Bersin & Associates Analyst Updates

Vestas Wind Systems: A Lesson In Leading-Edge Onboarding Programs

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:36:00 PST

Over the past five years, onboarding has evolved from a basic orientation to a key talent initiative. Organizations understand how a positive new hire experience can help to reduce turnover and increase time to productivity. Clearly, onboarding matters. Yet, the majority of organizations admit to losing new hires due to a poor new hire experience. Something isn’t adding up. In a time with plenty of options for innovative talent strategies, why are so few organizations implementing leading-edge onboarding programs?

Well, for starters, the majority of organizations (76%) are concerned with the “basics” – completing, storing and retrieving employment eligibility forms and ensuring compliance. The electronic I-9 and new laws and regulations set forth by the Department of Homeland Security contribute to this pre-occupation with forms management. By focusing so heavily on forms and compliance, few organizations are actually addressing one of the most critical areas of onboarding…socialization in the company culture. Despite all of the buzz around employee engagement, organizations still fall short.

Vestas Wind Systems is an exception. The leading supplier of wind power solutions makes socialization a priority through their Global Induction Program. The goal of this program is to streamline the way they introduce new employees into the company culture and to create a learning culture throughout the entire organization. Vestas Wind Systems achieved these goals through innovation…creating a virtual environment targeted to reach a very broad audience of new hires. Not to mention, they translated this program in 12 languages.

How Does the Virtual Environment Work?

Vestas Wind’s Global Induction Program provides a consistent virtual world for every employee in the organization. The program is divided into 5 chapters:

• History Train Ride: an overview of the company culture
• Product Development and Sales: a chance for new hires to interact with customers
• Production: experience with construction and production
• Project and Service: a learning experience designed around the company value chain
• Welcome to Vestas: an opportunity for new hires to report what they have learned to current employees

What are the Lessons Learned?

• Senior support was critical to the success of the global induction program and helped to create a learning culture.
• The program needs to be evaluated continuously both through satisfaction surveys and also pre and post- measurement for each new hire.
• The global inductions virtual world training takes a total of five hours to complete. In order to ensure participation throughout the organization, Vestas Wind Systems had to invest in internal marketing and promotion of the program.
• A common theme in talent management and learning management this year is to make sure that these programs align with the overall business issue. Vestas Wind Systems achieves this goal by making this program transparent and consistent to every job family and geographical region of the organization.

We are publishing a more detailed overview of Vestas Wind System’s Global Induction Program in the next few weeks. If your company is innovating your onboarding approach, we would love to hear from you.

Internal Promotion Rates Low for Senior Management

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:12:00 PST

According to our most recent study, the Leadership Development Factbook 2009, we found that over 60 percent of first- and mid-level managers were promoted from within their companies. When we looked at senior level and executives, this number decreased to 57 percent and 52 percent, respectively. We were surprised by this considering that, in this same study, first-level leaders received lower ratings on their skills and capabilities than senior-level and executives. So why are promotion rates lower for senior level managers? We believe there is one primary reason – Far too many companies ignore executive development – to their detriment.

Less than half of executives have development plans
Only 34 percent companies offer formal development to executives
20 percent of companies offer no development – formal or informal - to executives

Companies provide more formal development at lower leadership levels. Over 60% of companies offer formal development to first- and mid-level managers. Slightly less than half offer formal development to senior leaders, and just one-third offer formal develoment to executives.

Why the lack of focus on executives? We found four reasons:

Business Comes First - Executives tend to delay their own development to focus on pressing business issues.
Lack of Relevant Development - The executive population is much smaller than other levels and, therefore, individual development becomes much more common and often requires more informal approaches.
Development No Longer Necessary - Perhaps they believe that executives no longer require development – a big mistake!
No Accountability – The CEO’s participation in his / her individual development demonstrates a commitment to learning. We found that the engagement of the board of directors also has a strong influence.

Executives should be developed to improve performance in their current roles as well as to prepare them for future roles. Businesses change, people change, technologies change – the whole world changes – and so an executive must continue to evolve and grow. Companies that have strong executive-level development (and succession management programs) are able to manage transitions between top executives quickly, providing calm and stability to shareholders, employees and customers.

Does your company have solid plans in place to develop executives? Are your executives held accountable for their development? If your CEO left the company today, is there a successor ready to move into that role seamlessly?

For more information on approaches companies use to develop their executives, check out our Leadership Development Factbook 2009.

Why Salary.com Won the 2009 HR Technology Shootout

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:07:00 PST

For the last two Octobers we have travelled to the HR Technology Conference to see four HR software providers show off their software in the Talent Management Shootout. While the Shootout is a relatively short event at 75 minutes (each vendor gets about a total of 10-15 minutes of demonstration time), there are often as many as 1,000 HR professionals voting, so the results are often very indicative of buyer needs, market trends, and key innovations in the market.

This year the conference focused on integrated end-to-end solutions and featured Lawson, Plateau, Salary.com, and SAP. Each vendor was asked to demonstrate a range of scenarios co-authored by one of our analysts and co-chair Bill Kutik, including:

Integrated performance management and development, from an employee's perspective: the employee can access their profile and goals, view performance reviews and developmental suggestions, look for other jobs of interest, find gaps in their competencies, and create development plans to fill their deficiencies and achieve their career aspirations.
Pay for performance, from a manager's perspective: manager viewing their employees as a group, looking at merit-based pay drivers and allocating salary budget between employees, applying standard guidelines, and viewing and changing compensation to meet the manager's final evaluation.
Talent planning and analytics, from an HR manager's perspective: using competency-based analysis to determine strengths and weaknesses of a team, creating multiple views of successors with graphical readiness indicators, comparing high-potentials by a variety of criteria, doing side-by-side comparison of candidates based on many background factors, creating a pool of nominees for a new role or group, and creating a development plan for those in a talent group.

These scenarios actually represent very complex business processes. Each demands a software platform with many features, extensive data integration, an easy-to-use yet powerful user interface, and a tremendous amount of content integration (e.g. employee profiles, job families and required competencies, compensation data, performance appraisals, career aspirations, learning and development offerings, career paths, and development plans).In a sense this year's Shootout represents the next wave of integrated talent management solutions - bringing together the standalone applications for recruiting, learning, compensation, performance management, and succession management into real-world solutions which every organization faces.

Why we believe Salary.com Won

The four companies which competed in this year's challenge are all excellent solution providers: Salary.com is a leading end-to-end provider of talent management software, content and data; SAP and Lawson are world-class ERP solution providers which provide financials, HR, talent management software and much more; Plateau is one of the world's most successful enterprise-class learning and talent management software providers. So what was it about Salary.com that perhaps swayed the audience?

Today Integrated Talent Management is the Sum of the Parts

I think the bottom line is that integrated talent management software today is far more than a platform. While HR and L&D buyers continually evaluate product features and functionality, in the real world of "making talent management decisions" the users of these systems (whether they are employees, managers, or HR people) must have three things:

Easy-to-learn, easy-to-use software, which is designed to work like they do.
Integrated employee and organizational information from the rich set of data needed to make talent management decisions.
A core set of content which describes the organization's job families, roles, organization structure, competencies, compensation models, and performance management processes.

When a company selects and implements a system, they rapidly find that there are many decisions about data they must make. How are we going to describe or define our job families in the system? What forms of evaluation and rating are we going to adopt? What type of competency model (if any) are we going to use to assess people? What forms of competency models will we use to train and certify people? How will we define, evaluate, and compare compensation structures across the company? What data elements will we use for employee profiles and succession management? And much more.

Some of these decisions may have been made already - but in most organizations they are either not clear, not implemented, not consistent, or subject to change. Therefore we have to realize that a talent management platform without this underlying data and content is really like an Excel spreadsheet with no data. It has a lot of power, but you have to load it and build the models you need to run your business. And since integrated talent management is still very new to most organizations, the "models" you need have to be developed as well.

