10 HR TRENDS THAT ARE CHANGING
THE FACE OF BUSINESS
A Keynote Presentation Delivered
By
Dave MacKay Chief Operating Officer Ceridian Canada Ltd.
INTRODUCTION
The business world is changing at bullet-train speed – technology, the global economy, increasing regulatory scrutiny, the looming talent crisis, the recognition that mental illness is dramatically affecting the workplace. All of these are having a huge impact on the HR profession.
The c-level is finally starting to realize how important your role is. They want you to get out of the day-to-day administrivia - while still making sure everything is done perfectly, mind you. They want you to measurably contribute to the top-line and the bottom line, and help mitigate risk.
There are ten major trends that you need to be aware of as your role evolves to meet these challenges. Let’s start with the most obvious.
#1. The Changing Role of the HR Professional
We need to put the “human” back into human resources. Employees are humans, not commodities, and HR departments have to start seeing them differently. With the current push towards strategies that engage employees, attract top talent, and contribute to the bottom line, this change is imperative.
We need to stop whining about being at the table. These days, almost every book or article you read about the role of HR talks about HR needing to be ‘at the table’ or to be more strategic.
It’s my observation that in almost every respected company, HR is at the table. So for most HR leaders, the question is not ‘how do you get to the table’. It is ‘now that you are at the table, how do you best contribute to the success of our organization?’. ‘How can you be taken seriously at the table?’
Clearly the first step is to make sure that the organization’s HR practices are effective. The practices should create competitive advantage by building strong organizations, strong leaders and managers, and strong teams and employees. But few HR departments do this in a measurable way. CEOs are demanding that HR stop giving lip service to strategic performance and find the metrics that prove they are contributing to the growth and performance of the company through effective people management.
Increasingly, more is being expected of HR practitioners than just being good at HR. They need to broaden their skill-sets so that they can sit at the executive table and understand as much about the business as the other leaders.
A Finance person who only understands Finance and a financial perspective, a Sales person who only understands Sales and the Sales perspective – these individuals will have limited career prospects and very little chance of succeeding in a leadership role. The same holds true for HR people. That this is the case is good news for HR. It means that HR and HR people are too important to be set aside in the corner. It means that HR skills and knowledge need to be brought to bear on the strategic management of the organization.
Organizations consist of people. People are real. You can see them, touch them, hear them. And people have capabilities. And those people with their capabilities will determine whether the organization thrives or dies. As Jim Burns, Ceridian’s president, likes to say “people are the only company asset that increases in value.”
If HR is to be perceived as an enabler of business strategies, they need to be seen to be making measurable contributions to the bottom line through expense reduction, or revenue generation, talent management and risk mitigation. HR people need to be a lot more creative in the way they do things. The “one size fits all” approach doesn’t work anymore. HR departments of today need to be the talent departments of tomorrow.
#2 - The War for Talent
The most important corporate resource over the next 20 years will be talent: smart, sophisticated business-people who are technologically literate, globally astute, and operationally agile. Talent really does matter – for example “top software developers are more productive than an average software developer not by 10x, 100x, or even 1000x … but 10,000x” (Nathan Myhrvold, former Chief Scientist, Microsoft)
According to The Conference Board of Canada, “the war for talent is fierce, and is likely to become more so with the massive number of employees retiring in the next five years. Top organizations are moving beyond the vanilla “employer of choice” concept to a more rigorous strategy of attracting and retaining the right employees through branding.”
Here are the facts:
The Conference Board of Canada predicts a shortage of 1 million skilled workers by 2020. By 2006, for every two workers leaving the workforce, only one will enter. 2.6 new jobs are expected to be created for every person entering the workforce. Younger workers are now bosses of the older workers.
The key to attracting and retaining scarce skills is to be, and be seen to be, a first-tier employer that can meet the needs of high potential/high performance employees.
Traditional workforce planning is being replaced by talent strategies and skills gap analysis. Once they determine the gap, it becomes clear what talent they need to hire, to layoff, or to develop or transfer internally.
Now is not the time to sit in the ivory towers thinking you know who your major contributors are. You need to dig deep into the organization to identify the top talent, the high performers in every aspect of your business. In all likelihood it’s not the people who are the most politically astute or the most popular.
Traditional marketing practices are going to have to be applied to recruitment. Employer branding and unique selling points with a strong differentiator are imperative. Look at strategies such as changing your employer brand from the groan-inducing “we’re a big successful company” to a company delivering on the promise of continuous learning, work-life balance, personally-fulfilling roles and innovative reward and recognition programs.
Some recruitment effectiveness strategies include:
Employment branding Ongoing recruiting, not stop-start Nurturing relationships with strong candidates, even though no jobs
for them are currently available
Referrals – this is particularly effective with Generation “Y”ers. They do everything through leveraging their networks. They are always connected – using mobile phones, text messaging, instant messaging, blogging or email.
Realistic job previews Managers trained in interviewing (so that they will create a favourable impression of company)
Selection criteria – Can they do the job? (Competencies) Will they do the job? (Motivation) Can we offer them what they are looking for? (Cultural Fit)
Rapid response and follow up – Hard to hire skills are in high demand Debrief candidates as quality control monitoring for recruitment process
Most candidates will not get jobs – but they might be current or future customers, hence the importance of handling the rejection process effectively.
Note: Ceridian surveys rejected candidates to get their feedback on the entire recruiting and selection process. Even though we have not hired those candidates, their feedback about the process and their treatment during it is very favourable.
Recruitment, while strategic, involves a lot of administration. Now is the time to outsource some of those tasks to organizations that have the people, technology and process so that you can decrease time-to-hire, increase the quality of your candidates and reduce your expenses…which leads into our next point.
#3. Outsourcing of HR Functions: The Virtual HR Organization
If you are an HR professional I doubt that you got hired for your ability to process employee information changes, sort resumes or process the payroll every other week.
CEOs’ expectations of their senior HR people have changed significantly. The HR executive is expected to deliver value in areas like organizational effectiveness, talent management, change management, leadership development, succession planning, merger integration, strategic compensation. If you read job postings for senior HR positions, these items are listed time and time again as the key expectations for HR leaders.
The primary benefit of HR outsourcing is that it will allow you to keep your job because it will enable you to tackle these more strategic issues!
HR professionals need to embrace outsourcing. They can’t be afraid of it. Outsourcing of HR transactions is a proven way to reduce costs and get access to a higher level of service.
