iProCon Insight - Latest Thinking
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Our latest book recommendation is "Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies" (Tom DeMarco at al).
iProCon Ltd.
In its November edition the British magazine “Human Resources” (www.hrmagazine.co.uk) published the article “Must try harder”, which indicates that appraisals are still considered a waste of time by far too many employees.
At iProCon HCM we have found a very cynical attitude towards appraisal or performance management systems in general. While the article mentioned above names a lack of integration into reward and career management, we believe the problem is of a much broader nature: the appraisee can rarely see the links between their performance and the performance of the core business, and the process is all too often owned by HR rather than line management. It is therefore often considered an HR-admin nuisance, while it should be one of the most important tools for line managers on all levels to manage their people. This topic was addressed during the HR2009 conference in Prague by iProCon Partner Sven Ringling in his session “Proven techniques to optimize your global performance management strategy”. If you would like to learn more, please contact us.
iProCon Ltd.
In its edition from 31st October 2009 The Economist magazine published an article with the title “A tough search for talent”. This article points out that the public sector across most rich countries struggles to find the right talent, an issue expected to get even worse when the labour market becomes more difficult for employers once the current economic crisis ends.
Two factors making it particularly difficult are:
- The public sector is increasingly looking for candidates with profiles closer to what the private sector is looking for.
- The culture within many public sector organisations can easily alienate the talent needed to face the challenges of the future.
These factors lead to the public sector losing many of the better candidates to the private or the charity sectors. You can read the full article via this link: www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14753826
iProCon Ltd.
A well known Human Capital consulting firm recently published their structured approach to taking HR to the next level. Within this was a section focused on identifying HR’s primary performance measures.
Quite rightly they suggest that HR performance measures should focus on business impact, not just on HR operating efficiency. They go on to say that one of the best ways to measure how effectively a company is leveraging the value of its people is to consider its workforce productivity, defined as revenue per employee divided by profit per employee.
Sounds great, right?
Unfortunately in the HCM sphere, there is a tendency to force complex people metrics into oversimplified, financially relevant KPIs. Whilst HCM should absolutely be linked back to business value, value is not delivered by creating relationships between HCM and financial performance that at best are not causal*, and at worst do not exist at all.
“Workforce Productivity” is an example of a metric that has absolutely nothing to do with measuring the effectiveness of people. Before the iProCon HCM email server is crashed by countless emails pointing to the existence of “Employees” in the definition, consider the following:
A company (let’s call it B.Com**) makes widgets in a factory staffed by 10 people. In 2007 B.Com made £12k of profit on revenues of £100k. In 2008 B.Com increased profits on the same £100k revenues to £15k, without changing their staffing. B.Com have done well in 2008, but their Workforce Productivity has declined from 8.3 to 6.7! But wait, there’s more...
Consider the definition of Workforce Productivity: Revenue/Employee divided by Profit/Employee
Basic maths tells us that this equation can also be expressed as: Revenue/Employee multiplied by Employee/Profit
Cancelling out the “Employees” from the top and bottom lines leads to: Workforce Productivity = Revenue/Profit
Don’t believe it? Consider B.Com again: In 2007 they made £12k of profit on revenues of £100k, rising to £15k profit on £100k revenues in 2008.
2007 Workforce Productivity = 100/12 = 8.3
2008 Workforce Productivity = 100/15 = 6.7
Jargon and irrelevant but nice sounding KPIs are prevalent within the HCM sphere, as more organisations try to show how their HCM solutions drive real, sustained business value. The challenge is to see through the flashing lights and marketing spiel and ensure that real, causal links exist from HCM interventions back to the core drivers of business value.
* Causal: when one event occurs as a direct result of another event. Some events may be correlated (i.e. they move together), but there is always the chance that they move together because of another event.
**B.Com is a fictional company. Any resemblance to other companies, either past or present, is purely coincidental.
iProCon Ltd.
A recent HBR article (“Innovation in turbulent times”, June 2009: http://tinyurl.com/mmpgfg) discussed the need for businesses to have creative, “right brain” types in leadership positions. It suggests that innovation is the result of pairing creative with analytical thinkers - when businesses have too few creative thinkers in leadership positions, innovation is vulnerable to unwise cost cutting, in particular during hard times.
Whilst there is some truth in the need to have a good mix of “left and right brain” thinkers, that is nothing new – diversity of thought is vital to establish the strong funnel of ideas from which to promote those with the most promise. Where the article falls short is in the lack of structure it places around the innovation process as a whole. In fact, it starts with the statement “innovation is a messy process – hard to measure and hard to manage”.
Innovation doesn't have to be messy, and it should certainly not be left to the effective partnership between two individuals in leadership positions. When managed effectively innovation is simply another business process, taking ideas through prioritisation and realisation in a way that meets the organisation’s strategic objectives and takes account of the innovation culture.
For additional information on frameworks and tools to help deliver and measure innovation in your organisation please contact us.
iProCon Ltd.
Many senior management teams have a clear idea of what they want their organisation or project to achieve, but have difficulty in distilling the often complex plans into a clear message for all staff. In tandem with this challenge is the need to overcome organisational inertia to bring about change and deliver your desired vision.
This paper focuses on two simple tools that can be used to address the above challenges. The first, the identification of Critical Success Factors, is a relatively simple way of articulating what must be performed well in order to achieve your vision or strategic objectives. The second, the Force Field Analysis, is used to identify the forces that drive and restrain the achievement of an objective, making it easier to identify the next steps that will deliver maximum benefit.
Click here to read about simple tools to define and deliver your organisation or project's vision.
iProCon Ltd.
iProCon Ltd.
iProCon Ltd.
US-based recruitment specialist Jobvite recently published the results of their "2009 Social Recruitment Survey".
- Use of social and professional networking sites (not distinguished that way in the survey) in recruitment is growing and by now widely accepted.
- Job boards and search firms lose ground
- Employers are disappointed with the results they get from job boards and search firms
- Employee referrals deliver best results and will be used more. There is much unused potential even in the US, where they are used far more than in continental Europe.
- Employers will invest more in recruitment through social media and are more satisfied with their results than they are with job boards.
- In the US LinkedIn leads the pack far ahead of Facebook and Twitter
iProCon Ltd.
iProCon HCM has deveoped a workshop to help HR experts
One tangible result of this workshop is an HR Shareholder Value Map. Click here to see a simplified real life example of how one organisation identified and redesigned their HCM value drivers. Or find a 1day workshop design here.
- to understand the concept and components of shareholder value
- to understand HR's current contribution to shareholder value and discuss it with line managers, the Finance Director or the executive board
- to develop approaches to increase HR's contribution to shareholder value through a redesigned HCM or new HCM initiatives.
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- Understanding Project Behaviour: book recommendation
- Cynicism prevails as an attitude towards appraisal systems
- Talent gaps in the public sector
- Some HCM metrics just don't measure up
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- Simple tools to define and deliver your vision
- HR-Strategy and the Black Swan
- Executives are disillusioned with HR-Transformation
- Recruiting: social media beat job boards and search firms
- HR Shareholder Value Map
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