One important concept we have realized in our research is that HR and talent management, unlike almost all other business processes, have no real "right" and "wrong." In accounting there are "proper and correct" ways to account for revenue, expenses, and capital. In HR and talent management there are only "generally accepted principles" for all the processes and practices we implement. Therefore the implementation of a talent management system often requires a lot of time talking about philosophy, what data and information we want to collect, and what type of management and employee practices we want to build.

Salary.com's Strategy

Which brings us to the focus of this article: Why did Salary.com win the shootout?

Over the last several years Salary.com has taken a unique, end-to-end approach to talent management. Through a series of acquisitions, Salary.com has built not only a platform, but a complete solution - one which includes rich salary data, job profiles for a variety of industries, well developed and proven competency models for all the roles in these job profiles, and a complete user-driven focus on bringing all this content and data into an easy-to-use environment.

When one looks at the Salary.com system, we see a "complete solution" - one which can be implemented and used right out of the box. While all talent management software vendors have access to industry job profiles, competency models, and salary data - few deliver it in an integrated solution like Salary.com.

In addition, because Salary.com has access to all this content, the product managers and engineers can design the system so it works with real-world data. One of the biggest challenges enterprise software companies have is trying to design a system which will work well after a large enterprise's data is entered. It often takes years before enough customers have loaded data for the solution provider to completely understand how to make search panels, reports, and various selection windows work well. In Salary.com's case, because the company purchased and built all this underlying data, the product is built to be easy to use with real-world data.

A simple example of "data-driven design" is illustrated in Salary.com's scenario to enable managers to assess candidates for promotion and succession management.

Because the data in the Salary.com system is real, the scenario to assess individuals against job competencies, rank and rate these individuals against peers, and select candidates for promotion is extremely easy, intuitive, and compelling.

Bottom Line: Think about the Entire Talent Management Solution

The bottom line is this: whichever platform you are evaluating, you must think of talent management as a complete end-to-end solution. This system, which will become one of the most valuable and detailed databases in your company, is ultimately a decision-making tool. It must store and manage a wide and deep set of information and content about your people, your organization, your jobs, and your development strategies.

I want to congratulate Salary.com on their big success at the 2009 HR Technology Conference and I encourage everyone to think about talent management as a complete "program" for your company - one which requires a focus on data, content, process, technology, governance, philosophy, and leadership.

Leadership Development - Is It Really Worth the Money?

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:47:00 PST

Leadership development costs money…usually a lot of money. Our recent study, Leadership Development Factbook 2009, showed that companies spent nearly $500,000 last year, on average, on leadership development initiatives. This figure varies by company size, ranging from $170,000 for small companies to nearly $1.3 million for large companies.

On a per-person basis, organizations spent just over $2,000 for each leader participating in development. Of course, programs for higher level leaders are far more expensive than for lower level leaders. Senior-level and executive programs typically utilize outside facilitators, external coaches, and assessments, all of which come with a high price tag. Executive education at business schools is also costly, with a high premium on highly credentialed professors and, in some cases, the school’s brand.

So the key question is, “Is it worth it?”

The short answer is, “Yes,” with the caveat “if it’s done right.”

The truth is that a lot of companies are spending money on leadership development and getting very poor results. Our study shows that, for most companies, leadership skills at every level are seriously lacking. However, companies that have made a continued investment in improving their leadership development initiatives have seen their efforts pay off. At these companies (which include firms like Ameriprise Financial, Motley Fool, and Textron), leadership development has evolved to a strategic, organization-wide process that is aligned with business priorities and integrated with the company’s overall talent management process. These companies target every level of leader and think of leadership development in terms of building organizational capabilities, not just individual capabilities. Although this type of leadership development takes a great deal of time and effort, the pay off is in stronger leadership capabilities, reduced employee turnover, and better financial and business performance.

For more information on the cost and impact of leadership development programs, check out our Leadership Development Factbook 2009.

How Strategic Recruiting Drives Business Performance During the Recession

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:41:00 PDT

Best practice companies make talent acquisition a key priority during both strong and weak economic conditions. It may seem hard to believe…why would companies want to recruit during a recession? Furthermore, how can sourcing and screening strategies take precedence over other key talent initiatives such as downsizing and restructuring?

To maximize talent investments during an economic slowdown, organizations need to rethink their current strategies and make the necessary changes to not only reduce costs but improve the accuracy and quality of hires. With more candidates in the workforce, recessions are an excellent time to “upgrade” your talent pool.

Sound simple? Well, unfortunately it’s not. Just ask GSK. The leading global pharmaceutical company has invested a considerable amount of time and energy to restructure their sourcing and screening strategies with a heavy focus on two major themes…integration and innovation. It is important to note that these changes did not happen overnight. In many cases, they began as early as 2004 and will continue beyond 2010 as GSK continues to prioritize and re-evaluate their strategies.

How Has GSK Invested in Strategic Sourcing?

• Internal Sourcing Function- GSK created an internal sourcing function under their global talent solutions department with the goal of reducing costs spent on executive search firms. Over the past few years, this sourcing team has filled 500 roles, saved $15 million and provided organizational benchmarking data as well as competitive intelligence.

• Global Talent Center of Excellence- Over the past year, GSK has continued to move away from a decentralized sourcing model by including this function in the global talent center of excellence with the goal of integrating talent acquisition with talent management.

• Technology Investment-GSK selected Peopleclick’s RMS solution as a robust solution for global enterprise organizations. As an early adopter of Peopleclick, GSK has continued to align with companies that prove to be innovative in their approach to talent acquisition.

How Has GSK Invested in Screening and Selection?

• Recruiters Toolkit- This end-to-end toolkit includes two primary tools used for the selection process across the organization. Some of these tools vary by the needs of different business units. They are integrated in the recruitment workflow and help inform hiring decisions, limit the risk that the company enters into when making a hiring decision, and reduce the cost associated with a new hire.

• Skillsurvey- As an innovative organization, GSK selected SkillSurvey to automate the reference checking process and move this process to the beginning of the recruiting lifecycle instead of the end. GSK has measured several key performance indicators including time to fill and recruiter workload.

• Standardized Assessments- GSK’s pre-hire assessment model is consistent throughout the organization and utilizes the underlying framework of their behavioral leadership framework. This behavioral leadership framework is used for the post-hire phases and will help integrate talent acquisition and talent management through the center of excellence.

These continuous talent acquisition initiatives during both a strong and weak economy have helped GSK reduce the redundancy associated with a decentralized model, increase communication and improve efficiency. We are publishing a more indepth case study on this topic…stay tuned.

The LMS Market: Hotter than Ever

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:53:00 PDT

In the last 60 days I've had the opportunity to attend five major industry events which cover corporate learning: user group meetings at Plateau, Saba, SumTotal and Taleo and the HR Technology Conference. While all this travel has taken a toll on my sleep, it did reinforce the tremendous importance of corporate learning technology. In this blog I would like to highlight a few recent thoughts for us to consider:

Corporate training is a huge issue in business today:

Organizations in all industries are struggling to upgrade and revamp their skills. I spoke with learning leaders at major banks, defense contractors, trucking companies, and government agencies - all reinforced the importance of building stronger technical and operational skills in their workforce.

Last week I had the opportunity to talk with several of the HR and L&D leaders at Intel, one of the most successful technology companies in the world. They told me that 80% of their total staff is technical in nature, and more than 8,000 have advanced degrees. Intel believes that every year's revenues come from products invented in the last 18 months. Talk about a rapid product cycle!

Intel views employee development as one of the most important investments they make - and they have a broad perspective on development as a total experience for professionals: training, job rotation, performance management, and stretch assignments. Intel is also making major investments in internal knowledge sharing, all built around their LMS (Saba). They understand, as do companies like Accenture, Caterpillar, Qualcomm, and many of our other clients, that skills specialization is not just a "nice thing" to have - it is a business imperative.

I think the $850 Million LMS market will continue to grow at 10-15% as we have predicted.
Learning Management Systems are still difficult to manage:

Many of the companies I talked with (including the Department of Health and Human Services, which manages more than 77,000 employees) told me about the complex, multi-year implementations they go through. Organizations invest millions of dollars in their learning infrastructure - and they view it as an essential infrastructure.