There are five good reasons why companies outsource their HR services:
1. 1. Cost reduction – economies of scale, automation and process improvement, especially for transactional work
2. 2. Focus – allows HR to allocate time to strategic, not transactional, concerns
3. 3. Regulatory compliance – minimize or transfer legal risk to the outsourcer and obtain specialized regulatory expertise.
4. 4. Access to best technologies – mutual benefits to ensure technology is continually upgraded
5. 5. No available internal resources – provides an HR capability for a company that does not have one, cannot staff it, or cannot afford a full-time resource, but has reached a size and complexity where expertise is required
However, all that being said, the administrative, transactional aspects of HR are key. What you need to do is identify them now – whether it’s your payroll, your Employee Assistance Programs, your recruitment or your HRIS systems. Then you need to go out into the marketplace and find outsourcing partners who can help take them off your hands. It’s the only way you are going to become more strategic.
#4. The Healthy Workplace: Wellness, Work-Life Balance
There is no competitive advantage in exhausted, sick and stressed-out workers.
There is growing recognition that there is a definite link between the work environment and the health and well-being of its employees. Further, employers are now recognizing the connection between employee health and the bottom line.
Consider…
Specific types of work stress/strain are related to 2x the incidence of mental illness and substance abuse, 5x the rate of certain cancers, 2x the rate of infection/injuries and 3x the incidence of heart and back problems – (Shain, 2000)
Over half of Canadians working for large employers feel stressed, one in three feels burned out or depressed, many are thinking of quitting their jobs, and absenteeism is costing employers billions each year.
Let me talk about a few of the findings of a major government-sponsored study of work-life conflict in Canada as well as published information from other credible research sources that point to the importance of a healthy workplace:
Canadian companies are experiencing the impact of compromised mental health in an unprecedented manner: 1 in 5 Canadians will experience a mental illness in their lifetime. Harvard School of Public Health predicts that by 2020 depression will rank second to heart disease as the leading cause of disability worldwide, and the cost of mental illness in lost productivity in Canada alone is estimated to be over 30 billion dollars annually. (Global Business and Economic Roundtable).
Canadians report working at a high speed "all the time," in greater numbers than workers in 17 other countries, according to a new report released by the Canadian Policy Research Networks. Working continually at a high rate is twice as likely to result in health problems, including stress. In turn, this leads to more absenteeism and disability claims – both very costly to organizations.
So, where does this leave Canadian workers?
Long working hours and heavy job demands were the main sources of work stress identified in a Statistics Canada survey. Poor interpersonal relationships and the risk of accident or injury were also cited as sources of stress on the job.
The term ‘presenteeism’ has become part of the corporate lexicon, describing employees who are able to come into work but are inhibited from optimal levels of productivity by ongoing health issues and lack of desire to engage. This has emerged as a new and growing concern.
Rising mental health claims, primarily related to stress, depression and anxiety disorders, were the top health and productivity-related concern for organizations in 2005.
Ceridian’s Employee Assistance Practice has seen a significant shift in the role of EAP services – from a remedial approach of supporting people who have problems to a proactive and preventative approach focused on wellness and wellbeing.
When we look in the mirror, we see ourselves as entire human beings – not just people with jobs and careers, but people with families, friends, beliefs, interests, passions, responsibilities, worries and futures. We need to look at our people through the same mirror – not just as employees or colleagues but as total human beings. If companies ignore the full humanity of their people, or if people find it necessary to suppress their human-ness in the workplace, the tensions created eat away at the vitality of the organization.
#5. The Diverse Workforce
What does diversity mean? Canada has a reputation for embracing people of varied ethnicity, religion, culture, language and beliefs. But our multicultural mix does not make us immune to the challenges of managing a diverse workforce.
Diversity goes far beyond the traditional employment equity criteria of gender, visible minority or aboriginal status, or disability. Diversity is not employment equity. Diversity is a business strategy.
The reality is that today’s workforce and the workforce of the future will be made up of a diverse, complex collection of employees, all with different needs and experiences. And this is good, because an organization with a broad variety of people with a diverse range of perspectives is better able to do business with a variety of people, to solve a variety of problems and to make a variety of decisions.
As companies become more global and are using more offshore services, it creates the need for diversity strategies that go beyond our own national borders. It will take a whole new level of education, tolerance and a willingness to embrace change. HR will need to provide cross-cultural support and training for virtual global teams.
But diversity is not just about race, colour and creed. Diversity is about managing the demographic and psychographic characteristics of an evolving workforce.
According to Reed-Lewis in The Learning Café 2005, there are four generations in the workforce.
Silent or traditionalists 60 – 78 years old, 10% of workforce ¬characterized by tradition, loyalty, discipline, commitment, significant knowledge legacy
Boomers 41 – 59 years old, 46% of workforce - characterized by hard work (badge of honor), relationship oriented, change agents, competitive
Generation X 28 – 40 years old, 29% of workforce - independent (latch-key kids), entrepreneurial, flexible, demand work-life balance
Generation Y or Millennials 27 and younger, 19% of workforce- This generation was born with computers. They are comfortable in a multicultural environment and full of confidence
Let’s look at two groups: The Generation Y or Millenials, now entering the workforce. They’ve grown up in a world where the use of computers and the Internet is a basic bodily function.
They’ve grown up in an inclusive world, with friends and peers from a myriad of places and cultures. They’re the human embodiment of globalization.
They’ve grown up in a world where, through the Internet or other media, they have been exposed to a vast amount of information, far beyond the reach of previous generations.
They’ve grown up in a world in which traditional institutions are weaker and often objects of skepticism, and where there is no prevailing set of values, but rather conflicting views and values on the most fundamental issues.
Organizations that will attract and retain high potential younger employees will have the following characteristics:
They will be relatively non-hierarchical and inclusive They will provide for a balance between work and life outside work Their behaviour will be consistent with the values of their people They will provide an environment with both autonomy and support They will provide opportunities for learning and significant
contributions at an early stage in people’s careers
Another group, the Traditionalists, also deserves more attention. By 2011, almost one-fifth of baby boomers – those born between 1946 and 1964 – will be at least 61 years of age and pushing ever closer to retirement.
Much of the discussion about mandatory retirement centres around how to deal with older employees whose performance is slipping and who used to be carried until age 65
The challenge for managers and HR is to create an environment in which older, longer-service employees can continue to be fully engaged in the work of the organization
Continue to give them challenging work Continue to give them learning opportunities Give them a chance to build a legacy – mentoring, developing
others, knowledge transfer
Provide more flexible work environments – part-time work, phased retirements, retiree on call programs, contract and project-based employment
Because this group is often overlooked in the labour market, there are excellent opportunities to get ‘the best of the best’ from them As a business strategy, the value of diversity is to bring to a company the broadest possible spectrum of knowledge, experience and perspective. A diverse workforce consists not just of people with a broad range of demographic traits, but, more importantly, a broad range of educational backgrounds, professional and other interests, work experiences, life experiences and cultural perspectives. Ultimately the success of a diversity strategy is measured in how well we capitalize on the skills, intelligence, culture and experience of every employee.
