Walking The Talent Tightrope
By · CommentsIs your company walking the talent tightrope?
It is if you’ve not developed a robust talent management plan (TMP) that addresses the following key risk elements as follows:
Aging Workforce - The demographic composition of your workforce is a major risk factor. Here’s the issue: A sputtering economy and under-performing 401(k)s, have caused many valuable employees in the 50+ demographic to defer retirement. If they represent a large segment of your workforce, know this, as financial conditions improve, many of these employees will want to leave or work shorter schedules. The solution: Assessing your workforce make-up will allow you to evaluate your risk and prepare contingencies to reduce your exposure.
Employee Disengagement - Is another major element of risk. Here’s the issue: Workforce reductions, stressed survivors, inattentive management all contribute to a lack of commitment on the part of employees and lower productivity. Employee disengagement has a multiplier effect in that it amplifies other risk factors. The solution: Assessing the degree of risk and converting disengagement to engagement by improved internal communication and rewarding effort, both individual and team, is an imperative.
Skills Shortages - Here’s the issue: Skills inventories of existing/prospective employees have been neglected due to management’s preoccupation with weathering the recession. The erosion of the value of human capital and the lack of awareness of this fact is a common circumstance. The solution: Preparing a skills inventory and maintaining its currency over time is an essential component in managing this risk and for establishing a foundation for addressing identified problems and exploiting opportunities.
Talent Poaching - Here’s the issue: The advent of social media venues such as LinkedIn are exposing your employees to talent acquisition campaigns of your competitors. The solution: Evaluating the level of risk and countering it through actively managed retention initiatives is highly recommended. Social media can be a core component of this. You can even turn the tables on your competition by exploiting social outreach to capture your share of their talent.
Keeping your balance as you progress across the talent tightrope will help you cross safely to the other side and show that your talent plan is working and contributing to your company’s marketplace competitiveness.
Scrum For Agile Talent Management
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Sports metaphors and analogies are powerful things that enable us to visualize approaches to tackling business problems and get winning results. Case in point is your organization’s human capital bench strength and using Scrum for agile talent management.
But first, ask yourself the question: ”Is your team optimized for competitiveness and long-term talent sustainability or have you slipped during the recession?” If you’re honest in this self-assessment, it’s more likely that your company falls in to the latter category. Next, consider what you can do to quickly and cost-effectively build a winning team? Stumped? Let me suggest a dynamic solution, Scrum, derived from the sport of Rugby and enhanced by its effective application to IT project management. Scrum can really bring about a renewal of your human capital asset and give your firm the skills athleticism it will need to compete in a global marketplace.
As applied to human capital, Scrum is a set of roles and tactics. Scrum encourages collaboration and emphasizes communication between all talent management stakeholders. Key roles include the Scrum Talent Master – lead facilitator, Talent Owners – representing operating managers and the business, and the Talent Team - HR and others implementing the human capital initiative. The principal tactic is known as a sprint. The Scrum sprint addresses goals and focuses resources, breaking down the specific tasks as needed. A primary principle of Scrum involves the recognition that stakeholders’ requirements churn in response to changing needs and talent-market conditions. Thus the emphasis is on responding to this dynamic and creating bench strength in the workforce that will provide the organization with a differential competitive advantage on a sustainable basis.
Scrum offers a powerful way to visualize and implement agile talent management in support of marketplace competitiveness and organizational success.
Creating a winning strategy for your organization’s human capital is essential to business survival and competitiveness. Yet many companies, in developing their human capital plans, neglect to include an assessment of the stakeholders. This can be the proverbial Achilles heel that causes a plan to fail. I base my assertion on leading edge research suggesting that insufficient consideration of stakeholder influence can increase human capital acquisition and retention costs by 40% or more.
This sin of omission is especially egregious when you consider that identifying critical internal and external stakeholders is not particularly difficult. A simple inventory in the form of a list or chart will quickly reveal a stakeholder network and create a foundation for problem-solving via formulation of tactics and strategies required for an effective human capital management plan and related initiatives. A chart (see example above right) has the distinct advantage of providing a visual reference that is useful in the planning process and in presentations to get buy-in and generate support.
Scope is critical. It should be comprehensive and not leave out critical components. For example, internal stakeholders should include employees, management, shareholders, etc. The external stakeholders landscape must cover prospective candidates, customers and competitors and and other parties.
Take the example of current employees. This stakeholder cohort is an existing human capital asset that can be leveraged to great advantage. With the acquisition costs for new employees being over $100,000 USD in many cases, paying attention to this stakeholder category should be adopted as a best practice in your planning effort.
An example of an external stakeholder is current and prospective candidates for employment. The means of attracting their attention will vary with their target profile, but social media is proving to be a very effective means of reaching out to this population and building sustained relationships.