One of the user groups I talked with asked their customers to try to "rank" their feature needs for the future. These companies had to make the same difficult tradeoff as their vendors: how much should I spend on new learning features, collaboration, talent management, and integration software.What did they choose? Almost all the customers told their vendor that they wanted more interoperability. Why is this? The corporate LMS lives in a complex world of content, assessments, tools, social networks, and HR systems. Today's LMS is a critical "system of record" which must interoperate with all these systems. Vendors and customers must consider integration one of their most important design decisions.

Informal Learning is here to stay:

I had a lot of opportunities to talk about informal learning with many organizations. It is here, it is real, and it is confusing. Nearly every organization is trying to find new ways to embrace collaboration, social networking, knowledge sharing, coaching, mentoring, and other forms of informal learning in their strategy. In some cases the LMS is playing a major role - in other cases the LMS has been left behind.

This year Saba has introduced Saba Social; Plateau has introduced the Talent Gateway; and other vendors (Cornerstone, Learn.com, Mzinga, and others) have jumped on the bandwagon with integrated tools to make informal learning easier.

Talent Management and Learning Management have converged:

Almost four years ago we wrote a report on the convergence of learning and performance management systems. Today the convergence has arrived. While many training applications are "pure training" (customer training, for example), almost all organizations now realize that they must build a plan to integrate the management of training with the process of development planning, performance management, and succession management.

The LMS vendors which have strong talent management offerings (and almost all do) are now finding many customers willing to consider their talent management solutions as their "one-stop" solution.Likewise companies that are doing business with Taleo and Halogen (which are newer to the LMS market) are now strongly considering their talent development offerings. These worlds have now officially collided.

This is not to say that all LMS's are the same. The "industrial strength" LMS products from the experienced LMS companies (Plateau, Saba, SumTotal, Cornerstone, Learn.com, GeoLearning, and others) go far beyond the newer products offered by talent management companies. But all solutions are going in the same direction: an integrated "people management" platform that integrates LMS functionality with the rest of our talent management needs.

Bottom Line:

We are very bullish on the LMS market going forward. The changing nature of the workforce, need to develop GenX and GenY workers, and the tremendous growth in informal and social learning will drive accelerating growth in the need for LMS solutions. If your organization has not yet implemented a learning management system, mark my words: you will before long.

The Woman-Powered Economy

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:55:00 PDT

There are many demographic changes taking place in the US workforce today. Perhaps one of the most profound and personal is the rapid growth of women in the working population. This month "The Shriver Report" is being released - a comprehensive look at the growing role of women in the world of work. What this research tells us is that now, more than ever, women play a critical role in the success of any organization (more details here).

A few important statistics to consider:

This year, for the first time in history, there will be more women in the US workforce than men.
Today only 21% of families have a traditional "only husband employed" family structure.
By contrast, 22% of families now have an "only wife employed" family structure.
44% of families now have both spouses working.
63% of all women are now breadwinners.
Women now receive 52% of high school degrees, 57% of bachelor's degrees, and 50% of professional and post-doctoral degrees.

Clearly we now exist in a "woman-powered economy." Yet this slow but steady change does not come easy. The report notes that even as women have reached parity with men in employment, they still face inequities in pay and level of responsibility. And women are still much more likely to be caregivers for children and the elderly, placing them in a difficult role between work and family. The report notes that men, also, are taking on more responsibility for family issues - leaving both spouses caught in a balancing act between family, work, and free time.

How Employers Adapt - Family Friendly and Women-Powered is Part of Talent Management

As employers we have clearly adapted. In the coming years organizations which succeed must be "family friendly," offering flexible work environments, child-care, mentoring, and career development opportunities for women. The Shriver Report shows that women are much more likely to work in "service-related" positions, roles which are demanding of time and energy. If organizations want to succeed in the coming decades, they must build a "women-friendly" work environment to compete for talent.

Consider what many leading organizations do today. Organizations like Deloitte have a formal career development for people who move sideways at different points in their career (the career lattice), IBM and many other employers offer flexible work hours, JetBlue empowers employees to work at home, Intel has a variety of women-friendly programs including mentoring and coaching to attract engineers and leaders, Google offers in-house day care.

Many entreprenurial startups have been addressing this market, including two I found interesting: Hiremymom.com (which focuses on women re-entering the workforce), and Womenforhire.com, a complete resource site for women professionals.As we consider our new, integrated talent management strategies, it is now important to consider women-friendly programs which attract, develop, and support women as critical parts of our diverse workforce.

Women in Leadership - An Important Strategy for Today

One final point on this topic. The Shriver Report discusses how the role of women in the workforce has "crept up on us." Many stereotypes and glass ceilings are slowly going away. Yet despite these statements, only 15 of the Fortune 500 have women CEOs today. Clearly have a long way to go.

If organizations are going to truly embrace the woman-powered economy we have to go beyond "family friendly" programs to build women-friendly leadership programs, succession plans, and role models into our organizations.

My first view of a professional woman came from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", a story of a single woman in her 30s who becomes the executive producer of the TV station early in her career. In this show Mary Richards has to deal with a tough, hard-edged (but lovable) boss Lou Grant. Mary continually brings a "feminine" approach to problems, and often her boss is dumbfounded by her solutions to problems.

Today these stereotypes seem silly. Yet women often do have different ways of dealing with people, managing projects, and working in teams. One research report shows that while men may have 1 or 2 mentors in their career, women can have dozens. As our "women-powered economy" grows we must consider new approaches to leadership which enable women to succeed.

By the way, the implications of not managing women in leadership can hurt: a recent study by Families and Work showed that among more than 4,500 managers and executives in Europe, 51% of women were at risk of leaving their employers vs. 46% of men (there were no significant differences on where each gender was planning to go). The cost of this attrition is clearly very high.

The Families and Work study concluded that the four major barriers to career advancement among this population were:

Lack of access to sponsors, champions, and mentors
Limited knowledge of company politics
Few role models, and
Limited access to job opportunities.

The research shows that once a woman reaches the senior executive level these challenges diminish - but those in the leadership pipeline (particularly women over 30) face all four challenges consistently. Interestingly, the research shows that these problems are more acutely felt in Latin and Germanic countries.

Talent Management Practices that Matter

If your organization is ready to deal with this issue, our preliminary research shows that there are several practices to consider:

A commitment to talent diversity by gender as well as other factors
Accountability for talent diversity by upper management as well as line managers
Fair and equitable work assignments and developmental opportunities
Fair and equitable promotion decisions
A culture and process for constructive and open feedback
Flexibility in work environment
A focus on managers as a supportive coach.

What does the Woman-Powered Economy Mean to Your Organization? And your Talent Management Strategy?

We are in the final stages of planning our 2010 research calendar, and I believe this topic belongs on the list. We are interested in your comments: how well does your organization understand and embrace the changing nature of the workforce? What are some of the unique ways you drive performance, innovation, quality, and leadership among women and younger workers? How "family friendly" is your organization today? And how do you believe your organization will be able to take advantage of the Women-Powered economy in the coming decade?

I look forward to your comments and feedback.

CEO Succession: Is Your Company Prepared?

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:25:00 PDT

In the last few months there have been a number of changes (or impending changes) at the helm of large global companies. Some of these organizations have demonstrated great preparedness and others…well…not so much.

Textron’s CEO, Lewis Campbell, announced his departure in September. Not a moment was lost before the company was able to confidently announce his successor. At Intel, the pending departure of CEO Paul Otellini has set motions in place that included the departure of two key senior executives, while at the same time starting a race between three others vying for the top position. Intel is known for putting succession plans in place years in advance of a departure allowing the company adequate time to groom executives.

Bank of America’s CEO, Ken Lewis, abruptly announced in October his earlier-than-planned departure at the end of the year. They did not have a succession plan in place. One Bank of America director shared that if they had more time they could have started to work on it. This has forced the company and its Board of Directors scrambling to find a successor.

