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articles & white papers on
Talent Retention Team
Building
& Recruitment
http://www.nbr.co.nz
16-Feb-2006
National Business Review -
New Zealand
Employers
rate retention over recruitment
Don't know what
you've got until it's gone.
Almost half
of employers in a new survey said retaining employees was more important than
recruiting new staff.
Employers in a study from specialist recruiter
Hays said retention rated ahead of
compliance and recruiting talent, reflecting increasing concerns over the skills
shortage and the importance of keeping the talent an organisation has. In
the survey of over 1,000 employers 43.18 per cent rated retention as the most
important issue to their organisation in 2006.
Compliance was considered most important by 29.28 per cent while recruiting
talent was most important to 27.54 per cent. "This result isn't surprising given
the ongoing skills shortage," said Jason Walker, general manager of Hays NZ.
"Companies are using a variety of strategies to attract new talent, but it seems
retaining them has now become more important to employers. With a
candidate-driven market where skills at all levels are in demand, it is
understandable that retention has become more important than ever - even rated
above attracting talent."
Another key driver in the focus on retention comes in the cost of replacement.
"The average performing staff member costs around 90 per cent of their salary to
replace," said Mr Walker.
http://www.accountingweb.com
Accountingweb.com -
Indianapolis,IN,USA
Feb-16-2006
Employee Retention
Strategies for Busy Season
Professional
staffing firms are predicting that 2006 will the best year since 2000 for job
seekers, especially in high-paying fields like financial services, and many
employers are looking for strategies to keep their best workers. Neil Lebovits,
president and chief operating officer of Ajilon Professional Staffing in Saddle
Brook, NJ says in a report in The Seattle Times “The voluntary quit rate – employees leaving jobs without
being fired, laid off or otherwise forced out – will emerge prominently in
2006.”
How do accounting firms which have long
been focused on employee retention, particularly during the grueling busy
season, manage this increased pressure? Managers and staff who in previous years
had looked forward to the late night take out and the stimulating exchange of
technical knowledge with team members at all levels, may be experiencing
pressures from home, or may just be looking for new challenges, and compensation
strategies may not be enough.
Finding new challenges for professionals
within the firm can be a mutually beneficial strategy, Lebovits says.
Instilling a morale-minded attitude in
managers, who can communicate goals and for whom people like to work is one of
the key elements of her company’s employee retention strategy, says Marcie
Brogan, managing partner at Brogan Associates, a marketing firm, in a Christian
Science Monitor report. And nonmonetary incentives can motivate, as well as
help, to develop loyalty.
“All things being equal, you can attract,
retain, and motivate the best and the brightest by recognizing that what
motivates me might not motivate you," says John Putzier, author of “Get Weird”,
a book about creative personnel practices, according to the Monitor. “And most
of those things aren’t necessarily financial, they are “What’s it like to work
here day-to-day?”
Putzier recommends that employers strike a
“mutually beneficial deal with each employee within the framework of a broad
policy that gives them “time to live.”
“For young people, it might be looking at
flexible hours in order to have long weekends; for others it might be flexible
arrangements that allow for the care of aging adults; and for others it might be
child care," says John Peoples, managing partner at Global Lead Management
Consulting in Baltimore, in the Monitor report.
The individual agreements Putzier
recommends should not leave out the needs of employers, other personnel
consultants emphasize, and for accounting firms the busy season is one of those
needs.
Once an employee feel adequately
compensated, says Donna Oldenburg in the Monitor, former publisher of Incentive
magazine, tangible rewards, like a watch or a radio, encourage people to go for
their goals.
Setting measurable goals for employees can
help with retention when employees can see how their contributions contribute to
the success of the team and the business, Paul J. Savardi says, writing for
Entreprenuer.com. Managers should point out the ways an individual’s workplace
contributions are having an impact.
Savardi says that managers should also
emphasize their firm’s competitive advantage, and emphasize what is it that sets
them apart from the competition and makes them unique. “People want to work with
a winner,” he says in Entrepreneur.com.
Troubled BearingPoint, Inc. which has been
struggling with legal and accounting problems, has adopted a bold compensation
strategy to in order to keep staff, tmcnet.com reports. The consulting firm has
lost over 25 percent of its employees in the past year, and is trying a
compensation strategy that includes restricted stock awards and a revised system
of bonuses. The new bonus system rewards employees based on performance and not
on billable hours as in the past. So far, the results are mixed, the tmcnet
report says.
http://www.destinationcrm.com
Destination CRM - New York,NY,USA
by
Coreen Bailor
October 13, 2005
HR Execs
Fear Not Attracting 'A' Players
Long-term workforce planning
and updating, and integrating HCM technology, are ways to respond
Vying for
top talent and addressing benefit costs are the top-two challenges facing HR
executives today, according to a new Aberdeen Group study. "The HR Executive's
Agenda: The 2005 Benchmark Report," conducted with the Human Capital Institute (HCI)
and sponsored by Lawson Software, Unicru, Peopleclick, and GoalCentrix, contends
that 85 percent of HR executives site their ability to compete for top talent as
their biggest concern, while 60 percent are concerned about addressing benefit
costs, and 38 percent are concerned about balancing service levels and costs of
benefits and services. Additional challenges include lowering the human capital
operating budget (31 percent), predicting future workforce needs (30 percent),
and maintaining the human capital management (HCM) operating budget (25
percent). Survey data is based on the responses of 98 HR executives who are
members of HCI's online community, and interviews with HCM senior-level
executives.
"Retention is a big
issue--it's not that you can't get a person, it's that you can't get the talent
you need to be competitive, and that's the fear," says Katherine Jones, Aberdeen
HCM research director and the report's author. "Really look at the life cycle of
this employee, and invest in the employee, so you have an employee in 2010 who's
a happy, satisfied, highly productive, A player. That's the goal."
When segmented in
best-in-class companies (BICCs) and aggregate organizations, however, the
ability to hire and retain top talent remains the greatest challenge (85 percent
of BICCs versus 62 percent of Aggregates), but BICCs are less worried about
addressing benefit costs (54 percent of BICCs versus 60 percent of Aggregates),
recruiting future talent (15 percent of BICCs versus 30 percent of Aggregates),
and maintaining the HCM operating budget than their Aggregate cohorts (23
percent of BICCs versus 27 percent of Aggregates). "The best-in-class companies
have already thought through the idea and the concept, and are implementing
things that deal with the concept of real workforce planning," Jones says. "The
others need to struggle with other things to get there."
The top-three
strategies among HR executives for responding to these issues include
emphasizing long-term workforce planning, improving the company's brand as a
desirable place to work, and updating and integrating HCM technology, according
to the report. Fifty-nine percent of respondents noted the improvement of such
technology as a prime response to their business challenges. Specific HCM sects
that are gaining traction include hiring management solutions, preemployment
assessment, employee self-service, and performance management.
