Relationships and communication drive the world…we all realize this. I am not simply referring to “who you know” although certainly that comes to mind. I am referring more to the fact that every single day, we have opportunities to create, sustain, strengthen, damage or dissolve relationships. We have chances at every turn to do positive things and choose actions that impact lives. The most subtle interaction that we take for granted could invigorate another person and be a turning point for their career, or their life. The simplest interaction can have profound impact. I am certain you can think back to several (seemingly small) interactions in life that have altered your path. Hopefully, these were for the positive, but we all know it can certainly work the opposite way.
Real Stories That Alter Paths
Let’s relate this to the workplace with several quick examples from my past to which I am certain you can relate.
Story #1: I was about three months into my staffing/recruiting career. I was failing, horrifically. I was 23, unmotivated, a little lost in life during my transition from college to the working world, and simply under-performing. I had a manager that pulled me aside one day (after a couple verbal discussions) to discuss with me that I wasn’t ramping up my billing quickly enough. She asked me to take a walk and we went to another area of the company property and sat at a picnic table. She looked me in the eyes, told me how it was, and also offered to listen to “what was going on” because I was not performing as advertised in my interview. Immediately I was taken aback and defensive, but after the interaction, I realized that she had an interest in me, and in helping me turn this new career around. She could have terminated me and hired someone else or let me continue to fail to strengthen her case for eventual termination. She did neither, and invested a bit in me emotionally. I went on to become a senior manager in that company just two years later. A simple, direct and genuine discussion that many would overlook resulted in me steering my career towards significant success.
Increase Employee Engagement with Continuous Goal Management
Story #2: I was about two years into my corporate Human Resources (HR) career when it suddenly struck me on a rather slow day that if I wanted, I could totally see my employee file. It was more of a sudden curiosity that struck me rather than this crazy (seemingly obvious) revelation. I went to the filing cabinet (yes, I am that old – electronic employee files were just starting to gain ground), grabbed my file, and headed back to my desk. On the left inside tab was my resume from my initial interview. As I was about to breeze past it, I noticed a note my manager wrote in the upper right corner in all capital letters. It simply said “POTENTIAL.” This is a word that I am not sure I ever heard someone say to me, or about me. I still to this day feel an immense sense of pride and motivation to live up to that. I think about it all the time, and am incredibly thankful and humbled that someone so talented thought this about me.
Story #3: Fast forward to present day. Here I am at Deltek. I made a total career change at age 40, transitioning from being a senior HR practitioner to the Human Capital Management (HCM) product management world. This was a transition that many would not have made. I was divorced, splitting custody of my wonderful kids, and a one income household. Why would I take a near twenty year career in HR and make this move at this time when there was so much risk? What if I failed? How would I take care of my kids and support us? Even with those concerns in mind, I was determined to be successful in this new path and demonstrate to myself and my kids that I could do this, that it can be done at any age, and that I could succeed at a very challenging career. It was only about two weeks into this position and my head was spinning. All new acronyms (a ton of them) to learn, the technology seemed intimidating, and I was sure certain people were wondering how I got this position. I had a regularly scheduled 1-on-1 discussion with my new manager who had recruited me. I remember vividly that I was relaying some initial observations and I asked her for direction on how I should tackle product strategy. Two weeks, brand new to this career and organization, my manager said to me, “I trust your decisions and that you will make the right ones.” I thought to myself, “who says that two weeks in to an employee?” I was brand new, I hadn’t earned this trust yet, and there was no reason for me to receive this trust (at least in my mind). It was that near twenty-year career and all that came with it that earned the trust, and there was absolutely no way I was not going to deliver.
Three situations, all extremely different, and yet all have a commonality. In every situation, there was a simple interaction (verbal or written); one word, one line, or a quick discussion that shaped not just my career, but my life. I love my career and the path I have taken. I have enjoyed a ton of success that I can honestly attribute to a handful of individuals who simply took an interest in my development. They spoke to me consistently in a genuine manner, and helped me get to where I am.
Communication Is the Past, Present and Future
It is these opportunities to connect and influence that we need to act on. In order to do this, as HR professionals and leaders, we must build and foster the right processes and culture that help create stories like the above. Note that not a single one of my most defining moments in my career had anything to do with notes or comments from a performance appraisal. To this day, I cannot remember a single comment any manager has ever made on a performance appraisal, not one. What I can remember, and what has impacted my career are the moments of compassion and investment.