#6. The Impact of Technology
Resistance is futile!
Eventually technology is going to eliminate most HR jobs as they exist today. Which is another reason for HR professionals to become more strategic. Technology, with all its self-service and anytime-anywhere communications capabilities, coupled with outsourcing, guarantees there will be fewer HR people in corporations.
Technology continues to impact us profoundly, both in our personal lives and in the workplace, and it will continue to evolve. While most of its impact has been overwhelmingly progressive and positive, there are some downsides to its effect on our personal and work lives. Cell phones, email, messaging and Blackberry-type devices have blurred the lines between worklife and homelife.
Now we seem to be always on call, always reachable – in our cars, in the air, at home – virtually everywhere.
To today’s young professionals computers, PDAs, cell phones, etc. have become appendages, keeping them constantly connected.
Weblogs or blogs are favoured by this group so companies cannot afford to ignore their use or existence. A web-tracking site called Technorati reports tracking over 7.8 million weblogs and 937 million links in March 2005. That’s double the number of weblogs tracked in October last year. In fact, the blogosphere is doubling in size about once every five months. Employers need to develop a strategy around blogging. Negative blogs will be able to destroy a company’s reputation.
We’ve entered the century of the employee and technology has to respond. CRM or customer relationship management is giving way to ERM – employee relationship management. Employee self-service has become as important as customer self-service. Customized and personalized content will be king.
Employees can self-manage activities previously handled by human resource professionals. This is a cost-saving and time-saving benefit to organizations and it frees the HR practitioners to focus on more strategic issues. But more importantly, it is a fundamental expectation of Gen Y’s and Gen X’s.
Technology that protects the privacy and security of HR data is more important than ever…but more on that later.
It’s important that we continue to embrace technology and keep our eyes on new advances that may bring even better communication and collaboration tools. Technology helps people connect within the work environment regardless of time and place. It fuels the potential for increased productivity and creativity. Today’s virtual workers and flexible work arrangements are made possible through communication technology. Organizations can be physically local, yet virtually global, thanks to technology.
Organizations are looking for cross-border and multinational HR solutions that provide a single HR database that gives them access to real-time information on their workforce – information that will aid in their strategic decision-making.
They are looking for solutions that provide global compliance capabilities that can be used at the local level.
They are looking for an HR solutions framework that will enable the management of employees from hire-to-retire.
#7. Talent Management: Leadership Development
Leadership skills are not built through courses. Management is a function of what you do; leadership is a function of what you are. When planning leadership development initiatives, the tendency is to first look for courses.
One of the scarcest capabilities, now and for the foreseeable future, is leadership. As organizations, their customers, their employees and their environment become more global, more complex, more competitive and more subject to rapid and radical change, the competency requirements for successful leadership are increasing exponentially.
Most organizations would acknowledge that they currently have a shortage of leadership talent or bench strength; how will they fare when the bar keeps on being raised?
Leadership is less definable and therefore leadership capabilities are more difficult to build or transmit. Indeed, one could debate whether leadership skills can be taught at all, or whether they are innate.
So how do we develop leaders?
Take a few seconds and reflect on what were the three most important contributors to your own development – as a professional and as a leader.
If you are like most people, none of those three contributors was a course. One of our HR consultants at Ceridian has conducted this exercise with numerous groups of managers and executives across Canada, the U.S. and Asia. About one in ten people mention a course – usually a very extensive and expensive 1-3 month executive development program. But over 90% of the items mentioned pertain to learning that occurred in the course of their work. Among the most common are being given responsibility for a major project – sometimes being thrown off the deep end, gaining experience in groups outside one’s functional expertise, working on multi-disciplinary teams, working with customers, suppliers or strategic partners, working for a really good boss or a really bad one.
An emerging trend in North American executive development is ‘Action Learning’ – which has been well established in Europe for many years. It involves assigning groups of executives, with diverse backgrounds, to work on issues of strategic interest to their organization – with a facilitator to keep them on track and provide feedback. The advantage of Action Learning is that it engages leaders and potential leaders in real work and a real work environment rather than a simulation.
Part of fostering leadership is encouraging and rewarding risk-taking. It is also giving these leaders, wherever they are in the organization, the opportunity to contribute to the development of the corporate strategies and plans. Leadership comes with empowerment – employees can’t be leaders unless they have the power to take risks, make decisions, innovate and lead.
#8. Talent management: Succession Planning
We now live in a world where the jobs, the job requirements and the organizations are constantly changing – acquisitions, divestitures, down¬sizing, mergers, technology changes and on and on.
Many of us are in jobs that did not exist three years ago. Three years from now, many of us will be in jobs that do not exist today.
The challenge for HR professionals is to figure out how to look deep into the organization to find talented, visionary people with a passion for the future. They need to anticipate the skills they will need in the future.
There are more and more younger people going into leadership or management positions. What kind of mentoring and coaching do they need?
Traditional succession planning identified who could fill what box in the organization chart in how many years time, and what skills they would need to get there.
Even if we have remained, or will remain, in the same box in the org chart, the chances are very high that the skill requirements of our position will change significantly.
Many of us are in jobs that did not exist three years ago. Three years from now, many of us will be in jobs that do not exist today. In this context of unceasing change, succession planning needs to be re-engineered, to focus not on particular positions, which may or may not exist in the future but rather on the competencies that the organization will need in the future, regardless of how the individual positions or the organization chart changes. Succession planning evolves into something broader – talent management.
Instead of identifying which individuals can move into which position when, talent management identifies a pool of high potential employees who will provide the basis for the organization’s success regardless of the changing organizational structure. Investments must be made in these high potential employees to help them develop the competencies that will take them and the organization to success.
Lots of companies have succession plans but very few have done the career planning and skills gap analysis needed to acquire the best talent. I would hazard a guess that most of the companies in this room don’t have such a plan.
#9. Corporate Values and Culture
We are entering the third wave of public mistrust about corporations, according to Market and social trend analyst Daniel Yankelovich. The first, set off by the Great Depression, continued until World War II; the second, caused in part by economic stagflation and the Vietnam War, lasted from the early 1960s until the early 1980s. In each of these periods companies tended to be reactive, blaming a few bad apples, dismissing values as “not central to what we do,” or ignoring opportunities to improve because “we don’t have to make major changes.”