Pertaining to HR
outsourcing, however, nearly all HR executives who responded, 96 percent,
outsource some portion of their human capital activities, but 31 percent of
BICCs and 37 percent of Industry Norms reported that nothing would lead them to
consider outsourcing HR. Respondents also noted that they outsource business
operations to companies that include Accenture, ADP, Aon, Ceridian, Fidelity,
Genesys, Gervity, Hewitt, HR Xcel, IBM Global, Mellon, Mercer, Spherion, and
Ultimate, report states.
Overall, one of the
biggest takeaways of the report, according to Jones, is the use of HCM
technology within the employee life cycle. Another is talent. "If you don't have
a long-term strategy for your workforce--at least five years--you really need to
sit down and think about at the end of the decade, how do I get the tasks of
this company done?"
Globe and Mail -
Canada
By HEATHER SCOFFIELD
October 8, 2005
ECONOMICS REPORTER
As
unemployment rate declines, spectre of worker shortage
raised
Sept.'s
6.7% rate lowest in three decades
Canada's
unemployment rate dropped back to a three-decade low in September, and a survey
suggests companies are having increasing difficulty finding the right kinds of
workers to support their growing businesses.
The unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage points to 6.7 per
cent last month, tying with June, 2005, for the lowest rate since March, 1976.
"There just isn't a
huge supply of available and qualified workers," said Douglas Porter, deputy
chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns.
But while the low
rate shows that the job market is strong, many of the details of the Statistics
Canada survey yesterday showed troubling trends in the economy.
The total number of
Canadians working in September slid by about 2,300 from August. It was the worst
performance since January, surprising analysts who had expected net job creation
of more than 20,000 positions.
But because the
total number of people active in the work force also dropped in August, the
national unemployment rate managed to edge down too.
About 19,200
full-time jobs were added to the economy in September, offset by a loss of about
21,400 part-time jobs, Statscan said.
While its report
suggests companies weren't hiring much in September, firms told the Bank of
Canada that they had strong intentions of hiring in the future.
In the central bank's
quarterly Business Outlook Survey, 50 per cent of the companies surveyed said
they intended to hire more people in the next 12 months. And a whopping 51 per
cent said they are facing labour shortages that restrict their ability to meet
demand. That's up from 36 per cent in the bank's summer survey.
Regional differences
in the Canadian economy are becoming more pronounced, the central bank said,
with energy-rich Western Canada very optimistic about sales growth over the next
year. About three-quarters of Western companies said they expect to hire more
workers in the next year.
"What we're being told by
employers is that people are hard to find, and they hope to find more people in
the months to come," said Ted Carmichael, chief economist at J.P. Morgan
Securities Canada Inc.The central bank survey also pointed to signs of rising
inflation expectations. About one-quarter of the companies said they expect
inflation to rise above the 3-per-cent ceiling on the bank's target band. And 60
per cent expect annual inflation to be in the top end of the target range.
The Statistics Canada
jobs report also revealed some signs of inflation, with average hourly earnings
rising 3.5 per cent from a year earlier -- higher than in August, and higher
than the national inflation rate of 2.6 per cent.The signs of inflation, along
with increasing evidence of a tight labour market, led most economists to
reinforce their call for a rate increase from the Bank of Canada on Oct. 18, and
perhaps a second rate increase in December as well. The central bank raised its
key rate 0.25 percentage points in September for the first time in 11 months.
Still, the labour
force report contained enough puzzling facts that it gave some economists pause
for thought.For example, the largest drop in employment in September was in the
financial services industry, accounting for 29,000 fewer jobs despite
registering increases throughout the year. "That's almost the payroll of an
entire bank," Mr. Porter commented. Neither he nor officials at Statscan could
explain the job losses. A second quirk singles out Ontario for job strength. A
total of 17,000 jobs were created in the province last month, pushing the
unemployment rate down two percentage points to 6.4 per cent -- it's lowest in
four years. Indeed, Ontario's job market was much more active than Alberta's in
September.
That's despite
massive, sustained job losses in the manufacturing sector, Ontario's mainstay.
http://financialexpress-bd.com
The Financial Express - Bangladesh
Ruth Sullivan
9/18/2005
Employers
take a psychometric view of hopefuls
Psychometric testing, which can
help to assess personality traits, is enjoying a renaissance. This approach --
allowing companies to build up a fuller picture of job applicants and to select
executives with leadership potential -- is being used by a growing number of top
companies.
The practice, dates at least as far back as the second world war, when the
British army experimented with the technique to measure officers' ability and
leadership skills. Companies have been trialling it mostly since the 1970s, and
its growing importance was signalled 18 months ago, when James Murdoch, Rupert
Murdoch's son, was obliged to take a psychometric test as part of the selection
process for the chief executive job at
BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster
that is part of his father's media empire.
Now, a new survey of FTSE 100 companies -- conducted by The Test Agency Hogrefe, a
psychometric test publisher -- shows that most large corporations are using some
form of psychometric testing: of the 73 responding to the survey, 59 said they
did so.
"It has taken a long time to get through to corporate use," says Nigel Evans, a
chartered psychologist and psychological testing verifier at the British
Psychological Society. So why the growing popularity? One reason is that, with
the rise of the internet, companies are receiving large volumes
of applications, especially from recent graduates.
Yet, intriguingly,
managers are the employees most subjected to
psychometric testing, with 80 per cent of the respondents using
tests on this group. Some 13 per cent of
the responding companies revealed that they use psychometric testing for
board-level appointments.
Wendy Lord, chief psychologist at The Test Agency, says that a good mix of
psychometric tests can help to find the right person - and this, in turn, is
likely to lead to more job satisfaction, better performance, higher productivity
and a greater likelihood of retaining staff.
The most popular psychometric tests are those measuring aspects of behavioural
style or motivation -- usually in the form of questionnaires -- and those
assessing intellectual power or the potential to learn in particular areas.
A classic questionnaire includes the question: "'Most of what happens in life
depends on being in the right place at the right time.' How much do you agree?
Strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree or strongly disagree?" Such inquiries
attempt to determine the extent to which a person believes they are captain of
their own destiny.
Some companies have seen a rise in the retention of staff following the use of
testing. Virgin Mobile, the virtual mobile phone operator and a FTSE 250
company, saw the retention rate of new recruits show an encouraging rise after
it started using psychometric testing more consistently two
years ago.
