Bersin & Associates Analyst Updates

Working for Free in Today’s Economy: Dedication or Desperation?

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:08:00 PDT

Working for Free in Today’s Economy: Dedication or Desperation?

Not too long ago, job candidates were in a position of power: we had a “war for talent.” Many companies were looking for creative ways to recruit the best of the best by offering “freebies”…free food, free vacations, free country club memberships, free day care, free gym memberships, free movie tickets….you name it.

The tides have shifted. In today’s recession the very same companies that were providing lavish incentives are now asking talented employees to work for free. Yes, free. This concept may seem outrageous to some but judging by the large number of individuals eager and willing to participate, employers are now holding the position of power.

How Are Today’s Companies Recruiting Employees to Work for Free?

• Jobnob: This salary board is now offering regional “happy hours”, a way for unemployed to connect with employees and well, work for free. Startups spend a few hours and a few bucks buying drinks for potential candidates and then offering them 5-10 hours of work at their respective companies. The first event had over 300 people. John Gray, blogger for the Wall Street Journal, refers to this as “prelancing”. He attended and was even recruiter by Jobnob to work for free and enhance his online marketing skills.

• British Airways: As airlines continue to lose revenue and cut jobs, it has asked 40,000 employees to work for free for the month of July. Leading this effort is BA’s Chief Executive, who will forgo his $100,000/month salary next month. As British Airways is learning, it is one thing to ask job seekers actively looking for opportunities to work but to ask current employees currently receiving salaries is a different ballgame. While a few hundred employees have volunteered to follow this request, the majority would prefer unpaid leave or part-time work.

• Google: A company that at one time offered many of the free perks listed above, Google is now asking illustrators to work for free. Unlike British Airlines struggling to stay afloat, Google can actually still afford to pay its employees. So, why would a quality candidate want to work here for free? Many job seekers are thrilled at this opportunity to not only work for the search engine mega-monster but also to build their skills, contribute work to a thriving company and to feel a sense of pride and social status.

What Do Recruiters Need to Know?

• Just because recruiters are now eliminating the cost per hire factor when does mean they should eliminate their recruiting best practices and processes. A poor hire will still reflect negatively on the company brand and overall productivity of the company. Recruiters need to still treat these employees with the same attention that they would hires receiving compensation.

• Despite massive layoffs, companies are suffering from talent shortages in technical and managerial positions. As many job seekers are looking to change careers, working for free might help to build certain skills and ensure a job in the future. According to Bersin & Associates’ TalentWatch report published in Fall 2008, the greatest talent shortages exist in the areas of:
-Line managers (43 percent of organizations cite severe
or major shortages);
-Executive positions (34 percent of organizations cite
severe or major shortages); and,
-Engineering and technical professionals (cited by 42
percent of organizations, with 14 percent stating their
shortages are urgent).

• What will this mean when reviewing resumes in the future? Does it lower the value of the person’s work or is it seen that they are ambition? Recruiters will need to consider the factors motivating these job seekers to work for free. For individuals such as John Gray, it presents an opportunity to build knowledge and create a new career path.

While this concept of “prelancing” might seem like a tough sell for many recruiters, job seekers are responding favorably. JobNob and Google are seeing a large amount of interest from individuals looking to build skills, self-esteem, and also, create future opportunities. When the economy begins to recover and these prelancing experiences begin to pop up on resumes, recruiters should consider the individual and in most cases, recognize them as a sign of ambition and dedication rather than desperation. And from the standpoint of a job seeker, working for “free” may be one of the most valuable career internships you can find.
Also, we are excited to announce the Talent Acquisition Research an Best Practices Network on LinkedIn (sign up on LinkedIn) and Bersin & Associates’ Talent Acquisition newsletter.
Click here to sign up for the newsletter: http://marketing.bersin.com/TalentAcquisitionAndRetentionAnnouncement.html

The HR and L&D Profession: The Career Factbook for 2009

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:17:00 PDT

How has the Human Resources and Training and Development profession changed in the last few years? What are the real motivations and career paths for people in our profession? How do people move from practitioners to leaders to executives? What are the educational backgrounds of people in our profession? What are the typical compensation ranges one can expect?

Several months ago we set out to study the demographics, career goals, developmental needs, and challenges of people in our profession. We sent out a large, broad industry survey to our research respondents and received more than 1,300 responses. Those who responded shared their personal backgrounds, their career experiences, their goals and motivations, and what frustrates them most about their jobs.

The result is a new research report available at no charge, "The Career Factbook for HR and Learning Professionals." You can download this research at no charge.

This 130+ page report, which we plan to cover each year, will give you personal and professional insights into our profession. While this research is not a salary survey or job hunting guide, I believe it will give you many deep insights into what makes the HR and corporate learning profession work.First, let me preface this by saying that our research found some very interesting things.

HR and L&D professionals are highly motivated by the intrinsic value of their work. While money is a motivator in their profession, they find far greater satisfaction by their ability serve and help others, transform their own organization, and find unique ways to motivate, align, and develop people. Professionals in the staffing and recruiting part of the profession are much more financially motivated than those in other areas of HR - but even they are less motivated by money than one may expect.
Each of the disciplines of HR and L&D has its own deep levels of expertise and experience. While people often move from role to role during their careers, some of the most satisfied and successful HR professionals tend to focus in one particular area for a long period of time. Some leverage this experience to move into leadership and executive ranks, but many decide to stay as professionals and have highly satisfying and financially rewarding careers as specialists.
There is a distinct break in the skills, areas of expertise, and motivation of those HR and L&D professionals who chose to become true executives from those who chose to become senior practitioners and program leaders. Our research found that true HR and L&D executives are very business-oriented, focused far more heavily on business-related challenges and issues, and function far more like "business leaders" than pure "HR or L&D leaders."
HR and L&D professionals are a fairly satisfied group. Even though many are suffering from very challenging business conditions, our research showed that job satisfaction rises steadily with experience (young HR and L&D professionals find the role very challenging) and they become very satisfied and happy with their career in their older years. Of course those who do not like the profession typically leave, but in the case of our research the average tenure was over 6 years, so these people have all had time in this profession.
The profession is a highly educated group. Our respondents were very highly educated: 34% of our respondents have a Bachelors degree, 51% have a Masters degree, and 7% have PhDs. In this profession education leads to job satisfaction: the more highly educated professionals are actually the happiest (but not necessarily the best paid).
HR and L&D professionals salaries grow fairly consistently over time. In our sample group we found that average compensation ranges almost linearly with experience from $67,381 for people with 2-5 years of experience to $115,200 for people with 15 or more years of experience. Managers can expect to earn 7% greater than non-managers, Directors can expect to earn 42% more than managers, and Vice-Presidents and other executives can expect to earn 25-30% more than Directors. As you will read in the study, the biggest single driver of earnings is actually level: once HR and L&D professionals reach the Director level or higher, their earnings go up significantly.
There two, equally satisfying, types of career paths in this profession. One, we would call the "professional" track, enables professionals to gain expertise in their subject area and grow from practitioner to senior practitioner to program leader to what we call the "HR or L&D Master." These "Masters" often become consultants, they write books, or they take on very important roles in corporations and other organizations.