The current wave of disapproval began in 2001 with the bursting of the dot¬com bubble, the ensuing bear market and the financial scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and others. But this time, corporate response is different. Companies are going well beyond the PR exercise of displaying values statements. They’re engaging in values-driven management improvement efforts, training staff in values and appraising executives and staff on their adherence to values.
What is clearly evident these days is that more and more firms are unwilling to tolerate unethical behaviour from their executives. They are taking drastic action as in the case of the Boeing CEO who was ousted because of unethical activities.
Ethical behaviour should be a core component of company culture. Ethics-related language in formal statements not only sets corporate expectations for employee behaviour, it also serves as a shield for companies in an increasingly complex and regulatory environment.
But what is culture? What drives it? How do values affect corporate performance?
Culture is not a concierge serving up free fresh fruit in the cafeteria, nor is it a values chart hanging on the wall purporting commitment to integrity, respect, honesty and customer satisfaction. Enron had a brilliantly-crafted set of corporate values. Obviously it was just there for decoration. .
Organizational culture is the shared assumptions, beliefs and norms of behaviour of a group. It has a powerful influence on the way in which people behave.
An effective corporate culture is not about being a nice place to work. It is about engaging employees at a fundamental level and translating that engagement to performance that meets the organization’s objectives. Increasingly, companies around the world have adopted formal statements of corporate values, and senior executives now routinely identify ethical behaviour, honesty, integrity, and social concerns as top issues on their companies’ agendas.
Business leaders are now recognizing that an effective corporate culture is essential to long-term success. They are taking steps to align corporate culture to business strategy. Many organizations are now making their values explicit and that’s a significant change from corporate practices 10 years ago.
Leaders and top management must be responsible for building strong, high-performance cultures. They are the ones who construct the social reality, and shape the values of the organization.
Edgar Schein said in 1992, “Organizational cultures are created by leaders, and one of the most decisive functions of leadership may well be the creation, the management, and if and when that may become necessary, the destruction of culture.” This has never been more true.
Consider the impact on corporate culture as more and more companies become global. How do you integrate culture when you’ve been acquired or you’ve merged with another company. And what about the expectations of a younger workforce – the people who ask “what’s in it for me?” Organizations need to demonstrate that they have the flexibility to adapt to these changes while still maintaining a strong culture.
A recent study on the factors that drive performance found that corporate environments where culture is flexible, adaptable to change and ongoing improvements will increase performance by 22.9%
So what does an effective corporate culture offer?
Branding: the alignment of the vision of the employee with the vision
of the company. In effect, it makes a promise about the values of the
organization and delivers on it. Engagement: The congruency between employees’ needs and those of the employer. Culture is a key element in achieving this match.
Culture will translate into employer branding. Employers have to deliver on their promises – they have to live up to the brand. They have to walk the talk. Remember that because of technology, i.e., all those blogs, your employer brand can be damaged or praised easily.
#10. Impact of Legal and Compliance Issues
Today’s legislative and regulatory requirements surrounding data privacy, security, etc., are a bureaucratic nightmare that Kafka would have been proud of.
Highly publicized instances of poor corporate governance, combined with growing consumer concerns about security and privacy, have led us to an era of interventionist and regulatory government involvement in many facets of our business. Regulations or laws that we have to worry about include:
Affecting financial systems: Money laundering and support of terrorism (FINTRAC), Sarbanes-Oxley and its upcoming Canadian equivalent and others on a sector by sector basis
National security: Anti-Terrorism Act, Public Safety Act, PATRIOT Act (for those of you that deal with or have a corporate relationship with US based entities)
Privacy: PIPEDA (Federal private sector), Privacy Act (Federal public sector), public sector in all provinces, private sector in three, and health information privacy in four provinces
Privacy laws are in the process of fundamentally changing the way in which the HR department interacts with employees. This may include but is not limited to:
the creation of employee privacy policies changing and more stringent rules on HR data 'least privilege' access rules to HR data - restrictions on access
to HR data restrictions on employee references restrictions on background checks changing and more stringent records management practices implementation of data retention and data destruction policies employee access to their own data
If you have tried to get specific answers to these or similar questions such as ‘how much security is enough’ or ‘what is the best practice for protecting HR data?’ from your auditors, then you probably have the same scar tissue on your forehead as I do. On a case by case basis, the intent of each of the regulations is grounded in a desire to make sure that we do the right thing.
What's the solution?
Embrace the opportunity. If you take these issues on one by one and respond, you will be stuck in response mode until the receivers knock on your door. The silver lining to this regulatory cloud is that by taking positive control of your assets, data as well as financial, you end up in better control of your business or your department. If you do it yourself, you can partner with your compliance department and your IT group and explicitly define your objectives and requirements. If you outsource, you can do the same thing through the service level agreement that you have with your outsourcer.
So what does all this mean to the HR professional? It means a lot of responsibility around risk management. It means we need to be looking for different skill-sets in HR to understand the new realities of privacy and security of employee data. And it means developing closer relationships with IT and Finance to understand the new rules.
Conclusion
HR professionals need to step up to these challenges. If you don’t, your C-level executives will make other functional areas responsible. As a COO, my advice to you is:
Think like marketers. Establish an employer brand. Communicate the employer brand. Sell the employer brand.
Don’t just preach the benefits of continuous learning to your employees. Be continuous learners. Be at the forefront of the latest trends and requirements and react to them quickly.
Acquire a broader range of business skills, in particular, think like a CFO. What are the metrics that you can develop that prove to the business the impact you are making.
Get rid of the stigma around mental health issues. There is no workplace issue more important to your organization, to society, and to Canada’s productivity. Anxiety and depression in the workplace must be dealt with or it’s going to cost your organization in lost productivity and a lot of money.
Do real talent management – know who your Stars are, nurture them, develop them, figure out what support they need to thrive in your organization – because if you don’t another company will.
Start working on an HR outsourcing strategy today. Otherwise, you won’t have time to do the rest.
So…if there is a rallying cry for HR professionals, what is it? We need to be at the table? We need to be more strategic?
No the rallying cry is – we need to change the world of work. To do so we need to change HR departments into Talent departments, and HR professionals must become the C-levels of tomorrow.
From Kuwait, Kuwait
6THE FACE OF BUSINESS
A Keynote Presentation Delivered
By
Dave MacKay Chief Operating Officer Ceridian Canada Ltd.
INTRODUCTION
The business world is changing at bullet-train speed – technology, the global economy, increasing regulatory scrutiny, the looming talent crisis, the recognition that mental illness is dramatically affecting the workplace. All of these are having a huge impact on the HR profession.