Phillip Mather,
head of human resources business delivery, says the biggest improvement in
retention has come from giving candidates personality tests:
"They have helped
us better identify which individuals would enjoy
and fit our culture". Previously newcomers to the company have
arrived and it has taken up to 12 months
for them to realise that Virgin
Mobile's
self-directed culture is not for them, he says.
"Recruitment is expensive and as companies focus on the bottom line they realise
they can reduce the risk [in recruitment]," says Mike Dodd from Academy HR, an
independent consulting company.
Over the past five years the consultancy has seen a large rise in the use of
psychometric testing in large and medium-sized companies.
But some employers, especially smaller companies, are still put off by the cost
and time involved, particularly the expense of using qualified professionals --
whether in-house or outsourced -- to chose and interpret tests.
While 95 per cent of respondents revealed that they use psychometric testing
only for recruitment purposes, some -- notably Rolls-Royce -- use them for staff
development. The company can, for example, establish which employees are team
players or team leaders.
http://www.onrec.com
Online Recruitment - UK
15/09/2005
Retiring workforce -
Deloitte survey
Looming talent crisis signals need for organisations to employ
new strategies for talent management
Impending baby boomer retirements, a widening skills gap and outdated approaches
to talent management are combining forces to produce a “perfect storm” that
threatens long-term business performance, according to a new survey conducted by
the Human Capital practice of Deloitte.
In a global survey, 69% of the 1396 human resources practitioners surveyed say
attracting new talent poses the greatest threat to competitiveness, followed by
the inability to retain key talent (66%) and incoming workers with inadequate
skills (34%). These survey findings are underscored in a Deloitte research
report, “It’s 2008: do you know where your talent is? Why acquisition and
retention strategies don’t work.”
“Deloitte’s new research points to an inescapable conclusion: the widening
skills gap is a global phenomenon, particularly among the categories of key
workers who disproportionately drive an organisation’s performance” said Ashley
Unwin, a partner in consulting at Deloitte. “This trend will leave behind
companies that do not begin to rethink their approach to talent management.”
Draining of the global labour pool
Over 70% of respondents surveyed by Deloitte confirmed they were experiencing,
or expected to experience, a shortage of white-collar workers. Global
demographic changes show that the number of 15-29 year olds entering the job
market is steadily contracting, while growing life expectancy is further
contributing to the problem.
Worryingly, only 13% of respondents identified approaching baby boomer
retirement as a concern, despite overwhelming evidence indicating a large exodus
of experienced staff from the labour market in the next three-five years.
“Retirement legislation is under review in some countries but the current
situation sees skilled workers continuing to leave their profession or trade
around late middle age and too few people are joining the workforce to fill
their place,” says Ashley Unwin. “Governments are able to partially alleviate
the depth of talent pools through policies on immigration, taxation and
education but their impact is likely to be superficial in the face of global
working population forecasts.”
The survey found the level of significance accorded to recruitment and retention
of able staff was consistent across every region surveyed, irrespective of the
size of the organisation.
Almost half (46%) of the survey respondents stated that demographic changes and
the impending skills shortage had been discussed at board level and most
identified a clear link between talent management and business performance. 54%
believe talent management issues will impact their overall organisational
productivity and 40% say it affects the firm’s ability to innovate. 33%
acknowledge it will limit their ability to meet production requirements and
fulfil customer demand.
Sabri Challah, a partner at Deloitte observes: “It is encouraging to see that so
many organisations have discussed the impending skills shortage at board level.
Given the potential impact on business performance, it is essential that
board-level commitment is gained to help drive rapid change to talent management
strategies.
“Firms must adapt their talent-management strategies quickly, so that they can
continue to attract the best people, nurture them to help maximise their
contribution, and retain them, rather than lose them to competitors.”
Ashley Unwin concludes: “Companies can avoid sustaining a direct hit from the
looming talent crisis by rethinking and reinventing their talent management
processes into a well-designed talent strategy that drives productivity and
differentiates a company from its competitors.”
www.deloitte.co.uk
http://www.deccanherald.com
Deccan Herald - Bangalore,India
September 14, 2005
by Sabu Thomas
Ten ways to make
IT recruitment painless
INFORMATION Technology (IT) recruiting has become a nightmare for
most companies in the industry. The biggest reason being the huge gap between
demand and supply, which is not in terms of numbers but in skill requirement.
The dynamic nature of software skills makes the talent pool very small, while
the procurers are many. Competition between IT organisations to capture this
limited talent makes IT recruiting a big challenge for the recruiter, who often
gets tempted to resort to unethical recruiting practices. Among that is the
ruthless poaching from other companies offering unprecedented salaries thereby
violating all internal compensation norms. The end result is CFOs raising their
eyebrows against increasing costs and diminishing profits.
There is no medicine to get out of this situation. However, a combination of
structured approaches could make IT recruitment much easier and painless. Let us
validate the age old saying ‘Prevention is better than cure’. Organisations who
build a people-base with long term perspectives supported by a strong culture
will be in an advantageous position to hire, than the ones whose intention is to
make a few quick bucks ‘somehow’. Let me categorise the latter as ‘trading
houses’ who trade human resources as commodities and discard them after use. I
do not believe that this is a sustainable model in the long run. An organisation
which is built to last, should look at the following:
Congenial work culture
Often, it is not the individuals but culture that attracts people
to an organisation. Culture is like fragrance that spreads in no time. Building
a good work culture is also very important in order to retain the best talent
within. Companies that have a good retention record would be very good in
attracting talent too. The reason is simple - employees would, themselves,
spread the message of an excellent work environment and tempt others to join the
firm. Time and again, it has been found that money does attract people, but
cannot retain them for long. Work environment and the nature of work one does is
what keeps employees loyal to the organisation.
Building leaders within
Though building leaders within is more to increase internal efficiency, it would
go a long way in attracting good talent to the organisation. As it is proved
that employees do not leave an organisation but leave their managers, a manager
who is able to retain talent, would be good at attracting talent too.
A manager should know the pulse of his team members and be people sensitive.
Teach your managers that people-management is as important as project delivery
and train them with recruitment and retention targets. Hiring is always a shared
responsibility and not an exclusive mandate of the recruiter.
Entrepreneurial employees
Is your employee referral scheme working well? Are you able to hire at least one
third of the required talent through employee referral schemes? It is possible
if you concentrate on building entrepreneurial employees. Every employee should
be made to feel as if they own their job and the outcome. The employees should
feel the comfort and need for referring talents and this will happen only if the
employees own their work and the organisation.
Manage exits with grace
Employees are the best ambassadors for your company. Exits, for whatever
reasons, should be handled gracefully. Exits should be managed as carefully as
inductions. It is very important that the company and the employee part as
friends. Research shows that after an employee leaves an organisation, he or she
will talk to at least a dozen people within 30 days after the departure, about
the former organisation. If it is an unpleasant exit, the number of people they
talk about their experience will be three times more than the normal. Any
bad-mouthing by a former employee will bring down the brand equity of the
organisation drastically, which further deteriorates the hiring capability.