The other track is the managerial and executive track. Here HR and L&D professionals take a more traditional approach to growing into manager, Director, and VP roles. In this profession there is a major narrowing of opportunities at the Director and VP level and our research shows that people who succeed at these levels doso because they have deep levels of domain expertise in at least one HR or L&D domain. "General managers" do not seem to function well in HR.
The biggest frustration for HR and L&D profesionals is not necessarily lack of resources (although that is clearly an issue), but rather working in teams or organizations that do not value their work. The single biggest career and job frustration cited in this research is "lack of support and input from business leaders." That is, HR and L&D professionals want to be respected and valued by their customers (the business leaders they support). When the organization or leadership does not give them this support, money or professional development does not generally improve their engagement.
HR and L&D professionals are "learners" by nature. The research clearly shows that people in this profession know that there are no real "perfect" ways to do anything - and in fact they are very highly motivated by opportunities to learn, share with each other, and improve their own professional skills.

I will be conducting a webinar on this topic in July, we encourage you to join us if you would like to hear more - and of course we are very interested in your own personal experiences and comments on this research. This research was a bit of a new thing for us - but we felt this data would be highly valuable for people at all ranges of experience in this important profession.

As difficult as the business world is today, this research once again reaffirms that our profession is one of hard-working, highly motivated, educated people who take their jobs very seriously and greatly want to contribute to their organizations' success.

Experimenting with Social Software Just Got Easier

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:15:00 PDT

Here is some potentially welcome news for any individual training departments out there (or small businesses) who have considered diving into enterprise social software for social and collaborative learning or otherwise, but have held off so far due to financial contraints. SocialText - a leading enterprise social software platform provider - just announced last week that they would now be offering fully SaaS access to their platform (up to 50 users) for free. No strings attached. Their hope is that giving away access at this level will let departments within organizations feel comfortable experimenting with their platform. When and if adoption catches on, it will be easier to prove a business case for either purchasing a larger SaaS account or transitioning to an on-premise appliance.

The version of the platform included with this offer is not stripped down feature-wise, although it is somewhat restricted. Users have access to one wiki workspace including blogging tool, a portal-style dashboard, and SocialText's social networking and corporate micro-blogging (think Twitter) functionalities. A paid version would add access to create unlimited wiki workspaces, access to SocialText's new social spreadsheet tool: SocialCalc, and - of course - tech support.

In our reviews of their product, we've found it to be very compelling. They certainly don't have the corporate user base of Atlassian's Confluence product, but they have still managed to create a name for themseves in the enterprise wiki space. They have been very sucessful at putting a user-friendly face onto the underlying wiki technology. We at Bersin & Associates have been slowly implementing a wiki as our intranet and collboration platform for a few months now. And our experience so far has shown that bringing the real power of the wiki to the employee population at large while navigating around the learning curves assocaited with wiki notation and macros can be very challenging. SocialText has tried to solve this issue by making as much of the functionality visually managed as possible.

Figure 1: Social Calc

Source: SocialText, 2009.

If this offer has you intrigued, and you think you just might start experimenting with blending social learning and collaboration into your programs, let us know. We are always looking for additional tales from the field, and we might be able to help as well.

-David

You Cut Costs: Now Build a Long Term Roadmap

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:36:00 PDT

This week we met with the head of L&D from a large financial services institution. This company, like many others, has just completed a wrenching reorganization and redesign of its global learning organization to save money. In this particular case the company is also integrating the L&D teams from several acquired companies.

(I know this will sound familiar to many of you.)

We discussed the organization structure, governance, use of shared services, technology strategy, business alignment, and measurement strategy. The new Federated model (actually built around our High Impact Learning Organization® research), is very well designed and has strong senior leaders in place. In fact this particular organization, like many very large companies, has assigned multiple "CLOs" who work hand-in-hand with the business leaders in each major line of business.

As we discussed the rapid transition which had taken place and the tremendous cost savings the company had achieved, the learning executive mentioned that senior leadership wants to know "what's next." In fact, I have heard this comment from many of our clients: the L&D team undergoes a major transformation with the goal of reducing costs and building better alignment, but in the process did not build a long term roadmap.

Since many of our client organizations and readers are in this precise stage of evolution, let me give you some thoughts here, so you can make that while you deal with the near-term issues of consolidation and cost reduction you also start to build a long term roadmap as well.

1. L&D transformations take years, and go on forever. The first thing I want to reinforce is that L&D, like other areas of HR, must be continuously transformed.

There are two real reasons for this: external and internal. Externally, the L&D organization must continuously transform itself to deal with new technologies, demographic changes in the workforce, new learning modalities and approaches, new skill sets and disciplines, and new research in HR. Internally, of course, every time the company embarks on a new strategy, you must quickly adapt.

High Impact Learning Organizations like the Defense Acquisition University, Caterpillar, and others are reinventing themselves continuously. So one of your jobs as an L&D leader is to build and regularly update your 3-4 year roadmap. And this roadmap, as I will show you, should include organization, governance, tools, technology, processes, measurement, and business planning areas.

2. Your transformation will likely go through four stages:

A) Building efficiencies: initially you must design and implement an organization which is efficient. Most companies, during their growth periods, spawn training and development teams all over. Small training development and delivery groups appear in sales geographies, manufacturing plants, customer services groups, and other functions. Leadership development, management development, and technical development teams work independently. Many vendors are hired and many technologies are purchased. And the whole function becomes complex, costly, and somewhat un-aligned. So in most L&D transformations the first goal is to "save money," build a highly efficient model, and put in place processes which maintain and continuously improve efficiency.

(Remember, L&D is a cost center, regardless of what great work you do.)

B) Developing an Enterprise Learning Strategy: The second phase of the roadmap is building a true enterprise learning strategy. This rather grandiose phrase means standardizing the governance model, making sure business leaders have fully visiblity into plans and budgets, putting strong business alignment in place, defining the true learning priorities in the company, and implementing what we call a "learning architecture."

The "learning architecture," which we discuss in detail in The High Impact Learning Organization and upcoming High Impact Learning Practices® research, is your organization's constrained set of design criteria, tools, and program elements to deliver learning solutions. Will you build training that uses Second Life? How will you implement informal learning? What forms of collaboration will you adopt? How will you run and operationalize instructor-led training and when will you use it? What techniques will we use for performance consulting? How will we measure our programs.