Stakeholders are key to developing a winning human capital strategy and can provide the companies with a differential advantage in the marketplace.
Business Modeling: Your Ally In The Talent War – Part 2
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You have an ally in in your battle to win the talent war. It’s business modeling and it quite literally provides you with a strategic tool for making transformative and positive changes in the way you attract and retain high performing candidates and employees.
In part 1, I made the case for using business modeling, establishing that it’s a powerful tool for gaining victory through a winning talent strategy. In part 2, I’m suggesting a specific weapon that you and your team can begin deploying immediately. In this installment, I show you how this tool can help you build agile talent scenarios to take advantage of rapidly changing business developments and better align human capital with organizational needs. The tool is called SWOT, an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Just the name suggests its value in helping you fight the talent war battles now and in the future. In the context of agile talent management, its very structure compels you and your team make a thoughtful analysis of your competitive environment and is operationally defined as follows:
- Strengths: Current talent profile including demographics, key knowledge and skills domains possessed by your existing employees; positive reputation as an employer, active engagement with employees and prospective employees, etc.
- Weaknesses: Knowledge, skills or other gaps that hinder achievement of business plans.
- Opportunities: Chances for improvement or acquisition of your company’s human capital with the required knowledge, skills and experiences key to creating innovation and exploiting market opportunities.
- Threats: Circumstances including technological changes or industry trends that pose risks to your organization’s competitiveness and worsen weaknesses identified above.
To use SWOT, you can create a simple table with four quadrants with a label for each. Here are some examples which you can use to develop your own SWOT matrix:
Strengths
- Positive employer reputation, actively engaged with current and prospective employees using social media
- Effective performance management program
Weaknesses
- No social media presence that connects with employees and prospects
- Negative reputation
Opportunities
- Ability to use strengths to acquire talent from competitors
- Other trends on which to capitalize
Threats
- Identified personal weaknesses that, if unaddressed, could threaten your human capital
- Other trends that will degrade your talent pool
As you complete your SWOT matrix, a framework is developed that outlines what is needed to enhance/maintain strengths, correct weaknesses, seize opportunities and counter threats. By giving your talent management/human capital development program a SWOT, you are activating a planning process that will pay dividends now and in the future and be a key ally in helping you win the talent war.
Business Modeling: Your Ally In The Talent War – Part 1
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You have an ally in in your battle to win the talent war. It’s business modeling and it quite literally provides you with a strategic tool for making transformative and positive changes in the way you attract and retain high performing candidates and employees.
Before I get into the concept and application of business modeling to talent management, I want to make a compelling business case for using this powerful implement. Maybe you don’t believe that a talent war is going on. You need to be convinced. You may be suffering under the illusion that, because of unstable business conditions and continuing layoffs, you have your pick of qualified candidates and that your current employees are staying put, greatful just to have a job with your firm. If that’s the way you see things, then you are putting your company at risk for losing its most important asset, its human capital.
Consider the following items:
- Layoffs that were necessary to allow your business to lower costs and survive the downturn have made you more dependent that ever on a critical core of knowledgeable, skilled employees in your remaining workforce. Losing a few of these, could wreak havoc on your productivity and competitiveness.
- Competitors are gathering intelligence on your workforce and are intent on “poaching” your best and brightest.
- Were you distracted from your human capital preservation activities by what seemed to be imminent organizational survival issues?
A sober assessment of the above considerations and others should lead you to a recognition that you need to assess your human capital situation and develop a plan for addressing near term and future challenges with a view to minimizing threats and taking advantage of opportunities. Fortunately. you have a toolkit, business modeling, that can be your ally in winning the talent war. In part 2, I’ll discuss specific business modeling tools and how they can arm you for success in waging the talent war.
Boomer Career Sustainability: Your Skills Shelf-Life
By · CommentsA key factor in career sustainability is the freshness of your skills. Recruiters and hiring managers want candidates with up-to-date skills sets and high levels of comfort with collaboration and technology tools including social media. Think of this just as you do when purchasing items from the grocery store where many of these have a “sell by” or “best by” date listed. You wouldn’t buy outdated dairy products and recruiters and hiring managers won’t select candidates for employment with stale skills.
Skills are very perishable and need to be constantly refreshed. In our technology-driven and rapidly changing world of work, employees’ skills sets are short-lived. This is especially true if you work in finance, telecommunications, health care and information technology. Even employees and job seekers outside these industries, are coming to understand that a growing reliance on technology tools and engagement through social media demands that skills and facility in their application be acquired.
Ideally, the responsibility for skills maintenance is shared between the employer and the employee; however, today’s reality is that pressure on corporate budgets has resulted in a scarcity of training dollars. Add to this an intensely competitive job market and you have a situation where you are wise to take the initiative to personally invest in necessary training. After all, your most important asset is your career and sustaining it demands that you extend its shelf-life.