Remember, employees who are leaving the organisation are not your enemies but
your ambassadors at least for a short time in the job market. Good reference by
a former employee would be a great boost to prospective employees, especially at
senior levels.
Build internal brand awareness
It is important to educate employees about the strength of their organisation
and its brand value. It is not something that should be assumed but needs
continuous education.
It is futile to hold reputation exercises and promotions through agencies
outside the organisation, if people within are not aware of it and own it. Brand
building should begin from within, and it should be the employees who should be
spreading the brand image of the organisation externally with conviction. Search
for talent who will stay with the organisation at least for a reasonable period.
If the number of job changes is more than the number of years of experience,
such candidates will not be suitable for organisations with long-term
perspectives. Such candidates will fall into the ‘floaters’ category and they
will leave the organisation as soon as they get another job. Beware, the cost of
a wrong recruitment will be much more than the cost of losing a piece of work.
If we hire more talent from the floaters category, which is easy to hire, we are
putting ourselves into trouble since we will always be doing the fire-fighting
of finding replacement for such people. So it is important to look at the
‘culture fit’ before making an offer.
Resource planning
When a company gains a new project, the company goes on a hiring spree. In such
a situation, often, enough resources are not available. It is difficult to
locate people with the right talent or one has to pay astronomical salaries to
get them.
A good way to overcome last minute hiring is to plan in advance. A people
resource requisition plan should be in place. A company should be able to
predict demands in emerging technologies and plan around it. Some recruitment
could be done in advance and for the rest the databank could be kept ready. So
when the time comes, the pressure to hire will be much less.
Speed-up selection process
Often the process of recruitment, the various levels of interviews and related
formalities, are very long drawn and can put off a prospective employee. It is
important to make the interview process as simple as possible.
However, it should not be at the cost of the quality of the hiring process. It
does not mean that the steps of the selection process be cut down. Perhaps, the
various interviews could be done in a shorter span of time. It is also important
to value the time of the candidate who is being interviewed.
Build an interview panel
I do not know whether the act of selecting the right candidate is an art or
science. However, I believe that it is a great skill which is very rare. Hence,
it is important for an organisation to develop resources that are skilled enough
to conduct selection interviews to find the right fit for the organisation. For
a good candidate, deciding a career option is a tough job and it should be the
selection panel that helps a candidate take a favourable decision. The job of an
interviewer is not only to find the skill suitability of the candidate but also
selling the job or career to the candidate. Hence it is important that the
selection panel consist of well trained people who can do their job
appropriately. Each interview for a candidate is important for the organisation;
hence treat it like a business responsibility.
Treat candidates as customers
The importance of the job as well as the person should be demonstrated while
interviewing candidates. It would be a good idea to inform security and the
reception before the person comes for the interview. Nothing like being greeted
by your name when you walk into a company for an interview. It is also a good
idea not to keep the candidates waiting for long. After the selection and before
joining, is when most people change their minds. It will be a good idea to
assign ‘buddy’s’ to each selected candidate till he/she joins the organisation.
Make the interview experience pleasant for the candidate. It will help
candidates to make a favourable decision or at least the candidate will talk
good about the company.
In today’s competitive environment, talent acquisition is a challenging task for
the organisation. Recruiters cannot do any magic if the organisation as a whole
is not prepared to face this challenge.
If we keep our house in order, talent acquisition can be made easier. Look
internally first before resorting to external selling tactics.
The author is Vice President - Human Resources, at Adea International Pvt
Ltd.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com
September 7, 2005
By WALLACE IMMEN
It's time to leave a loveless
career
Up to a
third of employees feel trapped in jobs, new poll shows, but experts say now is
a perfect time to hunt for a better match.
The workload piled up
higher every day but there was no extra pay and little appreciation. Aubrey
Stork was beginning to dread the thought of going in to work and realized it was
time to escape to a new career.
The Internet merchandising company he worked for in Toronto was
shrinking and, as other people left the company, he had to take on their
responsibilities. Mr. Stork says he tried to no avail to discuss the burden with
his bosses.
"It forced me to look
at my long-term goals and I realized I had reached my limit and it was time to
look for a new job," Mr. Stork says. And he did. Now, four months into his new
job as production specialist at ThinData Inc., a website marketing company in
Toronto, Mr. Stork says that he loves to go to work every day because he's
getting encouragement from management in the growing firm to expand his horizons
and work toward his goal of becoming an account manager.
"I definitely feel
more appreciated," he says. Mr. Stork is not the only one who felt caught in a
loveless career. A recent poll reveals that as many as a third of employees in
Canada find themselves similarly trapped.
But they don't have
to stay that way: Career experts say the next few months will offer a perfect
time to hunt for a more perfect match.
"It was shocking to
discover that 17 per cent of people say they dislike their job so much, they
dread the thought of going to work every morning," says Patrick Sullivan,
president of Workopolis.com, which ran the poll, developed by Environics
Research, in July, and received about 10,000 responses from Canadians with
full-time jobs. Just as unsettling, Mr. Sullivan says, is that 32 per cent said
they think of their job as only "a means to earn a living" and not a career with
long-term potential.
"Too many Canadians
are caught up in the daily routine of going to work and should be evaluating how
to meet their career goals and needs," Mr. Sullivan says. "A job is like a
relationship. Both sides -- employer and employee -- have to be thinking at all
times about how they can understand each other's goals and needs."
The poll also found
that 47 per cent of respondents said they realize they are in dead-end
relationships and will have to eventually move to a new job to achieve their
ultimate career goals. As well, an overwhelming 64 per cent said they see little
or no opportunity for advancement, and 35 per cent rated their job so routine
that they get no exposure to new experiences. "I understand we all have to make
a paycheque. But if you are interested in developing a career, it's important
not to waste your time and to get into work that will move you nearer to your
long-term goal," Mr. Sullivan advises.
The good news: he and
other recruiters say those who do decide to take up the hunt will find plenty of
prospective suitors in virtually every sector of the economy this fall. For
instance, Workopolis -- a partnership of Bell Globemedia, Toronto Star
Newspapers Ltd. and Gesca Ltd., the newspaper publishing subsidiary of Power
Corp. of Canada -- currently lists more than 40,000 jobs, Mr. Sullivan says.
There are three
times as many listings in the energy industry than there were at this time last
year and twice as many for the financial industry, in part because of the boom
in the energy sector and the need for more accountants to deal with increased
reporting requirements, Mr. Sullivan says.