To be direct, if you have not adopted the Continuous Feedback process in your organization, you are most likely missing out on creating more moments like the above. If your primary performance management tool is still appraisals, you have very little opportunity to create similar impact. Relying largely on an antiquated, non-specific, disingenuous and untimely method of employee engagement, development and measurement is costing your business. Continuous Feedback and ongoing communication have transformed the workplace with a mechanism that fosters opportunities for stories like the above.
To close, I want to note that on a personal level as a father to two amazing kids, I recognize just how important key relationships and communication are. My kids look to me for so many things: support, leadership, development and encouragement. Do the four items I just mentioned sound like anything else? Just like being a leader in the workplace, all of these items rely on constant communication and feedback to foster growth, encourage learning, development and success. There are so many similarities between personal and professional lives, although we are taught often times to keep them separate. That doesn’t mean though that the skills and processes are not transferable. My challenge to you is this. Are you developing, implementing and fostering processes that can lead to positive impacts on lives? If not, it is definitely time for transformation.
I came across research commissioned by Middlesex University for Work Based Learningthat found from a sample of 4,300 workers, that 74% felt they weren’t achieving their full potential at work due to lack of development opportunities. While this research included workers form a variety of industries, my own conversations with customers and industry leaders indicate a similar failing where project-focused businesses are concerned. Development really should be at the very center of any human capital management strategy – instead we see investment in recruiting without an equal investment in the initiatives that will keep those key leaders and star project players at the top of their game and driving successful outcomes.
Think about it. By acting on a development plan you can impact everything from productivity to the billing rates of your employees. For example, if one of your growth plays includes diversifying your revenue streams by pursuing different types of projects, your development plans should be preparing your employees to meet the new and unique needs of those different contracts.
Want to have a serious impact on your organization? Development plans, when leveraged consistently, can help you to:
Facilitate alignment between your business goals and employee performance and growth
Prevent stagnation in your workforce, which results in increased employee engagement AND improved client satisfaction
Identify the key strengths (and weaknesses) of your employees and course-correct to utilize those strengths or address the gaps
Gain the competitive edge that you need to win the next contract or project by keeping your workforce on the cutting edge of your industry
Attract even more great talent by cultivating a development culture that helps establish your employer brand in the talent marketplace
Let’s assume for a second that you’re convinced, how and when do you start creating and implementing development plans? In short, the day your employees walk through the door for their first interview. After all, you learn key information that can help inform the earliest version of a new hire development plan during the interview process, so why wait?
It’s not as difficult as you might think to get started and the pay-off will be significant. Here are 5 tips to help you kick off the process:
#1 Define (and understand) your business strategy
Whether your business is in a growth phase or is staying relatively stable in size, there are always firm-wide strategies that require employees to stay at the top of their game. Understanding those plays is an important piece of implementing a development planning process for your employees. Aligning strategy with employee development offers a much higher return on your investment and prepares the workforce for the known challenges coming their way.
#2 Get to know your employees
You took the time to define what the business needs from its workforce, now it’s time to talk to your employees. Learn what your employees want from their careers. Take the time to objectively assess (and understand) you employees’ skill level and career aspirations. No assumptions. A star project player may seem like a logical project manager, but maybe they would rather stay an individual contributor. Gaining a basic understanding of who wants what on your team can go a long way toward building development plans that make sense for the employee AND for your business.
#3 Identify potential (and readiness)
Once you understand what types of roles your employees want to move into, it’s time to assess whether they are ready for their next step. Readiness is about more than general skills and experience. Every seasoned manager had to start somewhere, but I think most of us would admit that those first couple of years as a manager were some of the most difficult. A dose of humility and a growth mindset are also important indicators of readiness when it comes to moving an employee into a leadership position for the first time in their career, for example.
#4 Development is about more than certifications
Many of the industries we serve have very credentialed workforces, so tracking and maintaining the certifications, licenses, and even security clearances needed can be a handful. Regardless of tenure, career path, or level within your business, your employees need so much more than certification tracking. Start your development plans during onboarding, and leverage them throughout the employee life cycle to address gaps, and to prepare employees for stretch projects and growth.