There are many aspects to this topic - and the key is to try to standardize your tools, approaches, and then underlying disciplines.This whole area takes time, and we often work with companies on an advisory basis to help you make these important decisions, benchmark your approaches against other organizations, and implement the solutions.

C) Focus and Integrate Learning into Business Strategies: The third phase of a long term roadmap involves the integration of L&D into broader business strategies.

How will you embed learning into specific business strategies in each business unit? How will you build deep skills and specialization? How will you integrate L&D programs with talent management strategies? How will you support or build career development models? What are the "critical talent pools" in the organization and where can you put more money to generate the greatest return?

In this phase you may find the organization refocusing resources on a few major projects: revamping the first line leadership model (one of the 7 Keys to Transformative Change in my IMPACT keynote); building a deep skills assessment and specialization program (another of the 7 Keys); or perhaps implementing a very strategic measurement program which measures learning adoption, utility, effectiveness, and culture.

D) Building Executive Support and a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Finally, the fourth and most interesting phase in the evolution is something you must do all along - but often does not happen for a few years: you elevate the L&D function to a senior role in the organization, and you make sure you are considered and involved in all major business decisions in the company.

This stage is highly dependent on your own leadership and ability to affect change in your own team.Our research here shows that companies who reach this stage have very strong learning leaders and can "endure" rapid and massive changes in the company in-tact. Textron, for example, has such a strong investment in corporate learning that the COO sits on the advisory board of the corporate university. The Textron L&D function is highly integrated with HR, yet also leads the business-unit L&D strategies throughout the company.

The Specific Roadmap Issues you Should Address

But within this broad context, what really belongs in the long term roadmap? Let me list a few of the things we discussed with this particular company:

Implementing a standard measurement strategy - one which not only delivers actionable information to the L&D team but also gives senior leaders a "dashboard" they can use to evaluate and advise you over time.

Implementing a sound technology strategy - are you in the middle of an LMS implementation or upgrade? How will the system integrate with talent management? Will you have an informal or social learning platform?

Implementing an informal learning strategy - how will you build on-demand, social, and embedded learning into your programs? What coaching models will you use? How will you transform and update instructional design to meet today's organizational learning needs? And how will you standardize these approaches?

Developing a deep skills strategy and underlying competency models - as we discuss in much of our new research, today's enduring organizations focus on depth. How and where will you build deep competency based learning programs, how will you build them, and how much of this will be shared across the organziation?

Developing a career development strategy - High Impact Learning Organizations are more than three times likely to have some form of career models in the organization. Do you need to revamp, improve, or implement career develpment models in various organizations? How will this integrate with talent management and development planning strategies?

Developing a global learning strategy - How will you standardize your globalization processes?What tools, approaches, and strategies can you build and standardize to support the global needs of the organization?

Developing a We-learning strategy - how will you implement knowledge sharing in the organization? What forms of social learning and collaborative approaches and tools will you need?

I could go on and on. As you can see from this article, there are many exciting things to work on, and our research will help you understand these areas.Ultimately, building a long term roadmap must be your "next step." It will build internal alignment, engagement in your team, and executive support. And as I mentioned in the very beginning of this article, once you go through this process, you can interate and revise it on a regular basis.

The economy has been a challenge for nearly all L&D and HR organizations today. Remember that as you work to save money and reduce inefficiencies, you must also look ahead and build for the future. I hope these thoughts help you through this important part of building an enduring High Impact Learning Organization.

Measuring the Health of Online Communities - Lithium's Community Health Index

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:57:00 PDT

I recently had a briefing with the folks at Lithium, an enterprise social software platform provider that specializes in customer communities. During the conversation, they introduced me to a very intriguing way of capturing the health of a corporate community.

Lithium has recently turned their experience and expertise with online communities into a publically available tool for measuring the health of online communities: the Community Health Index. They compare this index to well known measures like the FICO score and Body Mass Index (BMI). Their hope is that the Community Health Index will become an industry standard way of measuring and predicting vibrant communities. Companies can use the index and it’s metrics to diagnose where the community needs the most help and then measure efforts over time. Since its release last year, they have already seen references to the tool showing up in public discussions, in prospect RFPs, and even with a few competitors.

You can take a look at their whitepaper here.

Lithium used aggregate data from a decade’s worth of community activity (15 billion actions and 6 million users) to identify key measures of a community’s health:

- Growth = Members (registrations)
- Useful = Content (post and page views)
- Popular = Traffic (visits)
- Responsivess (speed of responsive of community members to each other)
- Interactivity = Topic Interaction (depth of discussion threads taking into account number of contributors)
- Liveliness (tracking a critical threshold of posting activity in any given area)

The data behind these metrics has been validated and normalized for customer communities, but I think these most of these same metrics are transferable to internal enterprise communities as well with a few exceptions. If nothing else, I think corporate community managers such as those responsible for social learning environments like those at SUN and British Telecom would likely agree that capturing similar data for their internal communities would be a valuable way of measuring their overall health.

Growth as measured my new registrations may not be applicable, however system usage as a percentage of total employees (depth of adoption by the employee base) would be a useful stand-in. Stickiness, or the degree to which employees come back regularly might also be a helpful equivalent.
Useful content is just as important for internal communities.

In internal communities, Useful could be measured by page views, as Lithium does, or by ratings, or by Kirkpatrick-type level 1 surveys: which content is useful to you in your job?

Measuring the Popularity of the community would in itself be similar to a Kirkpatrick level 1 evaluation: people will go where they find value.

Responsiveness is highly important within internal communities. It speaks both to how helpful the site will be to employees and to how engaged they are with the community overall.

Interactivity can be directly transferred, and would be a useful way for internal community managers to gauge what an employee community’s social learning needs are. Of course, where community elements are built around pushed formal learning, peaks and valleys in Interactivity may be more related to timing of corporate initiatives and less to community health. The key would be to look for sustained interactivity outside of periods of prescribed activity.

Like Interactivity, Liveliness is directly transferable, but also subject to affect by corporate directives.

Lithium has used their data to create a visual map of what different types of health customer communities look like. Internal communities could use the same metrics, however what healthy means and looks like will likely be very different. Only further time and data will tell…

What are your thoughts? To all you corporate community managers out there, are you attempting to measure your communities using the CHI? If yes, we want to hear about it. Comments please.

-David

Questions on Informal Learning and the Future of Corporate Training

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:16:00 PDT

At the end of this month we will be releasing our important new study on the future of corporate training:

High Impact Learning Practices: The Operating Guide to the Modern Enterprise Learning Function.

It is a companion piece to our High Impact Learning Organization study. This report is the result of 9 months of investigation into how modern High Impact Learning Organizations are thriving in the face of the tranformative forces for change in today's organizations and evolving to meet the chaning needs of their workforces.

I have had the pleasure of presenting highlights of our findings to the learning organizations in several companies recently, including Booz Allen Hamilton and Dell.