In management ranks,
the New York-based Association of Executive Search Consultants reports that
recruiting in the financial and industrial sectors in North America is up 5 to
10 per cent from last year. While the numbers aren't broken down between Canada
and the United States, "what we hear informally from our offices and our
competitors is that demand is up more in Canada than it is in the United States
right now," says Peter Zukow, general manager of the Toronto office of national
executive recruiting firm Lock & Associates. "The fall is the traditional
back-to-reality time for employers after the summer holidays and, this year, our
phones have been lighting up more than ever," Mr. Zukow says.
Recruiting is surging
in nearly every industry and the demand for employees is rising faster than the
number of candidates in many areas.
http://theglobeandmail.com
By KEVIN
MARRON
May 18, 2005
Job
serendipity: Give luck a chance
New opportunities often arise out of happenstance encounters -- but you have to
be open to where they can lead.
When
Tracey Fellowes decided to run a marathon, she had no idea she'd also be running
into a chance meeting that would take her career in a whole new direction.
In 1995, Ms. Fellowes was a 37-year-old single mother, earning
a modest income as an executive for a cash-strapped, non-profit organization,
when she struck up a friendship with another woman in her marathon training
group -- a Xerox Canada Inc. executive who urged her to apply for a sales job
with her company.
Ms.
Fellowes decided to take her friend up on the risky suggestion of changing
careers, went to Xerox's sales school and began to work for the company on
commission.
That
marked the beginning of a new career path that led her to senior sales positions
at Oracle, EDS Canada Inc. and the former AT&T Canada.
Now a
senior sales manager in Calgary for Allstream, a unit of Manitoba Telecom
Services Inc., Ms. Fellowes looks back on the chance encounter that first opened
the door to a successful new career and wonders: Was it luck that got her to
where she is today? Or was it just an ability to see an opportunity and run with
it?
It is a
question many successful people ask themselves as they think about the role
chance encounters have played in determining the course of their careers.
And
that role factors in more frequently than you might think. Countless people have
stumbled on new career opportunities from striking up a conversation with a
plane seat mate, chatting with a stranger in a movie lineup or turning to the
topic of work at a party.
Constance Stevens, a career counsellor in Davis, Calif., has coined a name for
such encounters. She calls it "career serendipity" and maintains it involves
more than just a happy accident.
People
tend to stumble onto new career opportunities, she says, when they do something
different that takes them outside their normal routine and comfort zone. But
then they have to be receptive to opportunities that present themselves, she
adds.
As Vancouver
career coach Marlene Hayley puts it: "People have to make themselves available
for luck to show up."
You
have to be willing to tell people that you are interested in a career
opportunity. You also need to be clear about what you want and able to describe
your skills. Otherwise, people will not know how to help you, says Ms. Hayley,
the owner of Find Work You Love Inc.
Many
people find out about opportunities through chance encounters and casual
conversations for the simple reason that many jobs are never posted, says career
consultant Tim Cork, president of Toronto-based NexCareer. So it is a way to tap
into the huge hidden job market.
Chance
encounters lead to career breaks, he says, "when preparation meets opportunity."
Ted
Clarke turned a chance encounter into an opportunity to land a new job soon
after he was laid off from a senior human resources management position with a
manufacturing company in Kingston, Ont., in 1985.
Mr.
Clarke recalls how he fell into a conversation with the newspaper vendor from
whom he routinely bought a paper.
When
the vendor observed that he was picking it up earlier than usual, Mr. Clarke
explained that he'd just been laid off. The vendor then told him that he'd just
been talking to another customer who had also been laid off from an HR position
but had received two new job offers -- one of which he would reject.
From
the news vendor's description, Mr. Clarke was able to identify the other man as
a former colleague. He contacted the man, found out about the job he was
rejecting and then called the company with that opening.
He got
the position -- a human resource manager at a medical supply company -- that his
colleague had turned down.
Mr.
Clarke, who now runs his own human resources consulting business, J. Edward
Clarke & Associates in Peterborough, Ont., advises job seekers to tell everyone
and anyone that they are looking for work, since you never know where you might
find that crucial lead.
"Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to tell my barber," he says. "You never know
who will be sitting in the barber's chair after you or who was there before
you."
Some
people seem to be luckier than others in their careers, as in love or other
human endeavours, according to Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the
University of Hertfordshire in Britain and the author of The Luck Factor.
He says people who believe themselves to be lucky make their own luck by having
a positive attitude and taking more chances.
Luck is
what you make of it, adds David Friendly, a senior oil company executive who got
his start in the industry in the early 1970s, while a student working part-time
at a Toronto service station.
He
offered a ride to a customer whose car was being repaired and got into a
conversation about his graduate work in environmental studies.
The
customer turned out to be the chairman of Gulf Canada Ltd. A few months later,
he offered Mr. Friendly a job with Gulf's fledgling environmental department.
It was
the beginning of a long and successful career with Gulf Canada and then
Petro-Canada, which acquired parts of Gulf Canada in 1985.
All
kinds of career opportunities involve an element of luck, says Mr. Friendly, now
senior adviser for total loss management at Calgary-based Petro-Canada.
"Is it
any different from sending a bunch of résumés out and getting lucky enough that
one of them gets read by the right person?" he asks.
Ms.
Fellowes observes that many people in her profession stumbled onto their career
path by chance.
"No
one went to university and said, 'Gee, I'd like to be in sales,' " she says.
And
now that she is in a position to hire sales staff for her team, Ms. Fellowes
says she is constantly on the lookout for the right qualities in people she
happens to meet -- such as the ability to see an opportunity where others would
see a risk, and to listen to other people.
"You
cannot assess those qualities from a résumé," she adds.
So if
you're open to the possibility of a new career in sales, it wouldn't hurt to
bump into Ms. Fellowes running along the trails by Calgary's Bow River.
"I
might just try to recruit you," she says.
Make
your own luck.
Here
are tips culled from experts on how to make your own luck out of chance
encounters:
- Know
what you are looking for so you will recognize an opportunity when you see it.
-
Engage in all kinds of activities -- sports, arts, volunteer work, whatever
your interests -- because you don't have chance meetings sitting at home.
- Tell
everyone you know you are looking for work or interested in a career change.
You never know who or what they may know.
-
Explain clearly your skills and what you're looking for to give other people a
chance to make connections for you.
-
Believe in your own luck and take risks. You can't win the job lottery if you
never buy a ticket.
PersonnelToday.com –
UK
By
Simon Kent
17 May 2005
How Citigroup became an award-winning
diversity champion
The war for
talent is intensifying and one of the chief battlegrounds is the drive for
greater gender diversity. With the gender pay gap alone still standing at 14.4%
for full-time staff, rising to 43.2% for part-time workers, it is a battle many
seem to be losing. Simon Kent
discovers how international financial services company Citigroup won the
Opportunity Now City Focus Award for Commitment to Female Talent.