One of the key messages that I send every time I talk about succession management is that a company has to assume that their CEO could walk out the door tomorrow or get hit by the proverbial bus. A company cannot expect that they are going to have fair warning. It has to have at least one or two successors lined up for every key role, especially the CEO, and they must be placed on formal and prescriptive development plans.

There are many organizations, like BofA, without strong succession and development plans for their executives. In our recent Leadership Development Factbook study of over 350 companies, we found:

Only 37% of companies rated their executives’ capabilities as “excellent.”
Twenty percent of companies offer no development to executives.
Less than half of executives have development plans.

There are many reasons for this lack of attention on executive development. Simply, business comes first. Executives are busy running the company and not focused on development. Also, there is no accountability for executive development in many organizations. Without boards of directors engaged in the identification and development of successors to key executive roles, development is an afterthought. By ensuring succession management is a priority within the organization, the board impacts the overall effectiveness of the process.

The world is changing, primarily as a direct result of the economy and shifting workforce demographics. How many more management shuffles will take place? I suspect quite a few. You may be working for one of those organizations. Does your company have a solid and transparent succession management process in place? How quickly would your organization be able to respond to the departure of your company’s CEO or other key executive?

Our first ever Leadership Development Factbook will be published at the end of the month. Stay tuned.

For more information about High Impact Succession Management, members can access the industry study on our website. The report can be purchased at http://www.bersin.com/Store/.

The Talent Sophistication of European Companies

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:33:00 PDT

Our research on talent management demonstrates the sophistication of European companies on a range of talent processes – from performance management to leadership development to succession planning. In all of these areas, European companies have more mature processes than their U.S. counterparts. (See “2009 Talent Management Factbook” for more information.)

Europeans will likely agree that, of course, they are more sophisticated than Americans – they’ve known that for over 200 years. But what’s behind it?

Let’s take performance management, for example. Just over half of European companies have a consistent, enterprise-wide process. U.S. companies are more likely to have ad hoc or informal - and hence, not very effective - performance management processes.

Competencies tell a similar story. Nearly two-thirds of European companies have defined competencies – far more than their U.S. counterparts. Competencies are important to a number of talent processes. In performance management, competencies are used to communicate “how” performance results are achieved and give managers a common “currency” for assessing performance and potential for promotion. Competencies are also used in talent acquisition, learning and development, leadership development, career management, and succession management. Indeed, competencies are a foundational element for every talent process. How can a company be effective in any of these talent processes without defined competencies?

Another example is leadership development and succession planning. More European companies have mature leadership development initiatives aimed at long-term business sustainability. They also have more consistent, enterprise-wide succession planning processes to ensure strong leadership pipelines for the future. U.S. companies are more often in one of the less mature stages, in which leadership development and succession planning are inconsistent or aimed at developing individuals, rather than looking holistically at organizational needs.

Finally, if we look at overall talent management strategies, European companies again excel. More European companies have advanced their strategies, with mature, integrated processes in place. Our study found that having a mature, integrated talent management strategy has a tremendous impact on business performance. (See “The Impact of Integrated Talent Management” for more information.)

Given these findings, it appears that European companies have talent in their corporate DNA. They have a culture of continual development and are continually planning for the next generation of leaders and employees.

One U.S. manager, upon reading these results, remarked, “Of course they do. They HAVE to – it’s impossible for fire anybody over there!”

How much that plays into it, I don’t know. Maybe American companies are just too quick to churn through employees without trying to motivate and develop them to their highest potential. But that doesn’t explain the lack of long-term focus within U.S. companies. And I believe that goes beyond the current economic crisis, with many companies just trying to survive until the next quarter. Even before the recession, U.S. companies were more focused on the next quarter and beating Wall St. projections. Not many companies really think about the next five years.

I welcome any thoughts on this subject – especially from our friends across the pond.

HR Technology Conference: What's Hot for 2010

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:42:00 PDT

The overall message from this year’s HR Technology Conferencewas one of optimism and growth…companies are looking to invest in the future oftheir talent and solution providers are responding by offering innovation anddeep functionality to help companies recruit, develop and retain topperformers. If 2009 was characterized by trepidation and fear, 2010 promises tobe a year of possibilities in both talent acquisition and talent management.

After two days of back-to-back briefings with some of today’sleading solution providers, we noticed several trends including employeeengagement, integration, and leveraging technology to align talent managementwith the overall business strategy. Not to mention…mergers and acquisitions (inevitableas companies look to expand their offerings and increase their outreach) and thenever-ending buzz about social media.

What can you expect from these provides for the remainder of2009? Here is a preview:

Previsor

Front-Line Manager Product- It is clear from one look at Previsor’s Front Line Manager assessment solution why they won HR Technology Conference’s product of the year award. This solution offers companies a way to assess their entire workforce (both hourly and salaried) using media-rich simulations and coaching scenarios.
Industry Suite Solutions- With a high demand for assessments in certain industries such as retail and healthcare, Previsor will continue to tailor solutions to companies looking to find the right cultural fit within a given industry.

Salary.com

Competencies- This year’s winner of the prestigious talent management shootout has been working hard to build up the competency layer of the application with deep functionality in areas such as performance and compensation. We applaud Salary.com for really understanding the need for a “total solution” which includes talent management software, competencies, behavioral questions, and industry job descriptions in an integrated system.
Enterprise Growth- Salary.com continues to acquire a significant customer base at the enterprise level proving its ability to scale for large complex organizations.

Jobvite

Jobvite Source- After a successful year, this talent acquisition system provider has announced a sourcing solution including advanced features with employee referrals, social recruiting, candidate search, and a new Facebook application.
Matching Technology- Jobvite can now leverage the power of social media to help customers match candidates not only within their individual networks but also on the open web.

Peopleclick

Mobile- Peopleclick expands Suite functionality to mobile devices including the ability for HR professionals and managers to approve requisitions while they’re on the go, the capability to view reports and dashboards presented by the Peopleclick^® Business Intelligence Platform, and the means for candidates to manage interviewschedules via mobile device, email and text messaging.

iCIMS

Onboarding and Growth- iCIMS is continuing to grow throughout its entire talent management suite with considerable growth in their onboarding customer base. Customers are looking for both the iForms functionality as well as the socialization through the new hire portal.

Kronos

The Next Generation Workforce Management- This impressive new release to Kronos’ workforce management solutions includes a new user interface using Adobe Flex as well as mobile scheduling (taking various aspects of the system and making it available on mobile devices). Read Josh Bersin’s blog post for more details on this exciting new offering.
Retail Labor Index- Kronos is providing more information on employment targeted at the retail market.

InfoHRM

What-If Financial Modeling- InfoHRM is now expanding beyond scenario modeling for HR professionals and providing targeting business leaders.
Talent Mobility- Talent mobility was one of the hottest topics discussed at this year’s conference and InfoHRM is helping companies address this challenge with new diversity and compliance initiatives.

Enwisen

Global Expansion- With several new product releases this year, Enwisen plans to continue to extend its global reach and help companies around the globe with onboarding and HRServices.
Offboarding- Enwisen plans to strengthen its position in the offboarding space by providing customers with more socialization as employees exit a company.

Jobs2Web

Key Partnerships- Jobs2Web is continuing to make waves by providing companies an innovative way to attract, interact, capture and measure talent acquisition. Customer can expect more partnerships with social networks and more interactivity to make job posting easier
Advanced Metrics-The solution provider is also providing more reporting capabilities with significant advances in pre and post hire metrics.

Bond

US Launch- After a strong year in the global market, Bond announced the launch of its Bond Talent software in the US market with key features that include candidate career portals, onboarding, VMS, and customizable reports.

SilkRoad

Core HRMS (HeartBeat)- As more companies express an interest in a “system of record”, SilkRoad is responding with the launch of their HRMS- HeartBeat with differentiators that include cloud computing and targeted job functions.

