December 2009 - Issue 7
Welcome to the latest edition of iProCon Insight, your leading source of transformation, human capital strategy and technology theory and practical advice. This is the final edition of iProCon Insight for 2009, and we'd like to take this opportunity to thank our customers for their support in 2009. We wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas, and a safe and prosperous New Year. See you in 2010!
Features
- News: iProCon HCM changes its name and domain
- News: iProCon moves to new offices
- News: Managing international projects - workshop
- White Paper: Change management in international IT projects
- White Paper: From the archives - Innovation during a downturn
- BiteSize: Our regular collection of articles aimed to help you leverage human capital to improve business performance
- Events: iProCon concludes 2009 speaking schedule at Prague and Hanover conferences
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News |
iProCon is growing!
In order to better address the different markets that we serve, iProCon Human Capital Management Limited has changed its name to iProCon Limited. Over the past 18 months, iProCon Human Capital Management has provided an array of services to its customers. Some have been classic Human Capital consulting solutions, however there is a growing number of small and medium enterprises that benefit from classic business strategy and growth advice.In response to this the iProCon HCM name will live on as one of the brands through which iProCon Limited provides its services. As we further develop the formal propositions for the other parts of our business, we'll be sure to keep you informed.
Change to our domain name
As a result of the change to our name, we are also changing our domain. The next edition of iProCon Insight will be sent from our new domain, iprocon.co.uk. Please add the iprocon.co.uk domain to your spam whitelist (or ask your IT administrator to do so) in order to continue to receive communications from us. The iproconhcm.co.uk domain will continue to be used for the next couple of months whilst we roll out changes to our website, however we have already started moving email addresses and the website across to the new domain.New address
Now this one wasn't planned by us. Due to the London Crossrail project, we are having to move offices - when you are resident in a lovely new building surrounded by listed properties, it is yours that gets knocked down to make way for new rail links. Please note our new home is at 271 Regent Street, London, W1B 2ES. Our phone number (+44 845 003 9237) remains unchanged.Managing international projects
Keeping executives and senior management satisfied whilst delivering projects on time and on budget is difficult enough when the project team all sit in the same office and share the same language and culture. When they are spread out across different countries or involve teams in different companies (such as during mergers and acquisitions) traditional project management methodologies simply do not work.This new two day workshop provides teams with the tools, language and confidence they need to deliver international projects with the same rate of success as you expect of traditional projects, by demonstrating proven PM techniques, applying them to case studies and reviewing lessons learned from your past experience.
Follow this link to learn more about managing international projects.
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Change management in international IT projects |
As it is commonly accepted that a lack of good change management is one of the major sources of project failure, this seems like good news, however there are often many problems with the actual implementation. This whitepaper looks primarily at this transformation required at the corporate centre based on the experience of iProCon consultants in a variety of international projects.
Follow this link to learn about change management in international projects
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Innovation during economic downturn |
As a result of this trend, we thought we'd dust off this article. First published in May 2008, "Innovating During an Economic Downturn" examines the evidence for and against innovation during adverse economic conditions. Innovating during a downturn: Is it a good Idea? When the economy slows down, cost cutting often prevails against innovation. Is this the right thing to do and what are the risks and opportunities involved?
Follow this link to read more about innovation in an economic downturn.
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BiteSize |
Talent gap in the public sector
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
Cynicism prevails as an attitude towards appraisal systems
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.Innovation is more than a leadership team
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.
Some HCM metrics just don't measure up
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. 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.
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Events |
With the year drawing to a close, iProCon has finished it's event schedule for 2009. Keep and eye on the Latest News and Events pages on our website for news on upcoming events as they are announced.
iProCon HCM represented at the AdManus conference in Hanover: managing budgets, change and HR-alignment
During the AdManus SAP HR conference, 22nd and 23rd September in Hanover, iProCon Partner Sven Ringling spoke on a few non-technical topics, which were well received by delegates from the HR and IT functions of medium and large organisations.
- The interactive session “How to blow the budget: Proven strategies to achieve disaster.” challenged the ways IT projects are often managed and delegates took away many ideas to avoid budget and deadline issues in the future. Click here for an English translation of the session slides (note: large file size).
- In further sessions delegates learned about change management in international IT-projects and were presented with a way to ensure HR-IT systems actually enable the alignment of people management with business strategy.