Productivity Blog

Most Companies Don't Measure the Bottom-Line Impact of Diversity Programs

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00:00 GMT

While most companies agree that diversity issues in the workplace deserve attention, not many have a clear and consistent definition of just what "it" is, according to i4cp's latest study. The results are now available to i4cp members.

The study found overall, only about 1 in 5 (21%) study respondents have a broad and inclusive definition of diversity, while 17% admit they have no definition at all. Higher market-performing organizations are more likely to define diversity broadly, with 28% reporting they include all diversity groups in their definition, compared to only 15% of lower-performing companies that include them all. Roughly one in four (23%) lower-performer companies do not even have a diversity definition, and 12% of higher performers don't either. Also, few organizations measure the bottom-line impact of diversity initiatives. In higher-performing organizations, 76% said they do not calculate a return on their diversity investments, while 80% of lower performers don't measure ROI.

Higher-performing organizations have a more inclusive definition of diversity

Diversity strategy, however, is a widely recognized topic, particularly among larger companies. A full 78% of organizations with 10,000 or more employees report having a diversity strategy, compared to 44% of companies with 100 to 999 employees and 31% in companies with fewer than 100 workers.

The perceived importance of diversity is not lost on companies, either. Seventy-two percent of higher-performing organizations say that diversity issues are "important" or "very important" today, and 80% believe the issue will be important/very important in 10 years. That compares to 76% of lower performers who feel diversity is important or very important today, and 83% of them believe it will be so in 10 years.

"Defining 'diversity and inclusion' is a primary challenge for organizations to 'move the needle.' If you cannot agree on what diversity is, how do you create a strategy?" asks i4cp's Mary Ann Downey. "How do you know when you have succeeded? Another challenge is measurement. If you define diversity narrowly to attributes that are measurable, such as race/ethnicity, gender, etc., are you addressing the business challenge?"

Regarding budget considerations for diversity programs, larger and higher-performing companies are more likely to set a specific budget. Fifty-nine percent of companies with more than 10,000 workers have specific budgets for diversity issues, compared to 19% of companies with 100-999 employees, and 11% of companies with fewer than 100 workers. Higher performers (48%) are also more apt to specifically fund such initiatives than are lower-performing firms, at 27%.

When it comes to measuring the success of their programs, organizations at all performance levels agree that retention and engagement top the list. Improvement in employee retention was cited by 69% of higher performers as the top diversity success measurement, followed by better employee engagement results at 54%. More than half (56%) of lower performers cited retention as the top measurement, and 54% (the same as higher performers) pointed to improved employee engagement. When reviewing diversity metrics, companies at all levels tend to rely on the previous year's results for comparison purposes.

To support diversity strategies, the most common infrastructure in place is diversity training, favored by 53% of higher performers and 54% of lower-performing companies. Diversity recruiting is favored by 49% of higher performers, compared to 36% of lower performers.

The Diversity Practices Survey was conducted by i4cp in September of 2009. The full results of the survey are available exclusively for all i4cp corporate members.

Additionally, i4cp will be hosting a webinar titled, Global Diversity and Inclusion: A Johnson & Johnson Success Story, today, November 5, 2009 at 1pm EST. The webinar will be presented by Arisa Cunningham, Vice President of Global Diversity at Johnson & Johnson.

New i4cp Report Provides Solutions to Key Integrated Talent Management Challenges

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

There's no denying that proper integrated talent management benefits organizations, but it's not enough to just have a system; the data needs to flow in a correct format and be linked to specific business outcomes. This is just one of the challenges tackled in the new Talent Management Playbook from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp).

The new publication examines the core problems organizations face with their talent management programs and presents actionable solutions based on a study commissioned by the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) and conducted by i4cp. The resulting data has been combined with expert analysis, practitioner knowledge and company practices. With fewer than 20% of organizations ranking their ability to manage talent effectively to a high or very high extent, the Talent Management Playbook will serve as an instrumental tool to organizations looking to make an impact at the strategic level.