The folks at Booz Allen Hamilton submitted a few questions to me afterwards which I would like to share my answers to here:

Are communities of practice a common element of the (social) learning environments/programs in the organizations that you have surveyed?

Yes – although maybe not explicitly named as such. Many of the social learning environments we have studied so far are essentially creating communities of practice (or communites of need) within a given learning audience, although they may not be using that name. The community of practice concept is an excellent source of guidance for the kinds of interactions that you would want to see within a social learning environment. Employees are participating in a community with other employees with like experiences, expertise, and business problems to solve.

The CoP idea is also useful because it helps to remind us that the desired behaviors are not technology-dependent. You can accomplish the same goals through completely in-person events. That’s a valuable lesson to remember as you construct a learning environment. The technology is secondary to the business needs of the employee participants and to the culture of learning in the organization.
How do you create financial incentives for learning environments and reward behavior that encourages knowledge sharing?

Looking at best practices cases in companies like SUN, Best Buy, British Telecom, Qualcomm, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, behaviors are encouraged both explicitly and implicitly. The most obvious encouragement comes by having high profile business leaders and community managers lead by example. These environments are very public, and if key leaders are participating, the best and brightest within the organizatin will get the message and follow along. Employees will see particpation as a way to raise their own profile within the company as a whole, and will be naturally careful to contribute appropriately so as not to harm their reputation.

Of course the community manager role is critical as well. The community manager can instigate and reward activity through seed content, contests, and promotions. The community manager can track participant activity and choose to reward particularly frequent or useful contributions. Some of the technology platforms available to support these environments can assist by helping to track the reputation of users with other users as well as the overall rating of their contributions by the community at large. Your users will tell you who is most helpful to the community at large.

More systemic, some organizations bake the desired behaviors into job profiles and competency sets, so that employees are assessed and reviewed on related activity as part of the organizations performance management and development planning processes. If knowledge sharing is truly important to the organization, make it a core competency.

Lastly, underpinning all of these tactics for encourgaing participation is the culture of learning in the organization. Best practice learning organizations understand that part of their role is to cultivate a belief in knowledge sharing and collaboration across the organization.
How are these environments being put together so as not to impose greater time requirements on employees as they integrate this learning environment into their jobs? In the end the employee is most responsible to get the everyday job done and already feels overwhelmed to keep up and fend for themselves.

This question speaks to a very important design principle for these environments. As much as possible, make access and participation as close to regular behavior as possible. Don’t put these environments out on island that requires special, non-routine actions on the part of the user. In practice, this principle could mean finding a platform that allows users to contribute (both as knowledge seekers and experts) via email instead of logging into the system. It could also mean embedding functional elements of the learning environment (e.g., search, latest posts on a topic, etc.) in systems and portals already in use by the employee population (via web services), again – to avoid requiring the employee to go out of his/her way to contribute.

For experts, find ways to manage their involvement. Some of the technology platforms that support these environments allow for balancing contact requests to experts or community leaders, so that any one expert only gets so many questions or contacts per day/week.

Lastly though, don’t forget that what you are trying to do here is take behaviors that were already happening (interacting with peers to solve business problems) and make them more effective. Spend some time finding out where social learning is already happening, and work to improve it. Ideally – you will not be adding to anyone’s to-do list, just making it easier for them to cross items off of it.
In terms of talent management, what are the metrics that are being used to demonstrate the impact of informal learning?

This is a very important and interesting question. On its face, the goals of informal learning are the same as for formal. So a question back to you would be: what are the metrics that are being used to demonstrate the impact of formal learning? From our research so far, we’ve seen that the same metrics can and should apply to informal approaches. However, because informal is closer to work – and in many cases employees engage in it as a natural consequence of work, we have seen that it tends to force using business metrics more directly than does formal learning.

For instance, if you create a knowledge sharing environment to support your salesforce, the ultimate measures of success for the environment will be: are sales staff selling more? Faster? With better attachment rates? Are they able to put proposals together faster? Do they have quicker access to gathered expertise with regards to overcoming specific objections?

Are these sorts of metrics not why we really do corporate training in the first place?

As for the talent management component, competency assessments are the most logical place to see the long term impact of these environments. If they are working, then you should see increasing competence on the part of employees in those competencies which are truly critical to success.

These were great questions and seem to be on the minds of many organziations trying to get a handle on social and informal learning today. Thanks to Booz Allen for sharing. We address these topics and many more in: High Impact Learning Practices - The Operating Guide to the Modern Enterprise Learning Function. So be on the lookout for it very soon!

-David

7-Eleven’s New and Improved Sourcing Strategy: Will Social Media Replace Job Boards?

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:58:00 PDT

Over the past two years, the Director of Talent Acquisition at 7-Eleven has been working on something that might scare the Monsters and CareerBuilders of the world…actively measuring the effectiveness of job boards. With 128 open positions at their corporate office and plans to expand the number of stores this year, 7-Eleven began to look at the exorbitant $500,000 yearly spend on job boards and ask…”Is this worth it?”

What Results Did He Uncover?

1. Cost per Hire- As cost per hire of the “Big 3” (Monster, CareerBuilder, Yahoo Hotjobs) has continued to skyrocket over the years, 7-Eleven noticed they were paying more with fewer quality results.

2. Quality of Hire- While many high-performing employees are now out of work, 7-Eleven is not receiving quality candidates from job boards. To prove this point, the Director of Talent Acquisition conducted an experiment. He decided to post one job on LinkedIn and the 7-Eleven career site rather than the job boards. In a short period of time, he received 86 quality resumes.

3. Ease of Use- 7-Eleven’s 10 recruiters were suffering from resume overload. On average, they hire 1 new hire for every 147 applicants they receive from job boards. The job boards were creating busy work for recruiters…they needed to cut down on their time to fill.

What is 7-Eleven Planning to Do?

1. Social Media- 7-Eleven is committed to engaging and connecting with candidates through a social media strategy including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

2. Search Engine Optimization- 7-Eleven has already started conversations with their talent acquisition system provider (Peopleclick) about a partnership with Jobs2Web and a search engine optimization strategy. Jobs2Web will also help 7-Eleven to enhance their career site with Web 2.0 functionality such as videos, recruiter pages, and chat.

3. Reduce Number of Job Boards- Social media will not replace the job boards. What it will do is help 7-Eleven decide what job boards to use. CareerBuilder has performed as a true partner with 7-Eleven and creates a more positive candidate experience through Peopleclick RMS’ “Shared Applied” service.

7-Eleven’s question about job boards stirs up a greater debate. Not too long ago, job boards were the latest and greatest recruiting tool around. What happened? Two realities have emerged in today’s talent acquisition environment. To start, companies are placing heavy emphasis on “quality” candidates and the job boards simply are not producing results. Secondly, social media has afforded companies options to expand their reach and improve their brand. Using these strategies, candidates will seek out the employer versus the employer hunting for candidates. We will publish a more in-depth case study on 7-Eleven’s results next month.