SuccessFactors

Business Execution- SuccessFactors is repositioning its talent management software as a way to build strong alignment between business leaders and the workforce.
Recruiting Management Release-The latest release of SuccessFactors’ recruiting management solution proves that they are now a force to be reckoned with in the talent acquisition space. Not only do they provide a comprehensive set of core features and advanced features but have acquired several large customers including Siemens.

Taleo

Taleo Performance, Talent Compensation, and Taleo Development were all demonstrated as part of Taleo 10. The company's new flagship enterprise recruiting platform, complimented by the Taleo Grid, brought many buyers into the Taleo booth to see the integrated solution.

Globoforce

Consulting- Globoforce’s message resonates with what we are hearing in the market…employee engagement matters. They are launching a consulting arm of their recognition program to provide best practices and help customers plan for success.
Metrics-Globoforce is offering new dashboards to measure recognition and tie recognition to performance.

MrTed

China- The Asia/Pacific market continues to become a hot spot for talent acquisition and MrTed’s latest deal will be its largest deployment of TalentLink to over 30,000 recruitersand 85 million candidates.
Cloud 9 Release- MrTed announced the latest release of their MrTed TalentLink solution based on cloud computing technology to provide more interactivity and configurability.

Cytiva

Performance Management- With the latest release of SonicPerform, Cytiva is experiencing an uptick in performance management as customers look for both integration and deep functionality.
User Interface- Cytiva is working on redoing the user interface for SonicRecruit with a fresher, more open user experience.

HireRight

Integration- HireRight Connect offers multiple modes of integration including API’s, gadgets and web services with the goal to make the applicant experience more transparent through their “Applicant Center.”
Training Solutions- This background checking provider is now offering training solutions to help customers deal with critical areas such as compliance.

ADP

Growth- ADP is seeing the highest areas of growth in full service outsourcing and talent management.
Workforce Now- ADP is offering a new platform and approach to their talent management solution including a strategic partnership with Cornerstone On Demand.

SHL

New Versions- SHL is announcing new versions of their OPQ personality questionnaire (shorter completion time and more predictive qualities) as well as a new technology platform focusing on the candidate experience.
Post-Hire Assessments- With a well-established brand in the pre-hire assessment market in over 22countries, SHL is focusing heavily on post-hire solutions.

Sonar6

New Business Model- If you haven’t had a chance to check out this up and coming performance management solution provider, you are missing out. They offer one of the leading user experiences for performance reviews and engagement in the market. Their new business model promises a heavy focus on product development and potential partnerships.

Kenexa

Unified Candidate Record- With a suite of both products and services, Kenexa has big plans to deliver better products at faster rates.
New Brand- Kenexa is gaining attention with new efforts in both sales and marketing including an improved sales methodology and its “I x E” brand (Individual X Environment). ). In fact, Kenexa’s new integrated talent management strategy may be one of the most complete on the market (more to come on this topic).

Workscape

New Release to Benefits-The latest release of Workscape’s Benefits solutions offers a new user interface using Adobe Flex and more configurability.
Greater Focus on Compensation and Performance- We identified compensation and performance as the most popular combination of talent management modules and Workscape is offering deep functionality in both with a commitment to making this alignment a more continuous process.

Over the past year, customers have been able to call theshots with their HR technology options…and the solution providers are steppingup to the plate. There is no denying the fact that today’s leading solutionproviders are listening to customers and making significant changes toproducts, services and messaging. 2010 is shaping up to be the most innovativeand dynamic year in the world of HR technology to date.

Thoughts from the 2009 HR Technology Conference

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:00:00 PDT

Once each year we travel to Chicago to gather with Bill Kutik and dozens of HR vendors to see the latest and greatest technologies applied to human resources.

This year’s conference was as exciting as ever, with many product announcements and exciting innovations to see. Madeline Laurano, our principal analyst in talent acquisition, is posting a recap of all the major announcements, which you can read here.

In this blog I would like to highlight a few thoughts for the coming year.

1. Talent Management Expands into People Management: the HRMS market is hot.

As vendors expand their talent management software offerings, we see an inevitable expansion of the systems market into what we call "People Management" - a complete, end-to-end set of application software tools which include recruiting, performance and succession management, compensation, learning, workforce planning, and eventually even HRMS. (We recently published an in-depth report on People Management, available to research members.)

In the analyst panel Bill asked us about the state of the market for the Human Resources Management System (HRMS), or the HR “system of record.” The question posed the hypothesis that since SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft had invested billions of dollars into this market, was there really any room for other vendors to build such systems?

My answer is yes: the HRMS market is actually very much alive and well.

Today nearly every major talent management platform vendor has developed or is developing an HRMS of some kind, and each will become a new system of record. Salary.com, Softscape, and SilkRoad have all introduced full function HRMS solutions, and many have new network organization structures which model today's modern corporate organization. (A modern HRMS must model a corporate organization which includes a hierarchical, networked, and project organization structure - and must accomodate hourly, salaried, contingent, part-time, and alumni workers. There is a lot of room for innovation in this market.)

ADP, Lawson, Ultimate, and Meta4 have had HRMS offerings for years – and Workday, SuccessFactors, and Plateau are moving in this direction as well. While Oracle and SAP have much invested in these systems for large companies, there are still millions of small and mid-sized businesses which need a more robust HRMS - and frankly many large companies will slowly replace what they have when new offerings appear.

Why would anyone replace their "system of record?" Well first of all, there is no such thing as a "single system of record" when it comes to HR. Most companies have many systems of record for people, the HRMS being the one which happens to hold some of the most basic data. As the CIO of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies told me last week, "we have no illusion that we will ever have a single system of record - we just need to makes sure we have a single identifier which defines each person in the company."

In addition, our research shows that most companies who have an HRMS really aren’t very happy with it. It is hard to upgrade, rigid in structure, and in many cases little more than a payroll and compliance record-keeping system. These are what we call "legacy systems" - they work well, but companies don't want to pour more dollars into them.

When Bill asked the assembled conference how many would consider replacing their HRMS, almost 40% said yes. As the market for talent management software continues to focus on more integrated "people management" applications, watch the HRMS become an important part of the suite.

There is another reason this is happening. As more and more companies buy talent management software (and our research now shows that 55% of companies are seriously considering such software), the amount of data in these systems goes up exponentially. In fact, the talent management platform (or the “People Management System") really is one of the most important systems of record in the company. It holds all the current and historical information about the roles, skills, experiences, projects, and performance of your people.

As these people management platforms grow in importance, companies tell us they become systems for talent mobility and workforce planning. A client who has had an integrated talent management system for five years told me that the most valuable part of the system is that it gives them the ability to rapidly make decisions about who to move into what role as the organization changes. These systems are giant databases of people information - which can be used during restructuring, leadership changes, globalization programs, as well as expert databases for organizational learning. They are important, so they will be systems of record in their own right.

2. Too many organizations still think a “talent management systems strategy” is a “talent management strategy.”

I had a 75 minute "Expert Discussion" session with about 30 people and we discussed many topics about various parts of the HR systems market: the future of the LMS, social and informal learning. the heritage of different vendors, why customer satisfaction varies so widely, and how to integrate talent management software with other systems. In most of the discussions there was a tendency to believe that the “systems decision” is the company’s talent management strategy.