The c-level is finally starting to realize how important your role is. They want you to get out of the day-to-day administrivia - while still making sure everything is done perfectly, mind you. They want you to measurably contribute to the top-line and the bottom line, and help mitigate risk.
There are ten major trends that you need to be aware of as your role evolves to meet these challenges. Let’s start with the most obvious.
#1. The Changing Role of the HR Professional
We need to put the “human” back into human resources. Employees are humans, not commodities, and HR departments have to start seeing them differently. With the current push towards strategies that engage employees, attract top talent, and contribute to the bottom line, this change is imperative.
We need to stop whining about being at the table. These days, almost every book or article you read about the role of HR talks about HR needing to be ‘at the table’ or to be more strategic.
It’s my observation that in almost every respected company, HR is at the table. So for most HR leaders, the question is not ‘how do you get to the table’. It is ‘now that you are at the table, how do you best contribute to the success of our organization?’. ‘How can you be taken seriously at the table?’
Clearly the first step is to make sure that the organization’s HR practices are effective. The practices should create competitive advantage by building strong organizations, strong leaders and managers, and strong teams and employees. But few HR departments do this in a measurable way. CEOs are demanding that HR stop giving lip service to strategic performance and find the metrics that prove they are contributing to the growth and performance of the company through effective people management.
Increasingly, more is being expected of HR practitioners than just being good at HR. They need to broaden their skill-sets so that they can sit at the executive table and understand as much about the business as the other leaders.
A Finance person who only understands Finance and a financial perspective, a Sales person who only understands Sales and the Sales perspective – these individuals will have limited career prospects and very little chance of succeeding in a leadership role. The same holds true for HR people. That this is the case is good news for HR. It means that HR and HR people are too important to be set aside in the corner. It means that HR skills and knowledge need to be brought to bear on the strategic management of the organization.
Organizations consist of people. People are real. You can see them, touch them, hear them. And people have capabilities. And those people with their capabilities will determine whether the organization thrives or dies. As Jim Burns, Ceridian’s president, likes to say “people are the only company asset that increases in value.”
If HR is to be perceived as an enabler of business strategies, they need to be seen to be making measurable contributions to the bottom line through expense reduction, or revenue generation, talent management and risk mitigation. HR people need to be a lot more creative in the way they do things. The “one size fits all” approach doesn’t work anymore. HR departments of today need to be the talent departments of tomorrow.
#2 - The War for Talent
The most important corporate resource over the next 20 years will be talent: smart, sophisticated business-people who are technologically literate, globally astute, and operationally agile. Talent really does matter – for example “top software developers are more productive than an average software developer not by 10x, 100x, or even 1000x … but 10,000x” (Nathan Myhrvold, former Chief Scientist, Microsoft)
According to The Conference Board of Canada, “the war for talent is fierce, and is likely to become more so with the massive number of employees retiring in the next five years. Top organizations are moving beyond the vanilla “employer of choice” concept to a more rigorous strategy of attracting and retaining the right employees through branding.”
Here are the facts:
The Conference Board of Canada predicts a shortage of 1 million skilled workers by 2020. By 2006, for every two workers leaving the workforce, only one will enter. 2.6 new jobs are expected to be created for every person entering the workforce. Younger workers are now bosses of the older workers.
The key to attracting and retaining scarce skills is to be, and be seen to be, a first-tier employer that can meet the needs of high potential/high performance employees.
Traditional workforce planning is being replaced by talent strategies and skills gap analysis. Once they determine the gap, it becomes clear what talent they need to hire, to layoff, or to develop or transfer internally.
Now is not the time to sit in the ivory towers thinking you know who your major contributors are. You need to dig deep into the organization to identify the top talent, the high performers in every aspect of your business. In all likelihood it’s not the people who are the most politically astute or the most popular.
Traditional marketing practices are going to have to be applied to recruitment. Employer branding and unique selling points with a strong differentiator are imperative. Look at strategies such as changing your employer brand from the groan-inducing “we’re a big successful company” to a company delivering on the promise of continuous learning, work-life balance, personally-fulfilling roles and innovative reward and recognition programs.
Some recruitment effectiveness strategies include:
Employment branding Ongoing recruiting, not stop-start Nurturing relationships with strong candidates, even though no jobs
for them are currently available
Referrals – this is particularly effective with Generation “Y”ers. They do everything through leveraging their networks. They are always connected – using mobile phones, text messaging, instant messaging, blogging or email.
Realistic job previews Managers trained in interviewing (so that they will create a favourable impression of company)
Selection criteria – Can they do the job? (Competencies) Will they do the job? (Motivation) Can we offer them what they are looking for? (Cultural Fit)
Rapid response and follow up – Hard to hire skills are in high demand Debrief candidates as quality control monitoring for recruitment process
Most candidates will not get jobs – but they might be current or future customers, hence the importance of handling the rejection process effectively.
Note: Ceridian surveys rejected candidates to get their feedback on the entire recruiting and selection process. Even though we have not hired those candidates, their feedback about the process and their treatment during it is very favourable.
Recruitment, while strategic, involves a lot of administration. Now is the time to outsource some of those tasks to organizations that have the people, technology and process so that you can decrease time-to-hire, increase the quality of your candidates and reduce your expenses…which leads into our next point.
#3. Outsourcing of HR Functions: The Virtual HR Organization
If you are an HR professional I doubt that you got hired for your ability to process employee information changes, sort resumes or process the payroll every other week.
CEOs’ expectations of their senior HR people have changed significantly. The HR executive is expected to deliver value in areas like organizational effectiveness, talent management, change management, leadership development, succession planning, merger integration, strategic compensation. If you read job postings for senior HR positions, these items are listed time and time again as the key expectations for HR leaders.
The primary benefit of HR outsourcing is that it will allow you to keep your job because it will enable you to tackle these more strategic issues!
HR professionals need to embrace outsourcing. They can’t be afraid of it. Outsourcing of HR transactions is a proven way to reduce costs and get access to a higher level of service.
There are five good reasons why companies outsource their HR services:
1. 1. Cost reduction – economies of scale, automation and process improvement, especially for transactional work
2. 2. Focus – allows HR to allocate time to strategic, not transactional, concerns
3. 3. Regulatory compliance – minimize or transfer legal risk to the outsourcer and obtain specialized regulatory expertise.