Darden (DRI), Capital One (COF), Pratt & Whitney, Just Born Inc., Harley Davidson (HOG), Grant Thornton and AT&T/Cingular (ATT) are some of the companies highlighted in the report, providing insight into what makes their integrated talent management platforms successful. The practices of these organizations, combined with i4cp's research, offer insight into how high-performing organizations are driving business results through their human capital function.

The report explores and provides solutions to these five key challenges that many organizations face:

There is no universal consensus on the definition of talent management (TM), and its meaning can vary even within organizations.
Organizations that integrate talent management are more effective and successful, yet few organizations report they have successfully done so.
Talent management may lack the support of senior leadership, and there may be failure to designate executive-level accountability for managing talent.
Even in organizations that have designated accountability for TM leadership, line management may be lacking the expertise necessary to carry out TM effectively.
An organization may lack the measurement tools needed to accurately track and assess TM processes.

The Talent Management Playbook is an important tool in any organization's arsenal. It is currently available only to i4cp corporate members. For access to the report or the i4cp network of organizations, please contact us.

Heirs, Spares and Getting Prepared

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:03:00 GMT

Few people in the U.S. have been deprived of a chance in the past year or so to read or view speculative news reports about the health issues of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Although Jobs has been less than forthcoming with the details of his health status, it was serious enough to necessitate a corporate time-out for him. Because his persona is so closely associated with Apple's culture and its success, confidence in the tech firm's future - along with Apple stock prices - hit a speed bump when Jobs stepped away. Happily, both Mr. Jobs and Apple have rebounded. We certainly wish him well.

A very different outcome befell not one, but two Indiana organizations following the sudden death of their top leader last year. Health savings account pioneer J. Patrick Rooney headed both a medical insurance company and a foundation that helped patients dispute medical bills. His unexpected passing during a time of great volatility in healthcare-related industries and with no designated successors prepared to step in signaled disaster for the two organizations he led. Within months of Rooney's death, the foundation's board declared an end to its operations. At the same time, the state of Indiana took over the health insurance firm, and liquidation was set to follow.

If Apple's close call didn't bring home the point that succession planning is important, then the circumstances in Indiana certainly do. Organizations would do well to take a page from the planning playbook of Britain's royal family - "an heir and a spare" is an oft-cited quip associated with expansions of the House of Windsor. But today's business firms also must busy themselves with expanding the work of preparing leaders for the future - enough to address forecasted needs … and maybe one or two to spare.

The umbrella of talent management encompasses many disciplines: recruiting, engagement, retention, development, workforce planning and succession planning, to name just some of the most common components. As the economic downturn has wrought changes in the ways companies approach the elements of talent management, it also has served to highlight the benefits of looking ahead, projecting the variety of circumstances an organization might encounter and planning to meet those scenarios effectively. It's no longer enough to get through today relatively unscathed. We must be on our toes and not only watching our backs, but doing our best to peer into the future. i4cp's Knowledge Centers in Talent Management, Succession Planning and Workforce Planning help you do that.

Soon, too, we'll have new results from surveys in Workforce Planning and Succession Planning to help you benchmark and to provide more insights into these compelling business challenges. Because members like you respond to our surveys, we're able to offer glimpses into the best practices of some of the top firms in today's business world. Aren't you curious to find out who's prepared for the future? Don't you hope it'll be you?

In Corporate Limbo: Peer Coaching Programs

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:00:00 GMT

So much for sharing. The latest study from i4cp - now available for download in PDF and Interactive Data formats - reveals that less than a third of companies have a peer coaching program in place, and half don't have plans to implement one anytime soon.

While most organizations don't have a program in place to directly share expertise, i4cp will be sharing the results of the study with i4cp members this Thursday, October 29 in a first-look webinar - register today.

The study found that while 27% of all study respondents currently have a peer coaching initiative, 50% do not have one, nor do they envision the implementation of such a program. The findings are fairly evenly split when company size is taken into consideration. In large firms (10,000 or more employees), 29% have a program in place, but 45% said they don't and have no plans to add one. That compares to 25% of small organizations (fewer than 1,000 workers) that have a program, and 51% that do not and don't plan to.