Also, we are excited to announce Bersin & Associates’ Talent Acquisition newsletter this month.

Click here to sign up http://marketing.bersin.com/TalentAcquisitionAndRetentionAnnouncement.html

Harvard Business Publishing - Partner Meeting

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:13:00 PDT

Last week I had the privilege of attending Harvard Business Publishing’s Partner Meeting in Boston. The meeting represented over 100 of their clients from top companies around the world. As I listened to the speakers and conversations over the two-day session, a number of key themes emerged.

Cost-cutting
Clearly, there remains a primary focus on leadership development. More than ever, companies recognize that it is their leaders that will enable them to endure through such difficult economic times. With pressures to cut costs (even GE has cut their budget by 10%) companies are re-evaluating their programs and the people that they are sending through them. Instead of sending 100 leaders through a first level leadership program, companies are hand selecting a smaller number of their highest performers and investing in those who have been deemed their “future leaders.”

Virtual and On-demand
Continuing with that theme of cost-cutting is the need to cut and even eliminate travel. Companies are looking for highly sophisticated, engaging online programs that are easily accessible and target specific problem areas. For a long time, online training was perceived as not effective for leadership development. However, companies like HBP are dispelling this belief and compelling organizations to rethink the value of good online learning. By using content from well-renowned professors and thought leaders, and then coupling that with social networking and top-notch virtual facilitation, HBP has created a product that its customers really like.

Customization and Integration
A clear message at this meeting was that cost-cutting does not equal less customization. As a matter of fact, companies, more so, want to make sure that programs are heavily aligned to their business needs. Organizations would rather conduct two highly customized programs that will have an impact on their leaders and on the business instead of five off-the-shelf generic programs that may touch more leaders but have little relevancy to their business.

Further, companies want their solution provider partners to do a better job of integrating its content with the client’s existing content and programs. Instead of the programs being separate, companies want them to feel like they are part of their larger leadership development strategy.

Employee Engagement
Keynote speaker, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, spoke about keeping performance up when business is down. A few years ago, there was what she calls “extreme jobs in good times.” People worked 60 hours per week, had lots of travel, 24/7 access, and a large scope of work. Most people didn’t mind this and even loved their jobs. Today we are coping with these same extreme jobs but in bad times. This is disengaging. Loyalty and trust is down; stress and anxiety is up; and flight risk has increased 25%. Further, companies are looking for the best talent. As a result, the highest performers have the most options and won’t settle for working under negative conditions. They will leave the company for “greener pastures.”

To address engagement, there are a number of things that a company can do, according to Hewlett. Among them are:

Keep lines of communications open
Offer meaningful non-monetary rewards
Develop a fair restructuring process
Recreate pride, purpose and direction

Career Development
Blame it on the economy or blame it on Generation Y, it doesn’t matter - career development is on the tops of minds of employees. Employees are looking to develop themselves in the context of their individual career demands. Therefore, programs have to be designed in a way that employees can build the skill sets for successive positions. Prudential designed a website around two career tracks – a management track and a leadership track. The management track addresses the needs of newer managers, while the leadership track targets senior level managers and executives.

Figure 1: Prudential Career Tracks

The learning tracks are segmented by employee levels and offer learning opportunities via a number of different mediums. They are coded with easy to understand terms such as reading, listening, and watching. Also, learning assets are aligned to specific and current workplace challenges.

I just recently completed a research report on career development, which is due for publication in early July. Is career development an area that your company is focused on today? What are you doing to maintain engagement and trust of your employees in this economic crisis? How has the economy shifted your learning strategy? If you would like to share what you are doing in any of these areas, feel free to send me an email at kim.lamoureux@bersin.com. I’d love to hear about it.

Globalization: A Core Corporate Learning Strategy

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:39:00 PDT

I just completed a presentation at the ASTD (American Society of Training & Development) on best practices in the globalization of L&D programs. Brad Samargya, the CLO of CA and Peter Christensen, the Manager of Corporate Learning at Vestas, joined us - presenting their complete solutions for global technical and onboarding programs.

The session reminded me how important it is to go back to basics in the development and delivery of a training solution. Our High Impact Learning Organization research shows that 56% of all companies (of all sizes) now consider globalization a "key to success" for most of their training programs. The reason, of course, is that organizations of all sizes include employees, contractors, customers, partners, and often resellers in many countries. So rather than consider globalization a "translation" problem or a "conversion" problem, we need to consider it a "design" issue up front.

The "Top 20 Strategies for Globalization" are included in our research library (for members). But let me highlight a few key things which came up in our session at ASTD.

Language translation is the most basic and simple part of globalizing a program.
Most technical employees can read english, so it is not necessary to translate all documention into all languages. Focus translation on soft-skills, marketing elements, and process-related training.
For e-learning programs, to reduce costs of translation consider translating the scripts to audio and video rather than the actual content itself. Many employees would rather read the scripts than listen to a translated version anyway.
Characters, cities, landscapes, and images should be culturally globalized (Vestas created a "virtual world" which mimics China, Europe, Asia, and the US in a slightly neutral form). When a foreign employee starts an online learning program that is clearly "built by corporate" they may discount the content before they start. Examples, case studies, and interactivities should be tested in different cultures to validate that they make sense.
If you do not have a lot of employees in a given country, consider appointing one staff member to translate materials for a workgroup there so they can utilize online programs without the need for expensive translation.
Bandwidth is still not widely available in many areas of China and the far east, so do not assume that all online programs will work correctly without being downloaded to a DVD or CD.
Local delivery and local support is critical to the success of any global program.
Some countries (France was cited), may demand the content translated into their local language, even though they actually use the english version.
Implement a globalization checklist right into your standard design and development process to make sure you aren't reinventing the wheel for each program.
Talk with local country managers about incentives and other related business processes. In China, for example, employees at Vestas expect their training and HR programs to be very individually focused - helping them build their own personal skills. In Denmark, by contrast, employees at Vestas are more interested in training because it's part of the "company culture" - so they appreciate broader incentives to learn.

We live in a global economy with global markets, global problems, and global organizations. The principles we have identified apply to all your talent-related programs, not just training.

Globalization has become a new theme for all Bersin & Associates research, make sure you look through our globalization library to better understand how to globalize all your learning, talent, and HR programs.