#5 Create plan, measure success, adjust and repeat
A development plan is not a static thing. It is absolutely NOT something that you create once and leave on a shelf for the remainder of the employee’s tenure with the company. Development plans should be fluid and reflective of the changing needs of your employees. If you are executing your development plans, than your employees are constantly growing out of them. That is as it should be. As an employee progresses, their aspirations may change and the skills and competencies required for advancement may change, too. Be prepared to keep that dialogue open and continuous; then adjust and repeat the process.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Development plans aren’t just about creating leaders; they are about supporting your employees in their own aspirations and providing a framework that makes them successful. The success of your employees is your success. As your employees mature in their roles and feel your support, they’ll take on those stretch projects and become even more skilled. You’ll end up with a culture of development; a workforce full of people with a growth mindset. You will have cultivated the leaders, the innovators, and the integral contributors your company needs to build a long-lasting legacy of growth.
A multitude of research points to the fact that the majority of firms don’t have a viable succession planning strategy. This is really problematic when combined with some of the other trends we’re seeing. Baby boomers are continuing to leave the workforce, employee engagement continues to challenge most organizations and retention rates are falling. If you aren’t doing succession planning, how are you coping with the changing face of your workforce as older workers transition to retirement? How are you addressing the high turnover rates becoming increasingly common across so many industries?
The churn caused by leadership turnover is only one part of the issue. You need to be prepared for all types of turnover in order to keep your projects running smoothly. Have you ever lost a really key employee in the middle of a project? You probably have at some point, and if that’s the case then you know how disruptive it can be. Over-burdened and over-utilized team members will feel the strain, and if you don’t have succession plans in place, you could be adding to an already difficult situation.
So, why are we losing these key employees and what can be done to keep them? Well, although there could be a number of contributing factors, one of the most common reasons associated with the departure of top performers is a lack of career development.
What is Succession Planning?
Succession planning helps you identify and develop employees with the potential to fill key business and leadership positions within the company. Succession planning increases the availability of experienced and capable employees that are prepared to assume these roles as they become available. From recruiting the right candidate to developing new leadership from within, succession planning is crucial for an organization to meet its strategic vision and goals.
Are You Committing Any of the Seven Deadly Sins? Let’s See.
Sin #1 – You Set It and Forget It
This sin quickly results in outdated plans and inappropriate strategies. People may still leave the company, availability of employees on the plan may change, and employees may gain new skills or experience. The company could undergo major change, like a merger or acquisition. There is a fluidity to business strategy that should be reflected in your people planning.
Plans should be reviewed at least yearly and whenever changes in company direction or goals are made. When you review plans, ensure the potential successors are still viable by taking a look at your top performers, reviewing employment records, and watching out for new talent that might be a good fit.
Sin #2 – You Have No Backup Plan
The second sin happens when your plans are too narrow. If your plans only include one person and that person leaves, this can put you in a difficult position. Neglecting to create a backup plan restricts your ability to adjust to workforce changes.
When you review your plans, check for backup successors, and if none exist, identify some. Re-evaluate the backup employees as you complete your regular reviews of succession plans.
Sin #3 – You Fail To Develop Successors
Once a plan is setup, it’s time to provide development opportunities to your successors. Get them ready to be successful in the potential new roll. Failing to tie your succession planning to development strategy has plenty of consequences. What happens when an employee is promoted to a leadership role that they aren’t prepared for? A weak leader can have a very negative impact on team culture. Weak leadership can also erode workforce confidence. And for the potential successors, being moved into a role they are unprepared for is an extremely negative experience.
Analyze an employee’s skills, competencies and experiences, and look for resources, such as training courses or mentoring programs, to support those needs. Review the employee’s career path and consider lateral moves that could aid in your planning.
Sin #4 – No Manager Involvement
Managers know their employees and interact with them on a regular basis, and by leaving them out you are overlooking a good source for information.
Effective succession planning includes managers. Give them a voice and take their feedback into consideration. This tactic not only broadens your search, but fosters engagement. Both managers and team members feel they have a voice and are represented in the company’s planning. It also helps managers at the team level by keeping them in touch with who is being considered for succession.
Sin #5 – You Fail to Consider Your Entire Workforce
If you only look at your identified high potential employees, you may miss hidden talent because in many cases they are typically evaluated on the basis of ‘fit’ for their current position without broadening the discussion to include other roles in the organization. Larger organizations in particular may have “unknown” employees who should be considered – the greater the number of employees, the harder it becomes to ensure you are considering all of the right people.
So, make sure you look across the company’s entire workforce. Be sure to consider all important criteria, not just current skills, competencies and history. Look at employee goals and manager recommendations. Do any employees have a career path in place that is already providing training opportunities ideal for the succession plan? Enlist help to discover talent throughout organization – again, give your managers and other key company employees a voice.