Having
recognised the need to address the retention and progression of female talent in
the company only last year, Citigroup introduced a number of initiatives, from
networking to recruitment techniques and achieved remarkable success.
The Europe,
Middle East and Americas (EMEA) operating committee has risen from 9% to 14%
female, while 37% of graduate intake is now female, compared to an industry
standard of 25%. The proportion of female managing directors in the company has
risen by 4% in the past two years.
Lynne
Fisher, head of diversity and talent management, said the organisation's success
has come through the use of '100-day task teams' - groups made up of diverse
employees who were charged with delivering solutions to strict and short
deadlines.
"The teams
had to be diverse - they had to include people from different countries across
the EMEA region, different disciplines and be a mix of men and women," she said.
"We wanted to see results quickly rather than making recommendations for
consideration by management. This approach had a clear action focus and suited
our results-focused culture."
The teams
were sponsored by senior managers. Fisher said they energised the work through
their commitment as well as ensuring the team's activities remained constant on
the task in hand. Each team identified innovative practice and delivered pilot
schemes in their particular area. Successful pilots were then adopted and
developed by the diversity function and HR who expanded initiatives across
functions and company businesses.
One
initiative has seen the introduction of a mentoring programme which links female
employees with the most senior person in their particular business. "The women
were selected carefully to ensure they were at key points in their career," said
Fisher, "They had just returned from maternity or perhaps were due for a
promotion."
This
mentoring structure also raised awareness of female workers in the organisation
since it opened a channel of communication which was previously not there.
"Areas
like the trading floor are male dominated so it's rare to find women reporting
to senior managers in these areas," Fisher said, "The mentoring process gave
them that opportunity so it served as an educational process as well"
Citigroup
reports an impressive 82% of women returning to work following maternity leave
while 32% of participants who took part in its 'Coaching for Success' programme
have since been promoted.
"Our
programmes have raised awareness of the issue throughout the company," said
Fisher. "But the real key to success is that it has been driven by the employees
themselves. It's the only way you can make change happen in business."
While
acknowledging the success of their work so far, Fisher knows there is still some
way to go before the organisation achieves diversity as an automatic part of its
operations.
"I think
diversity still needs a special focus to get people to think about how it
impacts on their role," she said, "But this is about change management and it
could take five years to really embed."
PersonnelToday.com – UK\
17 May 2005
Employer branding is key in fight for
talent
In the war
for talent, HR professionals are not being equipped with one of the most
important weapons in the recruitment armoury – employer branding.
An exclusive
survey of 1,889 Personnel Today
readers with responsibility for recruitment reveals that 95% of
respondents believe employer branding is ‘important’ (Fig. A), with 80% saying
that it will become even more so (Fig. B). And yet only 25% of those surveyed
have responsibility for employer branding (Fig. C).
Many senior
HR professionals said they were trying to make their organisation an ‘employer
of choice’ in the face of low unemployment and skills shortages.
One said:
“There is so much competition for good candidates, those with a good employer
brand will be able to pick and choose from the best candidates.” And another
added: “People are becoming more inclined to look for roles where the
organisation’s values are aligned with their own.”
Recruitment
remains the preserve of the HR department. Indeed, the number of people in HR
with responsibility for recruiting is increasing (Fig. D).
The
proportion of jobs being filled by both internal and external recruitment
advertising is on the decline, while recruitment consultancies are filling a
greater share of the vacancies (Fig. E). But the biggest change to the
recruitment landscape has been the development of the internet.
Three-quarters of respondents agree that it has changed the way their
organisations approach recruitment (Fig. F).
But while
much of this can be attributed to the growth of online media and jobs boards,
survey respondents claim that the fastest growing medium over the next two years
will be their companies’ own websites.
Seventy-six
per cent plan to use their company websites more for recruitment purposes. Local
and national newspapers will be the losers, with 23% and 37% (respectively) of
respondents planning to use them less for job ads.
One
respondent summed up the general mood: “I intend to get our website working
efficiently to attract candidates without agency or advertising fees attached.”
Despite
respondents’ clear interest in the cost of recruitment, only 6% said their
companies had a cost-per-hire target. The average cost-per-hire is measured,
however, and stands at £2,773 (£3,175 among organisations with more than 10,000
employees).
And HR
departments are increasingly finding that the return on investment from their
recruitment spending is being measured (Fig G).
That
investment will be channelled into a number of areas, but principally it will go
to employee retention schemes, followed by developing in-house recruitment
websites and improving employer branding (Fig. H).
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com
Edinburgh Evening News -
Edinburgh,Scotland,UK
May 16, 2005
High demand for workers
drives recruitment activity upwards
STRONG demand for
staff at Scottish companies led to increased recruitment activity last month, a
new report reveals today.
Overall Scottish
labour market conditions remained firm in April, according to the latest
snapshot from the Bank of Scotland. However, shortages of suitable candidates restricted growth of
some permanent placements.
Meanwhile,
average pay rates continued to rise, albeit at the slowest pace in three months.
Tim Crawford,
group economist at BoS, said: "Staff appointments in
Scotland continue to rise, though at a slower pace than suggested by demand
trends, as recruiters find quality applicants hard to come by.
"Starting
salaries continue to rise in this environment. Demand is particularly strong for
IT and computer staff, both for permanent and temporary positions."
The report
signalled the 21st consecutive monthly improvement in overall job market
conditions north of the Border, with the rate of improvement broadly in line
with the
UK as a whole.
Permanent staff
placements were up only modestly in April, despite demand for staff rising at a
near record pace.
With recruitment
consultancies again reporting difficulties in finding suitable candidates to
fill vacancies, starting salaries offered to entice quality applicants continued
to rise. Average permanent salaries were up for the 22nd successive month.
http://www.emediawire.com
Emediawire (press release)
- Ferndale,WA,USA
Fayetteville, AR
(PRWEB) May 16,
2005
Retailers Seek More Affordable Job
Recruitment
With
the retail industry growing rapidly from year to year, many retailers have
started searching for cheaper alternatives to large online job recruitment
websites such as Monster.com.
With
the retail industry growing rapidly from year to year, many retailers have begun
using online job recruitment services to help fill corporate and store-based
positions. The information technology era has provided many new ways for retail
employers to recruit via the internet. The most popular job recruitment websites
include Monster.com and Hcareers.com
These type of job recruitment websites offer retail employers the chance to
advertise jobs on a nationwide level, as opposed to the limited ability of local
advertising. Most retailers advertise jobs on their own company websites, in
addition to job recruitment websites. By using online job recruitment services,
retail employers have access to thousands of resumes to search for qualified
candidates. These types of websites greatly increase the scope and visibility of
employers current open positions.