How Innovation From Google and Microsoft Can Enhance Your Talent Acquisition Strategies

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:04:00 PDT

In recent years, Google has become the holy grail of any sourcing strategy. It allows recruiters to search for passive candidates, benchmark against competition, and establish a solid company brand through search engine marketing strategies. Furthermore, it has helped companies accomplish all of these goals with hardly any competition. Google seemed to be in a very comfortable position. Well… as the old adage goes “nothing lasts forever”…and forever seemed to end last month with two major shakeups. First, Google decided to up its ante by announcing Google Wave-a real-time collaboration tool that supports a combination of documents and conversations. Secondly, Microsoft has launched Bing in an effort to squash Google’s strong hold on the search market. Big changes. But what will this mean in today’s world of recruiting? The good news is that this innovation is low cost and provides companies looking to make changes with existing recruitment technology strategies with options.

How can Google Wave and Bing enhance your talent acquisition efforts?

Google Wave

Not only can Google Wave offer ways to improve interview strategies, prescreening, and online career fairs (check out Jeff Schwatzman’s blog on the topic http://community.ere.net/blogs/jeffschwartzman/2009/06/google-wave-for-recruiting-what-are-the-possibilit/), it can also improve onboarding strategies. Strategic onboarding is a combination of forms management, tasks management and socialization. While Google certainly does not compete with onboarding technology from providers such as SilkRoad, Peoplclick, iCIMS, Taleo, Enwisen and KMS, it can enhance onboarding efforts through:

• Forms Management: Google Wave’s drag and drop file sharing can help companies share forms with new hires before day one. The real-time foreign language translator can also help companies reach a geographically diverse talent pool.

• Tasks Management: Through improved workflow, Google Wave can alert hiring managers, IT, and necessary employees of a new hires status and allow these individuals to edit and change and information.

• Socialization: Google Wave fosters connection and interactivity- two staples of any socialization strategy. Through instant communication, new hires can feel engaged throughout their first experience with their new employer.

Bing

Microsoft’s $100 million investment in their new search engine, is already beginning to see results. According to Net Applications, in just one week Bing is already accounting for 6% of the search engine market share. Furthermore, it seems to be gaining more and more attention from both job seekers and employers. The bottom line is that Bing provides more accurate searches and can help recruiters narrow their focus on candidates and candidates narrow their focus on specific job hunting. What are some of the differentiators:

• Stronger Search Filter: Bing provides “guided search” capabilities that can help recruiters go beyond their basic search criteria and find those passive candidates without relying on complicated boolean search string logic.

• XRank: This feature allows companies to understand why certain keywords are ranked high or low

Innovation has certainly been the buzz word of the recruiting industry over the past year. Google and Microsoft are continuing this trend with new advancements in communication and search. While it is still too early to tell if Bing will outshine Google, they are certainly offering a viable option in sourcing and recruiting.

We are excited to launch Bersin & Associates' first Talent Acquisition Newsletter this month! You can sign up here to learn about our latest research findings and receive complimentary reports. http://marketing.bersin.com/TalentAcquisitionAndRetentionAnnouncement.html

OutStart and HotLava Software - mLearning is Going Mainsteam

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:54:00 PDT

What do you use your mobile phone for?

Odds are increasing that you use it for much more that simply making phone calls. Today’s mobile devices are now platforms for e-mail, messaging, surfing the web, multimedia entertainment, gaming, personal organization, wayfinding (GPS), and even shopping.

You would be hard pressed to find an area of personal technology experiencing as much intensive innovation right now as in mobile. Mobile devises of all sorts are now ubiquitous. Smartphones and netbooks are changing our expectations of what we can and should be able to access or do – in the palm of our hands and away from our desks. The continuing transition to 3G and then 4G networks will make the distinction between wired and wireless increasingly meaningless.

In the past week, we have seen:

- the announcement of a new version of Apple’s iPhone and a release of a major new software update for it.
- the release of PDA pioneer PALM’s response to the iPhone, the PRE.

At the same time:

- Google continues to grow its open OS for mobile devices: Android
- Research in Motion’s Blackberry devices are as popular with the business world as ever.
- Nokia is still the best selling provider worldwide and their Symbian OS is transitioning to open source.

Given the pace of innovation with mobile devices and their place in today’s business environment, it only makes sense that the use of these devices as a primary means of providing access to on-demand knowledge and learning is becoming mainstream. In many organizations, mobile devices are more prevalent than PCs. It only stands to reason that companies are deciding that m-learning is no longer just something that the high-tech companies can do.

In our ongoing research into the evolution of the modern High Impact Learning Organization™ (High Impact Learning Practices: The Operating Guide for the Modern Enterprise Learning Function will be out later this month!), we have noted a marked increase in the usage and importance of mobile learning (mlearning). In fact, our data shows that the success use of mobile learning as well as podcasting & syndication technologies such as RSS for learning are both indicative of modern, High Impact Learning Organizations. In organizations such as Sun Microsystems, AT&T, the Federal Reserve, several major financial services firms, and several large retailers, mobile devices are being used to distribute both lightweight on-demand information for performance support and internal communications purposes as well as formal, tracked courseware to meet compliance training requirements.

In response we are now seeing activity in the learning provider market as companies move to meet the increased demand for mlearning.

Last year Research In Motion acquired Chalk Media – an early innovator in mobile learning delivery for the Blackberry. Providers such RIM and Apple have been very involved in helping learning industry companies such as Giunti Labs, CertPoint, and Intuition to develop mlearning applications and content for their devices.

Then yesterday Outstart, learning industry veteran and leader in the LCMS and social learning spaces, announced its merger with HotLava Software – a maker of mobile learning content development and distribution technologies.

HotLava brings:

- Hot Lava Mobile Desktop Authoring
- - An easy-to-use desktop authoring tool for building content once for deployment across 98 percent of all mobile phones.
- Hot Lava Mobile Delivery and Tracking
- - Delivers content via WAP or directly to mobile devices.
- - Automatically tracks: who accesses mobile content; how often they access the content; a learner’s ID; and, the scores from surveys and quizzes thus providing feedback to an instructor, learner or even a learning management system.

I recently had a chance to see a demo of HotLava’s development tool in action, and I have to say it is impressive. On its face it resembles most any other desktop e-learning development tool, but it makes developing content within the specialized constraints of mobile delivery much easier. An important plus, it is also device neutral. Each of the thousands of mobile devices out there each bring a unique set of physical and technological requirements that have to met. HotLava’s tool treats different devices as “skins” that can be applied to the developed content. The tool allows you to preview the finished content in a virtual facsimile of each target device.

From Outstart’s press release:
“From executives to yak herders, mobile devices are in the hands of billions of people around the globe,” said Bob Sanregret, CEO of Hot Lava Software. “If forced to choose, people would rather leave their house without their car keys than without their mobile device. Mobile applications have tremendous reach and a vast array of uses; we developed Hot Lava Mobile to serve this incredible market."