Sin # 6 – You Fail to Consider the Employee’s Needs
This sin can lead to engagement and retention issues, in addition to poor job satisfaction. It’s all about communication. You can’t create, implement, and maintain a succession plan in a vacuum. Your ideal candidate to become the next CEO may have very different priorities in mind for life and/or career.
Listen to what your employees say they want. This encourages engagement, positively impacts attrition rates, improves job satisfaction, contributes to overall business success, and demonstrates support for employees’ goals & aspirations.
Sin #7 – You Keep Employees in the Dark
If employees are not aware that there are opportunities available for them within the organization, they may look outside the company. This can lead to lack of engagement, which affects the bottom line. It may not always make sense to provide the full picture to a potential successor, but it is in your best interest to involve them to the degree that you deem appropriate.
There is a lot of debate on how involved employees should be in succession planning, but ultimately, not involving them can have negative consequences. By telling employees they are on a plan, you show that you are considering their long-term involvement at the company and driving awareness that can motivate self-development. You can never go wrong with more communication.
We get a lot of questions about engaging and retaining talent and in particular, millennial talent. Taking a good look at your performance management process can be a great place to gain some ground with your younger workers. A renewed focus on meaningful and timely feedback can go a long way toward improving your firm’s appeal to this generation. Keep in mind, however, that the desire for impactful feedback does not exclusively belong to a particular generation. All of your employees will benefit from continuous feedback cycles.
Getting started with continuous feedback can be overwhelming, especially since it is often a big departure from more traditional methods of managing performance. That being said, it’s also a very worthwhile investment whether you pair continuous feedback with existing appraisal cycles or switch to an entirely different methodology for managing performance.
Your organization, like many, may use one-to-one sessions informally, but you could be missing the opportunity to realize the results and outcomes typically associated with continuous feedback cycles. Detailed records and notes can help both managers and employees stay accountable to one another and drive even greater goal achievement. The ability to easily recall and refer to previous conversations can make a huge difference to employees and managers in the middle of an appraisal cycle. When you utilize the continuous feedback capabilities in Deltek Talent Management, you will have this information at your fingertips.
Continuous Feedback Records in Brilliant Talent Management allow you to refer to previous discussions.
Managers and employees can both view details and notes from prior sessions.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at some best practices to help you take your first big steps forward. An initial focus on training will set your organization up for success by ensuring that both managers and employees understand the short- and long-term purpose of feedback sessions. Since most of the work will happen between individual employees and their managers, it is especially important to create some excitement and buzz around this new methodology.
Here are 5 key points to emphasize when you begin training your workforce to implement Continuous Feedback:
There should be clear reasons why the meetings are being held
Create an agenda and set goals for the meeting
Never meet just for the sake of meeting or to check a box
Keep employees engaged by asking them to drive
Give employees some control over their goals, development, and outcomes
Deltek Talent Management can enable both the preparatory steps and the effective execution of continuous feedback sessions. Managers will be able to schedule and add notes or files with the solution to allow the employee to prepare for the upcoming session.
Sessions can be scheduled, accepted, or declined within the solution. Add notes when the session is created to help both parties prepare for the meeting.
When a session is taking place, start by reviewing the purpose of the meeting, along with prior meeting notes, keys wins and noteworthy challenges since the previous meeting. Spend some time on progress toward development and goals that have been previously established. Part of this discussion may focus on past concerns, issues and lessons learned, but the larger focus should be around how to move forward, and what future goals should be.
Look to new project assignments for opportunities to create future goals that stretch performance to a new level. Also, take the time to understand where the employee wants to go in the organization. Are there ways that current or future projects can help prepare the employee for a new direction or even a new role in the organization? At the end of the session, make sure to review the topics that have been discussed, along with action items, takeaways, and expectations of progress before the next meeting.
Conducting these meetings face-to-face, as much as possible, will help your managers and employees build the solid and trusting relationships necessary to be truly effective during these discussions. And, make sure that you do this for all employees, including those that work remotely. Making use of video conferencing solutions can help you make certain that all employees receive the same treatment regardless of where in the world they work.
Here are an additional 5 tips to share with your managers to help ensure that their sessions are as impactful as possible
Be on the receiving end more than the giving end
Be ready only to steer, like assisting from the front passenger seat, rather than doing everything for the employee
Practice active listening with the intent to understand, not just waiting for your turn to talk
Use the time to build and strengthen relationships
Energize and motivate employees by making sure each session is personalized to the employee – know your employees and make sure they get what they need from the sessions.