While these websites seem like a much more productive way for retailers to find
qualified job candidates, they have also become exceedingly expensive. Websites
like Monster.com and Hcareers.com are charging retailers anywhere from $200 -
$350 per job posting, in addition to initial account setup fees and add-on
services. Most retail employers are extremely satisfied with the ability to
reach a large online market but are often discouraged by high priced posting
fees.
There have been several websites which have taken a new approach to the dramatic
problem of overpriced retailing recruitment. RetailHeroes.com is a prime example
of this type of website. Colin Fagras, Director of Marketing for
RetailHeroes.com said, “We have found a new solution to help retailers with
their job recruitment services by running a smaller company and offering much
more affordable pricing. We target smaller markets and provide more targeted and
qualified candidates for our employers.” RetailHeroes.com offers the same
variety of services and professionalism as the larger recruitment websites, but
they offer job postings at substantially reduced prices and they tend to have
much closer relationships with retailers. “We keep very close relationships with
our employers. We feel by offering more affordable pricing and solid customer
service, retailers will stop using overpriced corporate websites and continue
recruiting with our company,” Mr. Fagras stated.
With the increasing cost of online job recruitment and the ever growing number
of retailers nationwide, employers will be forced to either fork out the
expensive fees of advertising with larger websites or begin to advertise with
smaller, yet more affordable and more targeted websites such as RetailHeroes.com
http://www.inbusinesslasvegas.com
In Business Las Vegas - Henderson,NV,USA
May 13-19, 2005
By
Alana Roberts
The key to having a successful human resources department is to
target good job candidates and aim to keep them, two recruiting leaders said
during a conference in
Las Vegas on Monday. "Recruiting is not just about bringing people
into the organization, it's talent management," Lea Soupata, senior vice
president of human resources of UPS, said at the Recruiting 2005 Conference and
Expo at the Las Vegas Hilton. She said out of the company's 375,000 employees,
70 percent are union- represented, part-time workers. Among those workers the
company has a 32 percent turnover rate, she said. But the company has a 7
percent turnover rate for full-time managers including retirement, and a 6
percent turnover rate for full-time nonmanagement staff.
Soupata said talent management is one of the most important human
resource functions a company can have. She said her company has several
strategies for attracting and also keeping good employees. "So you have
somebody, then what?" Soupata asked the group. Soupata said the company has a
focus on promoting from within. "I've been with UPS 36 years," Soupata said. "To
get promoted I had to drive and deliver packages. We're developing a bench. How
can we build on recruiting from within the company? We spend $400 million a year
on training and development. It starts from day one." She said programs such as
internships and co-ops are important ways of developing and then keeping a good
employee base. She also said the company offers such perks as tuition
reimbursement to keep workers loyal.
Christopher Metzler, director of Diversity Management and EEO
Studies at Cornell University, also stressed the importance of striving to not
only attract but retain a diverse workforce. "You cannot have a diversity
strategy that (just) focuses on bringing women and minorities into the company,"
Metzler said. "You want to recruit but you don't focus on retaining. If that is
you're motive, forget it. It should be both recruiting and retention." He also
said the fact that a company is looking to hire a more diverse workforce doesn't
preclude it from getting a qualified and talented workforce. He said meeting the
qualifications of the job should be the first priority. "Disabuse folks of this
notion that strategic diversity stops them from hiring the most qualified,"
Metzler said.
Metzler also said in order to have a successful diversity program
companies must also have diversity as a part of the company's branding and it
must be a priority for the entire company. He said efforts to help elevate
minorities throughout the company should be fair and based on merit. He said
companies that seek to recruit a diverse workforce though quotas will fail. He
said companies should make sure their recruiters, first line and middle managers
are aware of the legal pitfalls of interviewing candidates. He said when
companies have managers that ask illegal interviewing questions it is a
deterrent from getting potentially good candidates -- and he stressed that
candidates do indeed talk to one another.
"I am amazed in these days and times managers still ask illegal
questions," Metzler said. "You want to hold your managers accountable."
http://news.bbc.co.uk
BBC News - UK
11 May, 2005
Warning over healthcare
migration
Africa's health workers are deserting the continent's poorer countries.
Increasing
migration of healthcare workers has resulted in an emergency in the developing
world, doctors say.
The British Medical Association warned lives were being lost
because of staff shortages, particularly in
Africa.
Two-thirds of new doctors and 40% of nurses in the
UK came from abroad last year, although the health service does have
an ethical recruitment code.
The BMA and
Royal
College of Nurses have signed up to an international treaty criticising
the skills drain. BMA chairman James Johnson said: "The failure of
countries like the
US, and to a lesser extent the
UK, to train enough doctors has had devastating consequences for the
developing world. "In many parts of
Africa there is simply no healthcare of any kind. This cannot go on, it's
time for us to act."
Sub-Saharan
Africa
is short of 1m healthcare workers and in Ghana there are only 1,500 doctors for a population of 20m, as
two-thirds of young doctors leave the country within three years of graduation.
The paper, which the two
UK organisations have signed along with colleagues from the
US,
Canada,
South Africa and Commonwealth nurse and doctors groups, demanded all
signatories must try to become self-sufficient in their recruitment. It also
called on developed countries to help the developing world to retain their
doctors and nurses, while urging all countries to ensure their healthcare
workers were educated and funded to meet the needs of their populations.
The BMA said it would be calling for governments to act on the
recommendations at a conference of Commonwealth health ministers in
Geneva
at the weekend.
Dr Edwin Borman, chairman of the BMA's international committee,
added: "At the moment, richer countries simply aren't doing enough to prevent a
complete catastrophe. "The
UK has taken a lead in developing an ethical recruitment policy, but
all developed countries must follow suit if this is to be a successful
initiative."
The Department of Health introduced a code of conduct on ethical
recruitment in 2001. The code was beefed up last year to include private
recruitment agencies and now lists more than 150 countries from which doctors
and nurses cannot be taken. A spokeswoman said the NHS was a world leader in
ethical recruitment, adding: "The NHS does not actively recruit from any country
that does not wish to be recruited from." She also pointed out that the
UK government had given £560m over the last five years to support
health system in
Africa.