For the majority of companies that do not have a peer coaching element in place, almost 60% said other initiatives are seen as a higher priority, and 32% cited a lack of knowledge about the concept and its benefits.

"Since less than one-third of organizations have a peer coaching program in place, and just a small fraction of that group uses any metrics at all to assess the effectiveness of their programs, it's not a big surprise that most companies are unclear about peer coaching and its benefits," said i4cp Senior Research Analyst Holly Tompson, who will be co-presenting tomorrow's webinar with Dr. Mary Key. "However, companies that use peer coaching report more engaged employees and higher productivity in general. Many organizations got interested in peer coaching this past year as a cheaper alternative to bringing in outsiders from coaching firms. As the economy starts to rebound, it will be interesting to see how many stay with it, not just because it's cheaper, but because it works."

In a nod to the perceived importance of peer coaching, however, companies that do have programs in place are generally happy with them. Overall, 42% of organizations say they've seen positive results from their peer coaching initiatives from a high to very high degree. And, when offered, the programs appear to be popular. Of those companies that have programs, 78% said they are voluntary (91% in large companies), and nearly half (46%) said their employees take advantage of the offer.

Regarding peer coaching program training, 51% of polled organizations said the training is "an overview that gets people started," while 31% said their training is extensive and detailed. Eleven percent of all companies reported that their peer coaching training is minimal.

Overall, the areas peer coaching is used in is headed by use of peer coaching to improve employee engagement, cited by 56% of respondents, followed by the need to address specific workplace problems or issues (54%) and 53% said such programs are utilized to improve development opportunities.

The Peer Coaching Pulse Survey was conducted by i4cp in October of 2009. The full results of the survey are available exclusively for i4cp corporate members.

Hire Everybody

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:02:09 GMT

Let's say your company has about 1,500 employees and annual revenue of about $1.4 billion and you want to develop the next product innovation that will boost revenue and increase customer retention. What if I told you that you could hire tens of thousands of people from all over the world (some of whom already work for companies like AT&T and Yahoo!) to devote time to the project for three years, and you would get a three-year marketing campaign to go with it. What might that cost? Well, for Netflix, it cost exactly $1 million.

Last month, Netflix awarded its one-million-dollar Netflix Prize to the first team who could improve the company's movie recommendation service by 10% or more. It may sound like a lot of money, but when you add up the work hours that some of the most talented developers, engineers and mathematicians from more than 100 countries put into the project, and the marketing buzz that accompanied it, it appears to have been well worth it. So much so that Netflix has already announced round two of the initiative, aimed at improving movie recommendations based on demographic data.

This type of crowd-sourcing contest is not new, but the fact that the goal was an algorithm that would belong solely to Netflix and benefit the company in terms of revenue and customer loyalty makes the Netflix Prize kind of unusual. There was no "for the greater good" motive here. Netflix simply realized that it had maxed out its own brainpower to create its current recommendation system and needed help to make it better. To illustrate the type of brainpower that exists outside of a company's walls, the first team to beat Netflix's own system, which was five years in the making, did it in about three weeks.

The other key is the prize. There are plenty of crowd-sourcing options out there where people solve problems just for the satisfaction of finding answers. But the million-dollar prize attracted some of the most talented people, while keeping participants focused on the task and what others were doing. In many cases, teams realized they weren't getting any further on their own, so they joined forces with other groups. The winning team was actually a combination of two smaller teams.

There are companies out there whose business is facilitating this kind of crowd-sourcing. InnoCentive is sort of a marketplace for challenges, and NineSigma specializes in finding the right crowds for specific tasks. i4cp is also here to crowd-source your HR challenges. Is there a problem you're dealing with that could use some outside brainpower to solve? Post a question on our website and call on the combined wisdom of our network of member companies and internal analysts. And while we might not have $1 million to give away or the capability to launch a spacecraft, it's quite likely someone else has already dealt with issues similar to yours and has some good solutions that could end up saving your day.