Boomer Careers: Six Steps for Leveraging Twitter
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Boomer leveraging Twitter
Social media is playing an increasingly important part in business. Twitter is among the fastest growing of the social media tools and is regarded as “must have, must do” for serious professionals. So what’s the big deal and why are there social media skeptics among boomers, especially about Twitter? Are you among them? Part of the reason is that it’s hard to appreciate the real value of Twitter unless you’ve experienced it yourself in the context of practical use.
The objective of this blog post is to get you started using Twitter and to become a more engaged business professional and enhanced branding as one who is social media savvy. As many boomers have already discovered, this can make a big difference in getting on recruiters’ short lists.
Twitter for Business and Career:
- Sign up for an account. Pick a username that either identifies you by name, by company or a combination of these. If you are identifying yourself by your company and you are not the owner, check with your marketing department first. Don’t make your username too long.
- Complete your profile: Add a headshot and/or your company logo. Unless you are self-employed, check with your marketing department regarding your company’s branding policy before adding your company logo. Write your 160 character bio reflecting your personality and personal brand.
- Put up a couple tweets. Tweets are Twitter posts. A good first tweet is posting about an online article you’ve just read. Add a link to the article so the others can directly access the article.
- Follow and be followed by others on Twitter. Click here for details.
- Create/track hashtags in Twubs.
- Monitor Twitter by using TweetDeck, an application that runs on your computer, desktop/laptop or smartphone. TweetDeck lets you to configure multiple columns where you follow tweets according to criteria you specify. These can be all the people you follow on Twitter (your “friends”), or the continuing results of a Twitter search.
By following these steps for leveraging Twitter, you’re sure to a more engaged professional and get noticed.
Kit Jeffrey is Chief Boomer of BoomerCompass and Social Media Director of the Portland Human Resource Management Association (PHRMA).
Career sustainability is all about optimization, managing risks and balancing your obligations. On the optimization side, you are probably already doing a lot, embracing social media through networks, flexing with rapid economic and organizational changes and the like. On the risk side, you are paying more attention to managing your financial resources, savings and retirement. That’s all to the good! But you’re missing something if you’re not considering your obligations to your aging parents and the impact this can have on your career?
While there’s plenty of advice out their on enhancing your resume and managing your professional brand, there is much less good information on how to manage a critical element of career vulnerability for boomers: the matter of providing for the care of aging parents. The scope of the challenge is immense. It is estimated that more than 80% of those in the workforce age 50+currently are or in the near future will need to arrange for the caring for a parent or parents.
Some boomers address the issue by handling caregiver tasks themselves, even quitting their jobs to do so. Others continue to work and carry out caregiving activities with the assistance of relatives or must outsource eldercare to contract caregivers or assisted living facilities. That’s particularly true when a parent or parent lives in another city or state and can’t or won’t relocate.
Finding the missing link provides the element you need to address the challenge and you sustain your career by achieving a manageable balance between your career and caring for your parent(s). This can be in the form of community resources or counseling and support services provided by enlightened employers like Intel. Newly emerging are web and social media sites that provide free or low cost resources to empower you in helping your aging parents. A particularly good article, Sending Out An Elder-Care SOS, can be found in the Wall Street Journal. It’s full of useful suggestions and links for accessing online resources.
Mature Workers' Social Media Engagement
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Unfortunate and inaccurate perceptions persist about levels of activity and engagement of mature workers (age 44+) in social media. Some seem to view mature workers as laggards and virtual Luddites. The opposite is true.
The fact is that mature workers including Boomers are among the most engaged participants in the social media experience. A sampling of recent studies by Deloitte, Pew and Forrester; as well as articles in publications such as USA Today found that:
- Facebook usage by this cohort grew by more than 100% from 2008 to 2009.
- Twitter use by this demographic increased over 700% over the same period.
Mature workers are energetic members of professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Here they often add applications to upgrade the value of their profiles by integrating their blog posts, slide shows and the like. They also join LinkedIn Groups and even start their own.
What accounts for this tremendous growth in engagement via social media among members of the mature workforce? The key drivers are both professional and personal in nature.
At a professional level, mature workers recognize that new world of work with its emphasis on collaboration through social networks demands that they demonstrate proficiency in the use of social media tools.
At a personal level, they are leveraging social media tools to stay connected with geographically dispersed relatives and friends.
There is obvious crossover between the skills needed to successfully use social media tools in both spheres. Personal use leads to professional use as mature workers quickly apply social media interactional skills to workplace collaboration.
Mature workers are among the most engaged users of social media. The impact of their engagement will stimulate workplace collaboration and organizational effectiveness.
Note: This post titled as Mature Workers’ Active Engagement in Social Media also appears on the PortlandHRMA Blog.