After the deals completion, the new company will operate under the Oustart name. Massood Zarrabian continues as CEO and president of OutStart, while Bob Sanregret, CEO of Hot Lava Software, becomes vice president of the OutStart Hot Lava Mobile business unit. OutStart intends to integrate the HotLava technologies with each of its current major platforms, including LCMS (Evolution and ForceTen), social software (Participate), training management (TrainingEdge), and sales readiness (SellingEdge). OutStart will also continue to offer Hot Lava Mobile as a stand-alone solution.

This is the second major round of recent m&a activity for Outstart. The company combined with fellow LCMS provide Eedo Knowledgeware at the end of last summer.

Recent conversations with other providers are confirming what Outstart saw in deciding to do this deal: mobile learning is becoming a major area of growth in the learning industry. What about in your organization? Comments please.

-David

Leading Through Innovation

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:44:00 PDT

Innovation has become an increasingly important competency for executives and leaders at all levels in the company. A big word, innovation instills fear in some companies because they think it infers the permission of irresponsible risk-taking or massive investments. This is a short-sighted view because innovation is indeed only achieved through some risk and investment up front; but the outcome can present a huge cost savings long term.

Today’s economic climate is also driving companies to think and act differently, and change is even more constant than before. Speed-to-innovation will differentiate competitors and establish companies as leaders within their industry. Take Apple for example. They were the first to introduce the mp3 player through its iPod product. Today the terms iPod and mp3 are used synonymously. Apple’s iPhone is another example of a first-to-market product.

But products are not the only focus of innovation today. Business processes, models, services, and customer engagement are also getting attention. Accelerating the pace in which a company can change and adapt in order to “stay ahead of the game” requires that it operates and functions more efficiently; thus a need to be creative in how work is getting done (not only what is being produced).

A Culture of Innovation
To become truly innovative organizations have to develop and maintain a culture that:

Embraces collaboration;
Is open to new and creative ways of thinking;
Promotes risk-taking;
Rewards innovation; and
Offers forums for presenting new ideas.

Companies, like Intel, have redesigned their entire learning and development curriculum. Learning forums are the perfect platform for instilling company values and developing core competencies.

Some companies have instituted programs and other approaches that encourage, recognize and reward innovation, including Apple, Textron, Qualcomm, Lockheed Martin, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble, and Microsoft.

Lockheed Martin's Center for Innovation is a powerful net-centric experimentation and analysis laboratory, which serves as a focal point for resourceful thinking and revolutionary technology.

Textron’s innovation program is described as follows:

Since 1999, the Chairman’s Award for Innovation has recognized individuals and teams within Textron whose exemplary innovations have led to significant improvements in products and technology or in the company’s business practices that have resulted in tangible gains in sales, profitability quality or competitive position.

The award winners come from all Textron businesses and cut across functional areas. Innovation awards are awarded in the categories of Product & Technology and Business Practice. A cross-business panel evaluates each nominee and selects the finalists and the winners.

Textron’s CEO presents the awards at an annual dinner. Winners receive a $5,000 cash award, a trophy and lapel pin, and inclusion on the Chairman’s Award for Innovation Wall of Fame at Textron’s World Headquarters.

Is your company innovative? What is your company doing to promote and reward innovation? I’d like to know. Send me an email at kim.lamoureux@bersin.com.

Who’s Driving Your Talent Management Strategy?

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:48:00 PDT

Our latest research shows that companies continue to struggle with the issue of how to organize their talent management functions. Responsibilities are typically spread several groups, from recruiting to HR to L&D. Leaders within business units and regions may also have responsibility for some or all of these processes within their domains.

To create focus and ownership for integrated solutions, more companies are creating a dedicated role to manage talent management activities. Our recent study shows that approximately one in three companies has consolidated talent management activities under a single position, a figure that has grown over the past year. A dedicated talent management executive is important to aligning priorities and focusing resources across the company.

This talent management executive is typically responsible for most talent initiatives, including leadership development, succession management, career development, performance management, learning and development, and workforce planning. The exceptions are recruiting and onboarding (only half of the time these are put under the purview of the talent management exec) and compensation, for which only one-quarter of TM exec’s are responsible. To be fully effective, this executive needs to be actively engaged in all talent management activities. Otherwise, compensation will not be aligned with performance, and recruiting and onboarding will not be fully aligned with the organization’s overall talent management goals.

This talent management executive establishes centralized responsibility for designing and managing talent management initiatives across the company. Our research last year showed that the most common model was for the central group to develop the processes for talent initiatives, such as performance management and succession planning, which the business units are expected to follow. As you might expect, such a model may create compliance, but may not create widespread adoption.

A more effective model is for the central group to partner with the business units to design processes tailored to their needs. This approach is clearly slower and more difficult, but it results in a more business-driven solution. In successful programs, a small committee, headed by the talent management executive and comprised of key stakeholders from HR, IT, and business leaders, work together to design a process and tailor it according to individual business unit needs.

If your organization is one of the many undergoing restructuring, maybe it’s a good time to look at reorganizing your talent function. Check out our upcoming report, Talent Management Factbook 2009, to be published in a few weeks, for more details.

Modernize Corporate Training: The Enterprise Learning Framework

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:30:00 PDT

Over the last year or so we have talked with hundreds of companies about their desire to transform their corporate training programs to take advantage of social networking, knowledge management, communities of practice, and better models of blended learning. As we studied dozens of high performing training programs through our Learning Leaders® program, we realized that today's corporate training world has fundamentally evolved.

Fig: Evolution of Modern Corporate Training

How Corporate Training and Learning has Evolved

As this chart shows, over the last 10 years the corporate training world has gone through four major phases. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, traditional instructor-led training (which still makes up more than 60% of all training delivery today), was our primary form of training, and it was complimented by various forms of technology (CD ROMs, VideoDisks, VHS tapes, Video Broadcasts) - with a goal of increasing reach and reducing cost. In those days technology-supported training was called CBT or CAT.

In 1998 the term "e-learning" caught on, and the training world fundamentally changed. We call this second phase the "e-learning era," because it was characterized by a mad rush to put everything online. Originally, as many of us remember, organizations started repurposing all their programs and developed linear, formal training programs for the web. Things got a bit crazy: pundits talked about "shutting down" corporate universities. In 2001 we had a global recession, which even further accelerated the transition as organizations tried to drastically reduce instructor-led training to save money. During this second phase the modern LMS was born, as were many of the new rapid e-learning and other web-based development tools we have today.

In the mid 1990s we entered what I call the "blended and informal learning" era. Organizations realized that "e-learning" was not as all-powerful as we once imagined, and the concepts of blended learning began. Many companies actually "reopened" and "reinvested" in their classroom programs again. I wrote The Blended Learning Book in 2004 and it continues to be highly relevant today. As organizations adopted more and more blended learning concepts and the internet became more widely available, we realized that the many of original concepts of e-learning (replacing instructor led training) were incorrect: what we really needed to do was create a "new" learning experience on the web, one which included both formal (structured) programs as well as a wide variety of informal (unstructured) forms of content.