I reminded the group of several things:

No vendor has everything you need, so you must have a very clear understanding of your needs before you shop for software.
The features of the system are not your requirements - specific "use-cases" are. It takes a significant effort to define the "use-cases" you need. In fact, any major new HR process design should involve a team of HR, business, and IT owners which work together. Such a team must be assembled well before you search for software.
Most companies do not want to automate an old, existing process - they want to build a new, more powerful and integrated process. So the problem of understanding requirements is often one of designing a new process. If you do not do this in advance, you will have to do it in a big rush during systems implementation - which does not typically lead to the most strategic thinking.
Designing a new talent process takes executive support. Consider, for example, a decision about how to implement pay-for-performance. What types of goals and achievements will drive incentive pay? And how will that pay be computed? These are big, philosophical decisions which warrant executive-level discussion. So you should get executive support and discuss the strategy well before selecting a system.
As you get started with all this work, the question of "why" comes up immediately. Line managers are likely to ask: "Why are we going through all this again?" If you have not aligned your talent management program with a current and urgent business strategy (e.g. a restructuring, global growth, merger, acquisition, for example), the business case will look weak. Remember there are three ways to compute ROI: automation of existing processes (the lowest ROI), development of new processes which improve HR measures (a higher ROI), and as part of a major new business strategy (the greatest ROI). You should have the "why" and "how" very clearly agreed upon before you start a systems rollout.
Even if you do select the “perfect” system, it will take 2-3 years to fully deploy and will not be successful unless every manager and employee understands why and how to use it. You need total buy-in throughout the organization to be successful.

Solution providers (and some consultants) are happy to sell you software as a solution to a problem that may not be well defined. While HR software can solve many problems, it is very difficult to implement without a clear set of business needs, philosophies, process decisions, and management support. So... develop the high-level strategy and roadmap well before you shop for a solution.

I can give many examples of this: one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies rolled out its SAP talent management software because they were sure they needed an integrated system. There was no clear business case. Today, more than five years into the implementation, they tell me that their performance management process is hardly used, managers do not understand why and how to use the system, and they are struggling to make performance management work well. The SAP implementation alone did nothing to make the company perform better.

Bottom line: you really cannot shop for software without a well-defined business goal, executive level sponsorship, and a clear set of process steps in place. Our High Impact Talent Management® research, methodology, and services will help you through this. I am a huge fan of technology - just remember that you can have a fantastic talent management program without a platform, so make sure your strategy is in place before you select software.

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, please call us.

3. The big public HR solution providers are now seriously entering the talent management software market, and the software segment is not consolidating yet.

This year, perhaps more than ever before, the talent management software market has become big enough to attract all the big boys. IBM, Accenture, Mercer, Towers-Watson, and Hewitt all have teams actively building an integrated strategy to deliver talent management solutions. Each is at different levels of maturity today, but all are very actively investing in this space. This means that you, as a buyer, are going to see even more vendors offering you solutions. These companies are 10-100X larger than the software companies developing platforms.

The software companies which have gone public (Oracle, SAP, ADP, Kronos, Lawson, SuccessFactors, Salary.com, Saba, Stepstone, and Taleo) are now 100% committed to an end-to-end solution. Each is rolling out more modules each year, and buyers are demanding an integrated suite. We can expect the big HRO providers to start lining up with vendor partners in a much more significant way in the coming quarters.

For private companies, those with deep pockets and good revenue bases, including Halogen, CornerstoneOnDemand, Learn.com, Plateau, Authoria, Workscape, and SumTotal, are mostly thriving. While growth rates are less than projected a year ago, the market as a whole is growing by over 15% and each continues to introduce significant new products which make their solutions more “end-to-end” than ever before. This means that you as a buyer have many excellent options to consider.

In the industry panel Bill asked us whether we believe the market will consolidate. I think we are a long way from this happening: fewer than 30% of large organizations have an integrated talent management strategy today so we have many years of growth before such a consolidation occurs. I believe we will see more companies go public in the next few years and even dedicated applicant tracking and learning management systems vendors can still grow.

The entry of the big players just means that there will be more alliances and integrated solutions for you to consider.

4. I anticipate tremendous innovation in user interfaces in HR software.

One final point I noticed. One of the most innovative areas of HR software today is "user experience". An exciting example of such innovation is coming from Kronos. Kronos, which is one of the most successful providers of workforce management software, is well known for a product which is highly functional yet very complex to use. Since many of their customers are hourly workers, the company needed to find a way to simplify all the complex functionality which is needed by these workers, who have very little time and computer access during the day.

Madeline and I saw Kronos’s new user interface and my jaw dropped. While Taleo, SuccessFactors, Workday and others are showing off “baseball cards” and “dynamic organization charts” as user interfaces, Kronos is going even further. They have built a truly “use-centric” experience which enables the application to change modalities as a user’s needs change. I would characterize it as "modal" not "role-based." In other words, it is designed for the different "modes of usage" a manager goes through during the day.

Kronos hired an old acquaintance of mine who was one of the product leaders at PowerSoft (perhaps the fastest-growing software company in the client/server era). He implemented a brand new design process (which I do not believe they want us to disclose) and in a period of less than 6 months completely rebuilt the entire user experience for workforce management.

This new user interface looks more like a video game than anything else – it is simple, intuitive, and highly functional. It allows a store manager to quickly see who is available for which shifts, find people who want to work a shift, notify them via their i-phone, and schedule them into a complex work schedule.

I expect to see such radical and exciting new user interfaces from other vendors as well (Plateau, Taleo, SuccessFactors, and Saba just rolled out major facelifts). These new systems are now using Adobe Flex, a technology which enables the developers to really build “client/server” applications on the web. In the case of Kronos, the new UI works independently from the back-end application – so customers can implement it without upgrading their Kronos applications.

Flex user interfaces today are as exciting as the "data window" was in the PowerSoft days. (Ok, I''m showing my age.)

Well there is a lot more to talk about…. Read Madeline’s blog for all the vendor details.. we will keep you informed as this fascinating, rapidly changing market continues to evolve…

From E-Learning to We-Learning

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:02:00 PDT

The corporate training industry is undergoing some major changes. Over last few months we have been involved in many discussions with organizations about the tremendous needs to build, manage, and formalize their social and collaborative learning programs. This is being driven by many factors: the slowing economy, the "always-connected" nature of the workforce, and the explosion of social software tools and platforms now available.

In many ways, this transition is very similar to the last "big thing" to hit corporate training - the "e-learning" era. The word "e-learning" started in 1998 and we went through a radical change in thinking about training over the next 10 years.

I think today's transformation is very similar and we have much we can learn from that history. This blog will give you come context, as we examine: today's transition - "from e-learning to we-learning."

The History of E-Learning and What We Learned

E-learning radically changed the training industry. In 2000 and 2001 we had two major shifts take place: the internet emerged as a new computing platform and we had a recession. These two factors together created a tremendous focus on moving training programs and materials away from "instructor led" to "online." As many of you probably remember, there was talk about the end of brick and mortar universities as we all rushed to do all our training and education online.

Today of course as e-learning has matured, there are many forms of online training and education. We can implement "Rapid E-Learning" (often PowerPoint to Flash), application simulations, business simulations, character simulations, audio, video, and a wide variety of instructional interactivities.

Most high schools and universities use the internet for distribution of class materials, communications between instructors and students, and distribution of key training tools. Today "instructional media" is everywhere: from YouTube to the California Driver's License Exam (and also, by the way, to "traffic school"). And we can now view and interact with these materials on cell phones, laptops, and computers everywhere.

In addition, the original "concepts" of e-learning have changed. In the first few years companies rushed rapidly to take existing slides and instructor materials and put them online. In fact, SkillSoft, the largest player in the content market, pioneered this approach. Today's e-learning programs are very different than instructor led training: they act and behave like online movies, online video games, and immersive virtual experiences.

And as we, as training professionals, have demanded more applications, the tools industry has grown up as well. Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia was largely driven by Macromedia's amazing success selling Breeze, Dreamweaver, and other tools to the instructional media industry.

So this twelve year evolution of "e-learning" has been exciting, innovative, and transformational. Today many corporate clients tell us that 70% or more of their corporate training (measured by instructional hours) is done online. Such a concept was unthinkable in 1998.

Enter "We-Learning"

Now here we are again, in the middle of a whole new era. People are calling it "social learning," "informal learning," and "collaborative learning." (Our research actually shows that "informal learning" is actually a whole set of new approaches, which include learning on-demand, embedded learning, as well as social learning. Our Enterprise Learning Framework, which took us almost two years to finalize, brings all these elements together.)

So as companies get excited about the whole concepts of "we-learning," what can we learn about this evolution from the one just before?