4. 4. Access to best technologies – mutual benefits to ensure technology is continually upgraded
5. 5. No available internal resources – provides an HR capability for a company that does not have one, cannot staff it, or cannot afford a full-time resource, but has reached a size and complexity where expertise is required
However, all that being said, the administrative, transactional aspects of HR are key. What you need to do is identify them now – whether it’s your payroll, your Employee Assistance Programs, your recruitment or your HRIS systems. Then you need to go out into the marketplace and find outsourcing partners who can help take them off your hands. It’s the only way you are going to become more strategic.
#4. The Healthy Workplace: Wellness, Work-Life Balance
There is no competitive advantage in exhausted, sick and stressed-out workers.
There is growing recognition that there is a definite link between the work environment and the health and well-being of its employees. Further, employers are now recognizing the connection between employee health and the bottom line.
Consider…
Specific types of work stress/strain are related to 2x the incidence of mental illness and substance abuse, 5x the rate of certain cancers, 2x the rate of infection/injuries and 3x the incidence of heart and back problems – (Shain, 2000)
Over half of Canadians working for large employers feel stressed, one in three feels burned out or depressed, many are thinking of quitting their jobs, and absenteeism is costing employers billions each year.
Let me talk about a few of the findings of a major government-sponsored study of work-life conflict in Canada as well as published information from other credible research sources that point to the importance of a healthy workplace:
Canadian companies are experiencing the impact of compromised mental health in an unprecedented manner: 1 in 5 Canadians will experience a mental illness in their lifetime. Harvard School of Public Health predicts that by 2020 depression will rank second to heart disease as the leading cause of disability worldwide, and the cost of mental illness in lost productivity in Canada alone is estimated to be over 30 billion dollars annually. (Global Business and Economic Roundtable).
Canadians report working at a high speed "all the time," in greater numbers than workers in 17 other countries, according to a new report released by the Canadian Policy Research Networks. Working continually at a high rate is twice as likely to result in health problems, including stress. In turn, this leads to more absenteeism and disability claims – both very costly to organizations.
So, where does this leave Canadian workers?
Long working hours and heavy job demands were the main sources of work stress identified in a Statistics Canada survey. Poor interpersonal relationships and the risk of accident or injury were also cited as sources of stress on the job.
The term ‘presenteeism’ has become part of the corporate lexicon, describing employees who are able to come into work but are inhibited from optimal levels of productivity by ongoing health issues and lack of desire to engage. This has emerged as a new and growing concern.
Rising mental health claims, primarily related to stress, depression and anxiety disorders, were the top health and productivity-related concern for organizations in 2005.
Ceridian’s Employee Assistance Practice has seen a significant shift in the role of EAP services – from a remedial approach of supporting people who have problems to a proactive and preventative approach focused on wellness and wellbeing.
When we look in the mirror, we see ourselves as entire human beings – not just people with jobs and careers, but people with families, friends, beliefs, interests, passions, responsibilities, worries and futures. We need to look at our people through the same mirror – not just as employees or colleagues but as total human beings. If companies ignore the full humanity of their people, or if people find it necessary to suppress their human-ness in the workplace, the tensions created eat away at the vitality of the organization.
#5. The Diverse Workforce
What does diversity mean? Canada has a reputation for embracing people of varied ethnicity, religion, culture, language and beliefs. But our multicultural mix does not make us immune to the challenges of managing a diverse workforce.
Diversity goes far beyond the traditional employment equity criteria of gender, visible minority or aboriginal status, or disability. Diversity is not employment equity. Diversity is a business strategy.
The reality is that today’s workforce and the workforce of the future will be made up of a diverse, complex collection of employees, all with different needs and experiences. And this is good, because an organization with a broad variety of people with a diverse range of perspectives is better able to do business with a variety of people, to solve a variety of problems and to make a variety of decisions.
As companies become more global and are using more offshore services, it creates the need for diversity strategies that go beyond our own national borders. It will take a whole new level of education, tolerance and a willingness to embrace change. HR will need to provide cross-cultural support and training for virtual global teams.
But diversity is not just about race, colour and creed. Diversity is about managing the demographic and psychographic characteristics of an evolving workforce.
According to Reed-Lewis in The Learning Café 2005, there are four generations in the workforce.
Silent or traditionalists 60 – 78 years old, 10% of workforce ¬characterized by tradition, loyalty, discipline, commitment, significant knowledge legacy
Boomers 41 – 59 years old, 46% of workforce - characterized by hard work (badge of honor), relationship oriented, change agents, competitive
Generation X 28 – 40 years old, 29% of workforce - independent (latch-key kids), entrepreneurial, flexible, demand work-life balance
Generation Y or Millennials 27 and younger, 19% of workforce- This generation was born with computers. They are comfortable in a multicultural environment and full of confidence
Let’s look at two groups: The Generation Y or Millenials, now entering the workforce. They’ve grown up in a world where the use of computers and the Internet is a basic bodily function.
They’ve grown up in an inclusive world, with friends and peers from a myriad of places and cultures. They’re the human embodiment of globalization.
They’ve grown up in a world where, through the Internet or other media, they have been exposed to a vast amount of information, far beyond the reach of previous generations.
They’ve grown up in a world in which traditional institutions are weaker and often objects of skepticism, and where there is no prevailing set of values, but rather conflicting views and values on the most fundamental issues.
Organizations that will attract and retain high potential younger employees will have the following characteristics:
They will be relatively non-hierarchical and inclusive They will provide for a balance between work and life outside work Their behaviour will be consistent with the values of their people They will provide an environment with both autonomy and support They will provide opportunities for learning and significant
contributions at an early stage in people’s careers
Another group, the Traditionalists, also deserves more attention. By 2011, almost one-fifth of baby boomers – those born between 1946 and 1964 – will be at least 61 years of age and pushing ever closer to retirement.
Much of the discussion about mandatory retirement centres around how to deal with older employees whose performance is slipping and who used to be carried until age 65
The challenge for managers and HR is to create an environment in which older, longer-service employees can continue to be fully engaged in the work of the organization
Continue to give them challenging work Continue to give them learning opportunities Give them a chance to build a legacy – mentoring, developing
others, knowledge transfer
Provide more flexible work environments – part-time work, phased retirements, retiree on call programs, contract and project-based employment
Because this group is often overlooked in the labour market, there are excellent opportunities to get ‘the best of the best’ from them As a business strategy, the value of diversity is to bring to a company the broadest possible spectrum of knowledge, experience and perspective. A diverse workforce consists not just of people with a broad range of demographic traits, but, more importantly, a broad range of educational backgrounds, professional and other interests, work experiences, life experiences and cultural perspectives. Ultimately the success of a diversity strategy is measured in how well we capitalize on the skills, intelligence, culture and experience of every employee.
