve still got 9 days to comment / vote on my proposed hack on the MIX.

 

Photo credit: John S Turner

 

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Friday 7 January 2011

Do you need an Employee Retention process?

 

   I don’t normally post about client work but I’ve been in a workshop this week that has been particularly interesting and relevant to some of the stuff I’ve recently posted on here.

So, the overall context has been on retaining employees, but one morning was devoted to developing a business process for retention.  Now, I do quite a lot of work facilitating the development of business processes and I think it’s a skills / technique many more HR professionals should have.  And I’ve also run a similar workshop once previously focused on retention (at Kennedy Information’s Retention Summit in Orlando in 2008).

Actually, it’s a workshop I’d like to run a lot more, because I think it works so well.  In particularly, it helps demonstrate that what organisations often say are important, eg retaining its people, aren’t supported by actions that well.  Where is your employee retention process for example?  And of course, no organisation (?) has one.  Retention is split across a number of sub-processes eg some activity in performance management, some in reward etc.  Or probably more honestly, there’s often no process at all – retention is just (hopefully) a by-product of these other processes looking at other things.

And it sounds crazy to suggest that we should or might have a retention process.  But I think this is only a consequence of the way we have build HR processes around supporting the business, not developing Human Capital.  If we were focused on human capital, and if things like employee retention really were important, then we’d have a process for it.  Wouldn’t we?  (That’s basically the definition of a business process that I use within my workshop – a mechanism for doing something that the organisation sees as important.)

But this was the first time I’ve run this workshop with a client.  And it was possibly because this was an internal client group that we got a lot further in the workshop than I did before.

So, some of the group’s conclusions were:

  • That the start point of the process should be recruiting people who would be likely to stay in the organisation
  • That the end point would be arranging an appropriate departure (with links to the business development, employer branding and other different business processes as well as back to the beginning of this one).

 

In fact, the group found it difficult to specify and end point for the process – and it basically started to become a loop in which employees would leave the organisation but would then, very naturally, be re-recruited later on.

And, and this is the key bit, to make this process really work well, the organisation would engage with the individual employee to ensure they left at the most appropriate point (which might mean encouraging them to leave earlier than they would have otherwise done).

 

The interesting thing for me, you as well?, is that this is what I’ve proposed as a career partnership model a couple of times here before, and which I’ve recently entered as an example of a management hack at Gary Hamel’s Management Innovation Exchange (the MIX).  But I’ve never thought of this in process terms before, which makes me feel more confident that I’m right about both ideas (that organisations should have a retention process – or at least some aspects of one – and that a useful basis for employee retention would be a career partnership approach).

 

See:

 

 

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Monday 3 January 2011

New Year HR Predictions

 

  Happy New Year!

Just a quick reminder that I’m still after your predictions (well, really just some thoughts) about HR in 2011.

Particularly if you’re an HR / talent management / similar practitioner (working within an organisation) then I’d like to invite you to complete this short (17 question) survey.

As an incentive to those of you based or working in and around London, I’m offering a free ticket to The Economist’s Talent Management Summit on 9th June this Summer to one survey respondent, chosen at random on Monday 10th January 2011.  (The winner will, however, need to be wiling to engage in a short discussion about their responses which I will publish here along with the overall summary.)


Click here to take survey

 

 

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Sunday 2 January 2011

Enterprise social media Influencer

 

I’ve been included as one of 25 influencers in Enterprise social media in Bill Ives’ A list developed from Traackr (putting me in 6th position):

 

 

Thanks to Bill for putting the list together.

 

Also see best blog bling!

 

 

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