1. We-Learning will shift some focus away from traditional training, and create a need to learn new disciplines.

"We-learning" embraces the simple and profound concept that any organization has a collection of knowledge and experience which should be shared. It respects the fact that the training department may, at most, have 5-10% of the knowledge needed and used in the company. And organizational learning is taking place on a real-time basis - always changing and becoming more valuable.

Just like "e-learning" took the power away from the stand-up instructor, "we-learning" is going to take some power away from the instructional designer and training developer. We need to think about our roles as the facilitators, organizers, and drivers of collaborative learning - not necessarily the authors or designers.

And we have to give up a few old paradigms. I remember many arguments with instructional designers telling me why "rapid e-learning" was a terrible idea. Well let's learn from that experience and just get on with this new approach. Many of our clients are re-thinking their instructional design models now - making sure that all learning programs are really "learning environments" which have collaboration and social learning features "built-in."

We can still add a lot of value here - our research shows that there are a set of new disciplines for the modern L&D team which we need for success. Just as we had to learn about Flash, media design, and content development during the e-learning era, now we have to learn about community management, tagging, information architecture, and analytics.

(These are detailed in our research and in our new High Impact Learning Practices® industry study, a detailed report and set of assessment tools you can use to help embrace the new disciplines for L&D.)

2. E-Learning did not, despite predictions, kill traditional training and education. Nor will "We-Learning" totally replace carefully designed training programs.

I remember many articles about the death of brick and mortar education. It was all great PR. Now, in hindsight, we know that traditional training is not going away. Organizations still need formal training and certification to build a base level of knowledge and skills in many roles. But we now respect that in fact 80% or more of individual learning will take place through others - coaches, experts, managers, and peers.

Similarly, "we-learning" is not going to kill the need for formal instructional design, formal training, and instructor-led training. Rather it will extend and enhance traditional training - and in many cases make formal training even better. If you, as a subject-matter-expert, can tap into the collective wisdom of hundreds of people actually implementing what you already know, you will get smarter faster - enabling you to build even better tools and programs into your formal programs.

But let me add that there truly are some revolutionary effects taking place. At Sun, BT, the Federal Reserve, Network Appliance, Cisco, EMC, and many of the other companies collaborative learning strategies are creating even faster product cycles, better customer service, and new ways of developing people. BT believes that their "Dare2Share" network (a completely open YouTube for Learning program) saved more than $15 Million in the first year. These savings came from people no longer asking silly questions of their manager and re-solving small problems which others had already solved.

3. We-Learning will create markets for many new tools and platforms.

Just as e-learning spawned the modern LMS, a wide variety of development tools, and huge amounts of investment in content management - "we-learning" will spawn and support a tremendous number of new tools and systems to manage, track, and facilitate people working together online.

In this era we have some big companies to help us: Google is investing in Google Wave; Microsoft is investing in Sharepoint and Live Services; Adobe is investing heavily in Adobe Connect and other products: Cisco is investing millions in Webex, Citrix has launched an amazing set of new tools in GotoMeeting and its family, and there will be much more to come. We can thank Facebook, LinkedIN, Ning, and the rest of the social networking websites for many innovative ideas which will be rapidly copied into our corporate learning systems.

What we learned in e-learning was that the tools will change. While today you may use Jive or Sharepoint for your social learning platform, get prepared for something new and radical to appear down the road. Taleo's new development planning module, Saba's new Social Learning environment, and Plateau's new Talent Gateway are all giving us new tools and paradigms to facilitate communication and knowledge sharing. And I truly believe we will find ways of harnessing twitter and other "message-based" communication tools for learning very quickly.

4. We-Learning will change our behavior in corporate training.

Just as e-learning enabled us to stop flying people all over the place, we-learning will change the way we think about where and how people learn. Consider Sun Microsystems' new Sun Learning Exchange. This platform lets people browse and watch videos, audios, and other media from experts; it lets them download and subscribe to areas of interest on their cell phones, and it lets them receive updates and post responses via email.

Just as e-learning freed us from the classroom for all our learning, we-learning is going to free us from the computer. I would not be surprised to see more and more collaborative learning taking place on cell phones and other mobile devices.

When I wrote The Blended Learning Book I examined 17 different elements of instructional media and how it all could be tied together. Now let's add "we-learning" to the mix and add the ability to collaborate to almost every other form of formal training. Before class get people together online to discuss their objectives. During the class let's collaborate with each other to share experiences from the instructor. After the class let's create a community of practice and share information about how we are applying what we learned. The options are endless.

5. We-Learning will demand a change in culture and leadership.

I remember days in the 1980s and early 1990s when people were actually afraid to spend too much time in front of their computers. We learned, through 10 years of experience with e-learning, that we had to give people time and place to "learn online."

Similarly, we have to give people the support, culture, and motivation to engage in "we-learning." Does your organization have a culture of knowledge sharing? Are experts rewarded for sharing their best-practices? And more importantly, do you have incentives and career models which tell experts that "we expect you to contribute to the collective knowledge of the organization?"

Our research actually shows that the single biggest driver of success in today's modern L&D world is culture. No matter how well you design the programs, systems, and experiences - they only "stick" when the company itself values a continuous focus on organizational and individual learning. More and more top executives are thinking "how can I get people in this organization to more rapidly share information, talk to customers, and learn faster." These types of conversations lead to a discussion about the organization's learning culture - one of the biggest drivers of success in this new era.

Bottom line: We have a lot to learn.

Let's embrace the world of "we-learning" with the same fervor and excitement we had for e-learning. If we just remember the lessons of the past, we will find this new era of corporate training one of the most important and transformational changes in our industry.

The Most Important Survey You Will Ever Take

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:44:00 PDT

Ok, well, I might be stretching things a bit.>

But, past Bersin & Associates research has shown that nothing else affects the business impact of an organization’s learning and development efforts as its culture of learning. But what truly defines a strong culture of learning? What organizational practices, behaviors, and norms have the greatest effect on organizational learning?

We are launching a study to help answer these questions, as well as:

What should the role of business leaders, L&D, HR, and the individual employee each be in cultivating Organizational Learning?
Where should leaders in the business, L&D, and HR focus their time and efforts in order to best improve Organizational Learning? Which strategies will generate the biggest return on investment?
How have leading organizations strengthened their own Organizational Learning?
How can you diagnose your own state of Organizational Learning?

Readers of the final research should find easy-to-follow guidance for measuring the current state of organizational learning culture, discerning strengths and areas for improvement, and identifying actionable, practical solutions for raising the profile of learning within the organization.

We need your help. Take this survey. Send it to your friends to take as well.

As a special thanks, all survey participants will receive a complete copy of our related Case Study: "Learning Culture: The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Uses Knowledge-Sharing and Social Learning to Meet Its Workforce Needs”as well as an executive summary of the final study. With your permission, we will also invite you to a special summary webinar to coincide with the study launch.

Click here to take the survey now.

Or enter this URL into your browser:
https://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/3f3eg40280

We recognize that many of the questions on this survey might be of a sensitive or controversial nature. We commit to keeping all individual responses anonymous and confidential. Any identifying information will be stripped from the data before analysis.

We hope you will take the time to add to our collective knowledge by participating in this study. We look forward to sharing the results with you. If you have any questions regarding this survey or our research, please contact us.

Sincerely,
David

The Problem of Content - Part 4 - Who Needs Monkeys & Typewriters, We've Got the Internet!

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:19:00 PDT

Problem #3: Commoditization of Credibility and Quality

This post is part of an ongoing series on the content challenges facing today’s modern High Impact Learning Organizations. ™ Be sure to read the whole series.

As the barriers to authorship have fallen, a direct side effect has been a loss in the assumed credibility of authors. If everyone can create content, then we cannot automatically assume that any given artifact of content is of high quality, credible, or trustworthy just based on the source.

Production value is no longer a short cut to credibility either. The tools and technologies now available (HD handheld camcorders for instance) provide the untrained hand with the means to create content that looks similar enough to our expectations for so-called professional content as to be functionally indistinguishable, at least on first glance.