Google, of course, forced this evolution upon us. Employees and young workers, used to "googling" any problem they wanted to solve, no longer wanted to sit through long, formal online programs unless they were very entertaining. Today, in fact, according to Basex research published in May of this year, 28% of all employee work is wasted by people multi-tasking between email, google, and various other forms of "informal learning." The same research also found that the average employee visits 45 websites every day!

This pattern of behavior (and availability of technology), of course, has been further enhanced by the availability of social networking, which led us to the fourth phase shown above. Today's employee has access to formal training, overwhelming amounts of other information, and actual human beings online. Adding this all together, the corporate learning landscape has undergone a dramatic change. Now, when someone needs to "learn" something, we must consider the various ways they can gain these skills or information: they can go to a class, they can take an online course, they can look up support information on the web, they can read a book, or they can find someone who knows what to do and get help. And we, as L&D professionals, must "formalize" this informal learning environment and make sure we align our investments toward talent management and the needs to build deep levels of skill.

This shift has created tremendous challenges for the corporate training department. Our research shows that 68% of knowledge workers now feel that their biggest learning problem is an "overwhelming volume of information." This information exists in many formats, it is often out of date, and they are not sure how to find what they need. In some sense the need for "formal" training is greater than ever (you can make sure you get the right information presented in the right way). Yet in fact, now corporate training professionals must grapple with a whole new set of issues: how do I create a complete "learning environment" (not a learning program) which supports this new world of formal and informal learning?

And the shift has impacted our profession as well. Our research members now tell us that the biggest help they need is not in developing new content, but rather building the organizational learning culture and understanding the new skills and disciplines they need to be effective.

Enter our Enterprise Learning Framework®

Well we have been studying and thinking about this problem for a while. David Mallon, our Enterprise Learning Analyst (you should really read his blog), is in the middle of completing one of our most exciting-ever new research studies, High Impact Learning Practices®, which will be available in June. Through this research, David and our team has developed an excellent way to think through the modern world of corporate training - and we call it our Enterprise Learning Framework®. I would like to introduce it to you here.

Fig 2: Bersin & Associates Enterprise Learning Framework®

As you can see, the framework is multi-faceted. If you would like to walk through it in detail, I encourage you to read our in-depth whitepaper. Briefly, the framework has six main areas: Learning Programs (the solution-oriented training solutions you deliver), Audiences and Problems (a clear segmentation of your audiences and their specific needs), Learning Approaches (the four ways in which learning solutions are developed and delivered), Learning Disciplines (the things you as an L&D professional must now know to stay current in this area), Tools & Technology (the vast array of technology you can rely on to build and deliver these solutions), and Learning Culture (the underlying business processes, management processes, and talent management programs which support enterprise learning).

Framing these six key areas are the topics of Organization, Governance and Management (covered in detail in our High Impact Learning Organization® research) and the topic of your organization's Learning Architecture (also discussed in HILO in detail). In today's corporate training environment, L&D professionals must rethink how the training department is organized, how it operates, and build a complete architecture which helps employees and training managers decide what to use under what business conditions.

Bottom Line: Change is Here

The bottom line is this: I believe we are going through one of the most important transitions to corporate training in the last 10 years. While e-learning certainly forced organizations to invest and learn in many ways, today's corporate training world is changing even more. A recession is once-again fueling the fire: organizations are consolidating their training programs and trying to rationalize all the programs, vendors, and systems they have in place.

Now is the time to look at our framework and rethink how the "modern" corporate training organization works. We believe you will find tremendous opportunities to add value to your training programs and your own personal career.

PS: If you would like to better understand your organization's level of maturity and build a plan to implement the Enterprise Learning Framework, please contact us. We have a variety of assessment and strategy tools to help you get rapidly on your way.

Talent Management Systems: Are Organizations Still Buying?

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:50:00 PDT

Last week, I was part of a panel at Cornerstone’s Convergence customer conference. Bill Kutik, the moderator of the panel, tossed out the first question to me. It is a good question – a question that is on everyone’s mind today – and, as you can imagine, I had a lot to say.

The question was: “What impact has the economy had on the talent management and general HR technology market? Are companies buying new solutions or just adding on to what they already have?

Unfortunately, I only had less than three minutes to respond and could not share everything I felt was needed to understand the current state of affairs. So here is the more comprehensive response.

The need to support strategic HR processes and address talent challenges did not suddenly go away because of the recession. If anything, talent management initiatives and the enabling technologies are absolutely mission-critical in helping organizations stay solvent during the downturn and prepared for the upswing.

Let me give you two examples.

Oil and gas giant Chevron is proactively working on talent management initiatives to support its commitment to conservation through clean and renewable energy solutions. As such, the company is identifying and cultivating talent pools with new capability profiles and targeted development plans.
And not far down the road in San Jose, Cisco, a leading high-technology company, is preparing its leaders to lead in an expanded business model – one that offers both hardware and software solutions in the new collaborative business world.

Both organizations are taking this time to change and increase the quality of their existing talent pools in the context of this “new economy.”

At a more tactical level, talent management systems are being used to help companies make decisions for a reduction in force. Information contained in the comprehensive employee profiles (a key attribute of a “true” talent management system) has the potential to help business leaders plan out different scenarios in order to make calculated and legally defensible layoff decisions. By “calculated” we mean not letting go any top performers and named successors. Alternatively, business leaders can target the employees who consistently perform below expectations. In addition, business leaders can view related information, such as who is eligible for retirement and total worker spend.

As far as the market for talent management systems is concerned, interest has not waned and many organizations are still actively shopping. In fact, most of the leading vendors on the market report a very healthy pipeline of prospective customers. The problem is that most deals have slowed down substantially due to spending freezes and postponed (but not canceled) initiatives. As our founder and CEO Josh Bersin pointed out in his recent blog posting, in Q1’2009, the market for performance/career/succession management systems only grew by 5.5%, down from our prediction of 26% growth.

Part of the slowdown is caused by the organizations having to retrench and build detailed business cases to cost-justify purchasing and implementing new technology, particularly when they already have a solution in place. We encourage and help organizations to build a business case that not only focuses on savings gained through automation and consolidation, but one that also addresses the value to be created for the organization.

Organizations are also asking more questions regarding vendor viability – and justifiably so. In the downturn, we see strong vendors outpace market growth rates, continue to make investments and push out innovative product enhancements. By contrast, vendors with questionable viability are laying off a significant percentage of their workforces and have slowed product development efforts. Rest assured we will see more consolidation in the market, perhaps even sooner due to the recession. (In a blog posting here, I offered some sample questions for organizations to ask regarding solution provider viability.)

We believe that now is the time for both organizations and talent management system providers to position themselves well to lead once the economy eventually recovers.