#6. The Impact of Technology
Resistance is futile!
Eventually technology is going to eliminate most HR jobs as they exist today. Which is another reason for HR professionals to become more strategic. Technology, with all its self-service and anytime-anywhere communications capabilities, coupled with outsourcing, guarantees there will be fewer HR people in corporations.
Technology continues to impact us profoundly, both in our personal lives and in the workplace, and it will continue to evolve. While most of its impact has been overwhelmingly progressive and positive, there are some downsides to its effect on our personal and work lives. Cell phones, email, messaging and Blackberry-type devices have blurred the lines between worklife and homelife.
Now we seem to be always on call, always reachable – in our cars, in the air, at home – virtually everywhere.
To today’s young professionals computers, PDAs, cell phones, etc. have become appendages, keeping them constantly connected.
Weblogs or blogs are favoured by this group so companies cannot afford to ignore their use or existence. A web-tracking site called Technorati reports tracking over 7.8 million weblogs and 937 million links in March 2005. That’s double the number of weblogs tracked in October last year. In fact, the blogosphere is doubling in size about once every five months. Employers need to develop a strategy around blogging. Negative blogs will be able to destroy a company’s reputation.
We’ve entered the century of the employee and technology has to respond. CRM or customer relationship management is giving way to ERM – employee relationship management. Employee self-service has become as important as customer self-service. Customized and personalized content will be king.
Employees can self-manage activities previously handled by human resource professionals. This is a cost-saving and time-saving benefit to organizations and it frees the HR practitioners to focus on more strategic issues. But more importantly, it is a fundamental expectation of Gen Y’s and Gen X’s.
Technology that protects the privacy and security of HR data is more important than ever…but more on that later.
It’s important that we continue to embrace technology and keep our eyes on new advances that may bring even better communication and collaboration tools. Technology helps people connect within the work environment regardless of time and place. It fuels the potential for increased productivity and creativity. Today’s virtual workers and flexible work arrangements are made possible through communication technology. Organizations can be physically local, yet virtually global, thanks to technology.
Organizations are looking for cross-border and multinational HR solutions that provide a single HR database that gives them access to real-time information on their workforce – information that will aid in their strategic decision-making.
They are looking for solutions that provide global compliance capabilities that can be used at the local level.
They are looking for an HR solutions framework that will enable the management of employees from hire-to-retire.
#7. Talent Management: Leadership Development
Leadership skills are not built through courses. Management is a function of what you do; leadership is a function of what you are. When planning leadership development initiatives, the tendency is to first look for courses.
One of the scarcest capabilities, now and for the foreseeable future, is leadership. As organizations, their customers, their employees and their environment become more global, more complex, more competitive and more subject to rapid and radical change, the competency requirements for successful leadership are increasing exponentially.
Most organizations would acknowledge that they currently have a shortage of leadership talent or bench strength; how will they fare when the bar keeps on being raised?
Leadership is less definable and therefore leadership capabilities are more difficult to build or transmit. Indeed, one could debate whether leadership skills can be taught at all, or whether they are innate.
So how do we develop leaders?
Take a few seconds and reflect on what were the three most important contributors to your own development – as a professional and as a leader.
If you are like most people, none of those three contributors was a course. One of our HR consultants at Ceridian has conducted this exercise with numerous groups of managers and executives across Canada, the U.S. and Asia. About one in ten people mention a course – usually a very extensive and expensive 1-3 month executive development program. But over 90% of the items mentioned pertain to learning that occurred in the course of their work. Among the most common are being given responsibility for a major project – sometimes being thrown off the deep end, gaining experience in groups outside one’s functional expertise, working on multi-disciplinary teams, working with customers, suppliers or strategic partners, working for a really good boss or a really bad one.
An emerging trend in North American executive development is ‘Action Learning’ – which has been well established in Europe for many years. It involves assigning groups of executives, with diverse backgrounds, to work on issues of strategic interest to their organization – with a facilitator to keep them on track and provide feedback. The advantage of Action Learning is that it engages leaders and potential leaders in real work and a real work environment rather than a simulation.
Part of fostering leadership is encouraging and rewarding risk-taking. It is also giving these leaders, wherever they are in the organization, the opportunity to contribute to the development of the corporate strategies and plans. Leadership comes with empowerment – employees can’t be leaders unless they have the power to take risks, make decisions, innovate and lead.
#8. Talent management: Succession Planning
We now live in a world where the jobs, the job requirements and the organizations are constantly changing – acquisitions, divestitures, down¬sizing, mergers, technology changes and on and on.
Many of us are in jobs that did not exist three years ago. Three years from now, many of us will be in jobs that do not exist today.
The challenge for HR professionals is to figure out how to look deep into the organization to find talented, visionary people with a passion for the future. They need to anticipate the skills they will need in the future.
There are more and more younger people going into leadership or management positions. What kind of mentoring and coaching do they need?
Traditional succession planning identified who could fill what box in the organization chart in how many years time, and what skills they would need to get there.
Even if we have remained, or will remain, in the same box in the org chart, the chances are very high that the skill requirements of our position will change significantly.
Many of us are in jobs that did not exist three years ago. Three years from now, many of us will be in jobs that do not exist today. In this context of unceasing change, succession planning needs to be re-engineered, to focus not on particular positions, which may or may not exist in the future but rather on the competencies that the organization will need in the future, regardless of how the individual positions or the organization chart changes. Succession planning evolves into something broader – talent management.
Instead of identifying which individuals can move into which position when, talent management identifies a pool of high potential employees who will provide the basis for the organization’s success regardless of the changing organizational structure. Investments must be made in these high potential employees to help them develop the competencies that will take them and the organization to success.
Lots of companies have succession plans but very few have done the career planning and skills gap analysis needed to acquire the best talent. I would hazard a guess that most of the companies in this room don’t have such a plan.
#9. Corporate Values and Culture
We are entering the third wave of public mistrust about corporations, according to Market and social trend analyst Daniel Yankelovich. The first, set off by the Great Depression, continued until World War II; the second, caused in part by economic stagflation and the Vietnam War, lasted from the early 1960s until the early 1980s. In each of these periods companies tended to be reactive, blaming a few bad apples, dismissing values as “not central to what we do,” or ignoring opportunities to improve because “we don’t have to make major changes.”
The current wave of disapproval began in 2001 with the bursting of the dot¬com bubble, the ensuing bear market and the financial scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and others. But this time, corporate response is different. Companies are going well beyond the PR exercise of displaying values statements. They’re engaging in values-driven management improvement efforts, training staff in values and appraising executives and staff on their adherence to values.