The issue at hand is essentially this…”we aren’t getting it done.” Who makes up this proverbial “we” and what aren’t we getting done? Well, “we” refers to HR and management / leadership, and we are not getting it done when it comes to employees’ needs relevant to development and performance management. Let me restate that. Maybe we are listening, but we are failing to act. I have seen so many credible sources post so much significant data on this topic. Notably, here are just a few statistics that underscore the issue:
A recent Gallup study indicates that only 21% of employees strongly agree their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work.
Gallup also indicates that only 15% of employees strongly agree the leadership of their organization makes them enthusiastic about the future.
A recent Mercer study indicates that 78% of employees would remain longer with their employer if they saw a career path with their current organization. (Ummm, If? Meaning they don’t see it? Yikes!)
In a Deltek study, we note problematically that 95% of terminations are voluntary. While we know some voluntary turnover can be positive, by and large, we aren’t getting it done. We are hemorrhaging good talent daily.
A joint HR.com/Deltek study informs us that succession & career development planning, employee engagement, retention, performance management and learning are five of the top six issues keeping HR up at night.
…So now that you are tired of the data, what are we going to do about this issue?
Many of the issues we face at work are no different than those in our personal lives. If we aren’t being attentive enough at home, we need to step up and do something about it. In fact, when we know about issues and fail to act, it is viewed even more unfavorably because it becomes an “I/we don’t care” issue rather than just something of which we may not be aware. How does that make people in our personal lives or in our workplaces feel?
One of the most overlooked aspects of employee development (and showing that we are attentive, we care and are paying attention to employees’ needs) starts right in the interview process. Too often, we are either rushing the process just to fill a seat, or are only asking questions that help us determine if someone is a good fit “now”. Many of us are taking time to ask thoughtful interviewing questions regarding things that could really enhance our ability to engage or retain employees. Unfortunately, although we are noting them in interview logs and notes, they are immediately forgotten and not put to use. If we are asking the right questions in the interview, candidates are giving us the answers to the test. What’s the test, you ask? It’s whether or not we can rise to the challenge of putting a great program/strategy in place that is tailored towards meeting the varying needs of our employees, and facilitating their continued growth and development.
If someone is communicating their needs to us in our personal lives, with thought and attention, we can discern what needs to be addressed. We can use communication and interpersonal connection principles that allow us to specifically address the needs. Now, with that said, we need to be honest. We do our best to meet needs; however, we cannot be who we are not, or we will burn significant energy, create resentment, and harm relationships. Let’s apply this to interviews and employment. These needs/desires given in answer format in interviews are hopefully what we can support from a cultural or management perspective in our organizations. We cannot feign these items in order to “fill a seat” or we will end up with turnover, resentment, and a poor reputation in the market. This poor reputation will cause less attraction to our workplace, and drive down engagement and retention.
Career aspirations, short and long-term career development, motivational factors, skill and competency gaps, preferred learning styles and management, as well as cultural desires are key needs that can be uncovered in interviews. Powerful, thoughtful questions on these topics can guide us in our decision making on whether a candidate is both a fit “now” and potentially long-term. As we push through these powerful questions, as noted earlier…we now have the answers to the test. We know who our candidates and new hires are, and what we need to do to successfully foster effective performance management and development processes.
As we onboard these new hires, we have critical pieces of information to assist us in driving effective onboarding development plans. You have valuable information regarding:
Skill and competency gaps for the initial role, and how the employee envisions bridging the gap quickly
Preferred learning style and how they best implement learning and knowledge gains
Preferred frequency, style and methods for receiving feedback
Understanding of what motivates them to succeed and what you can do to incentivize them
Cultural and environmental needs
Much of this same information can be used for long-term development plans for advancement, gap and growth development and ultimate role career-pathing. You know how your employees work best, in what culture, what you can do as a manager to facilitate their development, how they consume and best implement learning, how you can best coach/motivate them, etc. Employees today, by and large, are looking for their roles to be developmental. Gain, grow, move forward (not necessarily up, but onto new challenges). The ability for HR leadership to acknowledge this and have a strategy is critical, and you will find that powerful interviewing will be the key to initiating and igniting the entire process.
Recently, I heard a commercial from Indeed.com. The ad was aimed at candidates, not employers, and focused on the ways Indeed can help candidates find the best employer. Candidates now have more choices than ever before. A growing abundance of remote and freelance work in many professions means that geography is no longer a restriction and workers have more flexibility when choosing work.