Did Shakespeare ever design training?

Like all of these challenges, this change has both good and bad aspects for our society as a whole. From a positive standpoint, it is harder to hold monopolies on political and historical perspective. Simply look at the role of blogs in politics today as example. Many competing viewpoints can be expressed and encountered. On the potentially not-so-good side, there is some research suggesting that having this wealth of viewpoints available allows people to only seek out those sources which reinforce their own views, leading to increasing polarization.

Regardless of how you view this shift, it is obvious that content seekers are no longer willing to go to established sources simply because they are established or because they follow formal, established methods of authorship. Take the world of consumer news content for instance. Newspapers and network television news broadcasts have seen their audiences (and therefore their business models) decline drastically. Journalism bona fides mean little to the general populace. There are just so many other options out there from which to choose, options which better fit the needs, preferences, and lifestyles of end-users.

It seems that the bar for what constitutes quality content is now much more personal, and not necessarily based on traditionally held standards. Beauty may have always been in the eye of the beholder. But in the past, less content and fewer sources meant the options open to an unsatisfied content consumer were few. Content creators held all of the leverage. Today, we live in a completely buyer’s market. It is more incumbent on content creators (and brokers) than ever before that they earn their audiences' respect, belief, and interest through their content.

However, since audiences do not always make their decision based on content accuracy or depth, they must be constantly studied to determine the latest, best value proposition to make.
What does this mean for training departments? It means the bar for what constitutes good learning content is now also more personal. Of course training departments have the benefit of a somewhat closed environment. They can require consumption of certain content. They can apply the official stamp of the organization to content, giving this blessed content added emphasis and prestige. But this advantage only goes so far.

For instance, training departments often tell us that their business audiences do not see the value in diligent adherence to instructional design methodologies. No matter how strong the culture of learning is in the organization, or how good a sales pitch the training department makes, this particular tension between training and business will likely never be fully resolved. And why should it be? Business stakeholders want business problems solved. If the solution requires employees to gain increased knowledge and skills or to change behaviors, then so be it. Give them access to the knowledge, opportunities to learn the skills, and sell them on the need to change behavior. As a learning professional, you know that sound instructional design is the best way to get there, so do your best to apply those concepts where and when possible. However, adult learning principles tell us that just as critical to successful workplace instruction is providing a clear answer to the WIIFM question (What's In It For Me?). Adult learners have to want to learn.

And so, learning professionals, you find yourself in a very similar place to the folks at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Yes, you might have highly skilled, well-credentialed content creators, but that alone is not going to drive engagement. How well do you really know your audiences: what they need, what they want, and how they would like it delivered? How will you sufficiently peak their interest while simultaneously demonstrating quality and credibility on both their terms and yours? Can you create enough content, fast enough, and in a sufficient number of modalities to meet all needs? Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your job is boring!

For additional guidance on meeting the challenges of the modern learning organization, please see our just-published groundbreaking new industry study: High Impact Learning Practices. This report is the definitive study of what it will take to remain a High Impact Learning Organization in today’s fast paced, information rich world.

Solutions:

How can learning organizations solve for this challenge?

Know Your Audiences
The best modern learning organizations have the connections and the expertise to analyze and to master the business processes of their target audiences. Think like the marketing department. Survey and profile constantly! To be sustainable, you will likely need master some form of structured, business process analysis discipline (e.g., performance consulting, business process modeling, Six Sigma, et al), and have deep integration between your teams and the business audiences you serve.
Trust the Community – They’re Pretty Smart
When communities take off, a funny thing happens: they get smart. Given the ability to rate, comment, and contribute, the community will quickly surface good, useful content and bury the rest. Organizations such as Sun Microsystems and British Telecom can vouch that moderation is not often necessary in these employee-focused environments. Of course, if you need to bless some content as official, that’s ok. Just make that a special type of tag or rating. Your users will be happy for the additional context by which to find and sort information.
Adopt ‘Living Content’ Standards (as opposed to ‘learning content’ standards)
At least part of the answer to that question is in the adoption of content standards. In fact we believe that helping the organization at large to develop and use standards for content is one of biggest values that a modern L&D department can bring to an organization. However, standards have to be living (meaning changeable as business needs change) and livable (meaning they don’t cause more problems than they solve). As long as they are flexible and designed for ease-of-use, standards bring consistency to information, making it easier to consume and helping employees to navigate through the overwhelming volume of data faced every day. Standards also help modern L&D departments ensure that the message delivered in the content is 1) the intended message, 2) an accurate message, and 3) able to stand out in a crowd - not drowned out or suppressed by competing messages. Standards become particularly important with content coming from so many different sources. Just remember, consistency does not equal control.
Buy Best-of-Breed On-Demand
Finally, when you do decide to purchase content, value and utility are key. A great way to jump start your on-demand learning content library – one that take much of the guesswork out of finding quality content in flexible formats is is the growing number of digital content library providers. Providers including Safari Books Online (coowned by O’Reilly Media and Pearson Education), Books 24 / 7 (part of SkillSoft), Soundview Executive Book Summaries, GetAbstract, and a growing list of others (including Amazon and Apple) now offer organizations access to a vetted library of quality content specifically formatted for on-demand access.

That's all for this week. Tune in next week for installment #4 on the conundrum that is putting a price on content. Until then…
Best,
David

Business Schools Are Breaking Stereotypes and Moving Into the 21st Century

info@bersin.com (Josh Bersin) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:48:00 PDT

In preparation for research that I am conducting on executive education, I have spoken to a large number of business schools over the last couple of months. I am happily surprised with the kinds of learning they are offering and the strategic nature of the work they are doing with their clients.

No longer pure open-enrollment, research-based education that is facilitated by “know-it-all” professors and supported with case studies from the 1980’s; these schools are rethinking their approach to highly effective learning to meet the needs and expectations of their corporate clients. As stated by the executive director of executive education at Northeastern University College of Business, “Business schools must learn to walk a fine line between having the research in their back pocket and then using that to be helpful to a company… Buyers are getting more sophisticated, requiring universities to become more like consultants.”

At the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the Chicago Executive Institute is a six week program that spans a one year period. Unlike the legacy model designed as a one-size-fits-all lock-step approach that takes everyone through the same curriculum, this program is created with a modular design. As described by the schools executive director of executive education, “The speed of business is rapid and people have diverse needs and diverse backgrounds. To compensate for these differences, three of the six weeks are core content and three are elective.” With this design, a CFO, for example, does not spend time on remedial finance courses. Instead he/she may elect courses that are focused on things like operations, marketing and leadership.

Indiana University’s Kelley Executive Partners (KEP) offers high tech solutions to learning. The kinds of technology that they use include Second Life, Google Apps, Google Groups, Twitter, YouTube, GPS, iPod Touches, handheld video cameras and alternate reality games. For example, a consumer marketing company needed help to understand how to best market to a demographic that is 14 to 25 years in age. In addition to achieving this business objective, they also wanted to reinvigorate collaborative practices as a work team. KEP developed an alternate reality game where the plot lines are possible, but not true. The game engaged the students in fictional story, blogs, twitter, GPS, iPod, Skype and other modalities that were necessary to accomplish the goals of the game. The participants were using the technology to learn about the technology which enabled them to achieve two outcomes:

To understand how their customers use these technologies; and
How to use these technologies to be a more collaborative work team.

Too see an example of Second Life by KEP, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc-9YuiGp0M

At the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler the focus is on experiential learning. Their goal is to take executives out of what they would typically expect and out of their comfort zone. For example, they created a program focused on driving a culture of innovation. As part of the participants’ experience, teams were brought to meet with companies outside of their industry. They spent time with these other large organizations that have been highly successful at creating a culture of innovation to learn about how they do it. Following these meetings, a facilitated debrief session is conducted with the teams to share the learning and how to apply it in their own industry and company.

We will be publishing an in-depth report on executive education and the business school market in late Q4. Stay tuned…