What is clearly evident these days is that more and more firms are unwilling to tolerate unethical behaviour from their executives. They are taking drastic action as in the case of the Boeing CEO who was ousted because of unethical activities.
Ethical behaviour should be a core component of company culture. Ethics-related language in formal statements not only sets corporate expectations for employee behaviour, it also serves as a shield for companies in an increasingly complex and regulatory environment.
But what is culture? What drives it? How do values affect corporate performance?
Culture is not a concierge serving up free fresh fruit in the cafeteria, nor is it a values chart hanging on the wall purporting commitment to integrity, respect, honesty and customer satisfaction. Enron had a brilliantly-crafted set of corporate values. Obviously it was just there for decoration. .
Organizational culture is the shared assumptions, beliefs and norms of behaviour of a group. It has a powerful influence on the way in which people behave.
An effective corporate culture is not about being a nice place to work. It is about engaging employees at a fundamental level and translating that engagement to performance that meets the organization’s objectives. Increasingly, companies around the world have adopted formal statements of corporate values, and senior executives now routinely identify ethical behaviour, honesty, integrity, and social concerns as top issues on their companies’ agendas.
Business leaders are now recognizing that an effective corporate culture is essential to long-term success. They are taking steps to align corporate culture to business strategy. Many organizations are now making their values explicit and that’s a significant change from corporate practices 10 years ago.
Leaders and top management must be responsible for building strong, high-performance cultures. They are the ones who construct the social reality, and shape the values of the organization.
Edgar Schein said in 1992, “Organizational cultures are created by leaders, and one of the most decisive functions of leadership may well be the creation, the management, and if and when that may become necessary, the destruction of culture.” This has never been more true.
Consider the impact on corporate culture as more and more companies become global. How do you integrate culture when you’ve been acquired or you’ve merged with another company. And what about the expectations of a younger workforce – the people who ask “what’s in it for me?” Organizations need to demonstrate that they have the flexibility to adapt to these changes while still maintaining a strong culture.
A recent study on the factors that drive performance found that corporate environments where culture is flexible, adaptable to change and ongoing improvements will increase performance by 22.9%
So what does an effective corporate culture offer?
Branding: the alignment of the vision of the employee with the vision
of the company. In effect, it makes a promise about the values of the
organization and delivers on it. Engagement: The congruency between employees’ needs and those of the employer. Culture is a key element in achieving this match.
Culture will translate into employer branding. Employers have to deliver on their promises – they have to live up to the brand. They have to walk the talk. Remember that because of technology, i.e., all those blogs, your employer brand can be damaged or praised easily.
#10. Impact of Legal and Compliance Issues
Today’s legislative and regulatory requirements surrounding data privacy, security, etc., are a bureaucratic nightmare that Kafka would have been proud of.
Highly publicized instances of poor corporate governance, combined with growing consumer concerns about security and privacy, have led us to an era of interventionist and regulatory government involvement in many facets of our business. Regulations or laws that we have to worry about include:
Affecting financial systems: Money laundering and support of terrorism (FINTRAC), Sarbanes-Oxley and its upcoming Canadian equivalent and others on a sector by sector basis
National security: Anti-Terrorism Act, Public Safety Act, PATRIOT Act (for those of you that deal with or have a corporate relationship with US based entities)
Privacy: PIPEDA (Federal private sector), Privacy Act (Federal public sector), public sector in all provinces, private sector in three, and health information privacy in four provinces
Privacy laws are in the process of fundamentally changing the way in which the HR department interacts with employees. This may include but is not limited to:
the creation of employee privacy policies changing and more stringent rules on HR data 'least privilege' access rules to HR data - restrictions on access
to HR data restrictions on employee references restrictions on background checks changing and more stringent records management practices implementation of data retention and data destruction policies employee access to their own data
If you have tried to get specific answers to these or similar questions such as ‘how much security is enough’ or ‘what is the best practice for protecting HR data?’ from your auditors, then you probably have the same scar tissue on your forehead as I do. On a case by case basis, the intent of each of the regulations is grounded in a desire to make sure that we do the right thing.
What's the solution?
Embrace the opportunity. If you take these issues on one by one and respond, you will be stuck in response mode until the receivers knock on your door. The silver lining to this regulatory cloud is that by taking positive control of your assets, data as well as financial, you end up in better control of your business or your department. If you do it yourself, you can partner with your compliance department and your IT group and explicitly define your objectives and requirements. If you outsource, you can do the same thing through the service level agreement that you have with your outsourcer.
So what does all this mean to the HR professional? It means a lot of responsibility around risk management. It means we need to be looking for different skill-sets in HR to understand the new realities of privacy and security of employee data. And it means developing closer relationships with IT and Finance to understand the new rules.
Conclusion
HR professionals need to step up to these challenges. If you don’t, your C-level executives will make other functional areas responsible. As a COO, my advice to you is:
Think like marketers. Establish an employer brand. Communicate the employer brand. Sell the employer brand.
Don’t just preach the benefits of continuous learning to your employees. Be continuous learners. Be at the forefront of the latest trends and requirements and react to them quickly.
Acquire a broader range of business skills, in particular, think like a CFO. What are the metrics that you can develop that prove to the business the impact you are making.
Get rid of the stigma around mental health issues. There is no workplace issue more important to your organization, to society, and to Canada’s productivity. Anxiety and depression in the workplace must be dealt with or it’s going to cost your organization in lost productivity and a lot of money.
Do real talent management – know who your Stars are, nurture them, develop them, figure out what support they need to thrive in your organization – because if you don’t another company will.
Start working on an HR outsourcing strategy today. Otherwise, you won’t have time to do the rest.
So…if there is a rallying cry for HR professionals, what is it? We need to be at the table? We need to be more strategic?
No the rallying cry is – we need to change the world of work. To do so we need to change HR departments into Talent departments, and HR professionals must become the C-levels of tomorrow.
From Kuwait, Kuwait
A lot has been written about HR evolving because of Technology and advancements of technology has reduced HR functions like payroll, leave & attendance down to a couple of clicks .Although human elements of HR such as employee management & employee engagement is also evolving . Flexible work timings, open salaries structures and change in strict dress codes may not necessarily work for all organizations . Thus the biggest changes taking place in HR is not only through technology but also through changing work culture .
The article i am referring to is https://quikchex.in/3-questions-evolving-hr-manager/ which analyzes the evolving HR policies.
From India, Mumbai
The article i am referring to is https://quikchex.in/3-questions-evolving-hr-manager/ which analyzes the evolving HR policies.
From India, Mumbai
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