The way we search for jobs has changed. Websites like Indeed.com, Salary.com, and Glassdoor.com all help candidates research the culture, salaries, benefits, and reputation of companies they are considering before filling out an application. Candidates (and often, your existing employees) are armed with more information and are using it to be selective.
In this new employment landscape, what can firms do to adapt to this changing employer-employee relationship? Start by assessing your existing Human Capital Management Strategy and begin thinking about how to integrate technology.
Here are three key places you can integrate technology to have a big impact on your firm’s talent:
Acquisition & Onboarding
When treated as a strategic function, talent acquisition can have a profound effect on your ability to influence company culture, establish an employer brand, and ultimately make your firm more attractive to prospective candidates.
Organizations typically just don’t have the bandwidth to achieve this without the support of an applicant tracking system (ATS). An ATS can free your organization from the repetitive, administrative tasks associated with recruiting, which can make it difficult to provide a top-notch applicant experience.
An applicant’s experience during the interview process can be the difference between a great candidate accepting your offer or going to the competition. But even after an offer letter is signed, much more needs to happen to reaffirm that choosing your company was a wise decision.
Onboarding is a critical first step in the employee lifecycle, but few organizations have a thorough strategy in place to integrate new hires into the company in a way that supports retention and engagement. When you create an onboarding strategy that includes your new hires’ needs and integrates collaborative planning for development, you’ll set your employees on a path toward long-term engagement and success within the company.
Post-Hire Professional Development
Talent acquisition is one of the most expensive business processes in any organization. It’s time to start talking about how to reduce acquisition costs by investing in post-hire human capital management initiatives that develop and retain existing employees.
Your employees want opportunities to develop and tend to stay with an organization longer when this investment is made. Unlike throwing additional funds at the acquisition process, spending on learning initiatives for your workforce is mutually beneficial for employers and employees. Increasing employee engagement is shown to have very positive effects on business performance. For example, according to recent Gallup research, the behaviors of highly engaged business units result in 21% greater profitability. It’s worth noting that not every resource problem in your organization is an acquisition problem. Sometimes the problem may be repetitively hiring for the same role or a failure to identify the next great leader. Most of the time, due to manual processes, businesses can struggle to predict future needs and end up scrambling.
According to multiple bodies of research, including Deltek’s own Clarity surveys, many organizations have a partial succession plan in place, but the majority are not prepared for expected or unexpected turnover. Whether the role is a leadership position or an important individual contributor, thorough succession plans are a must to help businesses weather the churn created by employee turnover.
It’s not enough for succession plans to live inside the brain of a single individual. By using the latest succession planning tools available through your talent management software, you can develop, maintain, and test succession plans to ensure that future leaders are ready to advance when you need them most.
Tracking Key Performance Indicators
Even less data-driven companies are beginning to track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to talent management–but the problem is that many are not tracking the right metrics.
Some metrics, like voluntary and involuntary turnover rates, are really just numbers. They fail to provide companies with the information needed to craft, implement and measure a more effective human capital management strategy.
Using a talent management solution to track metrics like Time to Start, Lead Time to Billable, and Talent Acquisition Sourcing Channel, your company will generate more sophisticated and actionable insights. Here is a closer look:
Time to Start: the amount of time it takes to bring a new hire on board from the moment the position is first publicized. This KPI determines the overall success of your acquisition strategy.
Lead Time to Billable: use this metric to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the onboarding process. The more quickly a new hire is assigned to billable project work, the sooner that employee is contributing to revenue.
Talent Acquisition Sourcing Channel: how effective are the job boards and social media sites on which you advertised open positions? By monitoring this metric, you will be able to determine which sources are the most effective for specific job categories and for your organization more generally.
Using technology to help you track, benchmark, and eventually predict metrics will help HR professionals to position human capital management as a strategic cornerstone for their organization.
Key Takeaways
For most organizations, a lack of integrated technology bogs down HR with administrative work and limits time for value-added activities such as strategic talent acquisition, retention and development. It prevents HR from being seen as a key contributor to strategic planning by limiting the analytics and insights they can provide at the executive level.
HR needs to partner with other functions within the organization, such as IT and Finance, to develop and then implement an HR technology roadmap. Human capital management solutions are the most powerful when they are integrated with the existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions used by your organization. All of the above challenges can be addressed and improved by the effective use of digital human capital management solutions.