But she added: "The NHS is a world renowned health service and many
overseas health professionals will want to benefit from the career opportunities
it offers, these individuals frequently then return to use there enhanced skills
and knowledge to the benefit of their home healthcare system."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com
Orlando Sentinel
(subscription) - Orlando,FL,USA
By Christopher Boyd
May 7, 2005
Nation's
payrolls grow by 274,000: Several industries show
marked gains in hiring
The nation's payroll
soared beyond expectations last month as employers added 274,000 jobs,
bolstering hopes that the long-lumbering labor market is undergoing solid
expansion. The U.S. Labor Department also reported Friday that the nationwide
unemployment rate held steady at 5.2 percent in April. "This is a good report
for the nation and a good report for Orlando," University of Central Florida
economist David Scott said. "This is an upbeat report that underscores the good
trends in Orlando and suggests those trends will continue for the next two to
three months at least."
Metropolitan Orlando has been a Mecca for job seekers for more than a year now.
It has one of the strongest employment markets in Florida, which is churning out
new jobs faster than any other state. April's growth in the U.S. work force was
a marked improvement from the 146,000 new jobs created in March. Economists also
were heartened to see that revised figures showed employers had added 93,000
more jobs in February and March combined than the government had previously
estimated.
Payroll gains were widespread. Retailers, bars and restaurants, health-care
providers, construction companies and financial services all showed employment
rising. Factories, however, lost jobs for the second straight month. Clothing,
automobile, food and furniture makers were among the manufacturers where
employment declined. Central Florida employers, who have been coping with a
tight labor market for months, say it is increasingly hard to find the right job
candidates.
"It's very tough to find people who fit our profile," said Greg Clendenin, CEO
of Middleton Pest Control in Orlando. "We're having to spend a lot of money on
recruiting. We're even using some of our radio airtime that we would normally
use for advertising to recruit workers." Joni Thompson, a recruiter with
Snelling Personnel Services in Altamonte Springs, said employers are facing a
double problem: finding new workers and retaining old ones. "We are in the
middle of an impending crisis," Thompson said. "Employers are going to have to
work much harder on employee retention as the labor market gets tighter. This is
very quickly becoming an employee's market."
Alex Rosario, who graduated from Rollins College with a master's degree in
business administration last weekend, said he had a number of job prospects
before deciding to accept a position as a sales associate in the Maitland office
of Trammell Crow, a national commercial real estate brokerage. "I don't know
many people in my program who had trouble finding jobs," said Rosario, 22.
"Almost everybody in the program who graduated last Saturday had a job this
week."
Employers in a number of fields say they are having trouble filling slots.
Xytrans, an Orlando high-tech company, has found it difficult to find engineers.
"With the uptick in the defense industry, we are dealing with competition from
Lockheed Martin and companies in Melbourne and Tampa that are also looking for
workers," said Rob Howald, Xytrans vice president of engineering. "Times have
changed. In 2000 and 2001, it was no problem finding the right people. It's more
difficult now."
So far, the job-creation rate has had little effect on wages, which have been
rising slower than the inflation rate. But a tightening of the labor market
could put upward pressure on wages. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials
gained just 5.02 Friday to close at 10,345.40 as the stronger-than-expected jobs
report made investors fret about the prospects of more aggressive rate increases
by the Federal Reserve.
To combat inflation, the Fed boosted interest rates on Tuesday by one-quarter
percentage point to 3 percent. It was the eighth increase of that size since the
Fed began tightening credit last June. The Fed is expected to keep pushing up
rates through much of this year. But the increase in payrolls suggests that the
higher cost of borrowing hasn't slowed the economy yet.
"The April number was a great number -- better than anybody expected," said Hank
Fishkind, president of Fishkind & Associates in Orlando. "Orlando is continuing
strong, with the tourism market remaining strong and the airport staying very
active."
Copyright © 2005,
Orlando Sentinel
http://www.bangkokpost.com
Bangkok Post - Klong
Toey,Bangkok,Thailand
May 2, 3005
The people challenge
and how to meet it
In business, people offer by far the biggest challenge. The key
to success is finding the right ones, keeping and motivating them, and above all
helping them realise their full potential in the context of your organisation.
As Jack Welch says in his bestseller, Winning (995 baht/hardback): ``All the
clever strategies and advanced technologies in the world are nowhere near as
effective without great people to put them to work.'' But people are complex and
there are no hard and fast rules to managing or measuring them. There are no
shortage of theories on the subject, none more unusual than that by Malcolm
Gladwell, who in the excellent Blink (495 baht/paperback) suggests a peek into
someone's bedroom will reveal more about someone than hours of interviews and
tests.
Mr Gladwell was recently recognised by Time magazine as one of the 100 most
influential people in the world and is interviewed in the June issue of Asia
Books' New Arrivals magazine. This most difficult of issues lies at the root of
all successful businesses. Indeed, the recognition of the importance of
effective human resource management is seeping into all areas of companies, as
it has been elevated from its former largely administrative capacity, to be
involved in customer relationship management (CRM), branding and strategy.
HR is one of the hottest business topics of the moment, a fact reiterated by the
recent Best Employers in Asia awards. With a total of 244 organisations and
70,000 employees participating, one of the major affirmations of the research,
according to Mick Bennett, head of the human resources consultancy Hewitt's Asia
Pacific operations, the company that handled the study, was the huge upswing in
attention being paid to attracting, motivating and retaining key talent as well
as building leadership within the company.
But to create the ideal environment for development is not easy. The
communication of goals for a start is difficult in an ever-changing business
landscape. How to do that without employees becoming demotivated with changing
directions when they've just got used to the new one? There are no laws to live
by. But there is plenty of advice available.
One that is quickly establishing itself as a must-have for all business
professionals is Winning by Jack Welch, which covers all areas of business
management, including chapters on hiring and people management ``Hiring good
people is hard. Hiring great people is brutally hard,'' he writes. ``And yet
nothing matters more than getting the right people on the field.''
There are many pitfalls he warns against too. How many times have we hired
people we like or people who have the experience that matters? Friendship and
experience are not enough, argues Mr Welch.He cites integrity, intelligence and
maturity, combined with positive energy, an ability to energise others, courage,
passion, and the more senior you get, authenticity, foresight, willingness to
draw on others for advice as key elements. The problem, then, is to manage them
effectively. Mr Welch says a parent-type HR team, combined with honest
evaluation systems, a motivation and retention policy that uses money,
recognition and training, plus a flatter organisation chart are key areas to
consider.
A new and highly acclaimed book from Harvard Business School Press, The
Workforce Scorecard: Managing Human Capital to Execute Strategy by Mark Huselid
et al (1,395 baht/hardback), takes people management a step further by
suggesting new ideas on how to maximise the power of your workforce. It aims to
give managers tools for measuring the impact the workforce has on strategic
success, by taking the Balanced Scorecard model to manage performance. The
system identifies the behaviours, competencies, mindset and culture required for
workforce success, measuring how they affect the bottom line.
The authors outline three principal challenges: view the workforce in terms of
contribution rather than cost; replace benchm |
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