Pondering Identity in the Global Community

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:31:00 GMT

I picked up a French language cassette tape - yes, I said cassette tape - at the public library a few months ago in preparation for a recent trip abroad. (The prices of most of the "Learn Conversational French in a Week!" CDs at the local bookstore prompted me to go with economic prudence and start out with a freebie - hence the library visit.) Although the selection at the library was limited, I assumed that my only option - an introduction to touristy French language basics produced in 1974 - would be fine. How much could have changed in 30+ years, right? Wrong.

Two minutes into listening to the tape, I found myself reflecting on the common lament of some of my frequently traveling friends: "People really don't like us. Why do they (anyone not from the U.S.) dislike us so much?"

The1974 tape turned out to be a tiny cultural time capsule of sorts, offering some insight and suggesting - to me, at least - that maybe we have been cultivating the "ugly American" image for quite some time. The tape starts with an introduction by someone who sounds suspiciously like the man who narrated the old Scholastic filmstrips of my black-and-white elementary school memories. His deep, booming voice is confident, assertive and self-possessed.

The conversational lessons began innocuously (albeit dated) enough: "Do you have a cigarette?" and "Do you have an air-conditioned room?"

But I started to feel a tad uncomfortable when phrases like "I want a better room," "I want a larger room," "Bring me my bill," and "I want to speak to the manager" were introduced with a marked absence of niceties such as "if you please," "excuse me," or "thank you." And the phrases were delivered in a terse, rapid-fire manner by Mr. Filmstrip in a tone that bordered on haughty, even disdainful. And I visualized the words I heard on the tape like this: "Bigger," "Better," "I WANT!"

Oh, no, I thought. Have we always come off sounding this obnoxious, this rude, this - well - ugly? Is this how we Americans sound to the rest of the world?

The effect was reminiscent of a similar realization I experienced in high school and was accompanied by the same creeping feeling of unease that evolved into disbelief. It happened as I sat in my ninth-grade American History class reading accounts of atrocities visited on Native Americans that began in the 16th century. This was not at all what I had learned in elementary or even junior high school about the harmonious origins of Thanksgiving. This didn't sound anything like what the Americans I knew or the American I believed myself to be could possibly be capable of. And yet, there it was in my textbook. I remember feeling ashamed and rattled for weeks after having that first fairly unedited glimpse of our history and collective American identity and imagining how we might be perceived by others.

I returned the cassette tape to the library and relied on a French-to-English translation handbook that promised to coach me phonetically though grabbing a taxi, ordering in a restaurant and finding a post office.

As pleasant as my recent trip was, it also left me feeling strangely ill at ease because I was oddly conscious of my American-ness as I traveled. And I was also aware of how distinctly different American culture truly is from much of the rest of Western culture.

Some of my friends who live and work abroad tell me they feel a deep sense of detachment that is difficult to articulate when they return to the U.S. for a visit or repatriate after an overseas assignment. One described it as a feeling of standing alone on a platform as a train pulls away, but feeling little emotion attached to the scene. "You know everyone else is on the train and that it's leaving the station, but you don't want to join them. You're okay with letting the train leave without you because their direction is not the same as yours and probably never will be again."

They tell me that living and working abroad changes you; it changes how you feel about your identity as an employee of a certain company and, more importantly, as a citizen of one nation or another. It broadens the sense that we are, for lack of a better word, global.

One of the things I noticed during my time in Europe was that most of my friends and the acquaintances I made seem to think of themselves as citizens of the world rather than as American, French, Russian or Czech. They are deeply concerned with and well informed about the issues and challenges facing other nations. Their concept of identity seems noticeably different from what I was accustomed to; there is an assumption that we are all world citizens rather than individuals concerned only with the goings-on in one particular parcel of geography.

This point of view is not all that common among my peers in the U.S. Our relative continental isolation makes it easy to lose sight of the global perspective. But what's required of living and working well in an increasingly global reality is that we do give more thought to our identity and the messages we send as individuals, as members of teams, as representatives of a company and of a nation. Because now more than ever before, what we do in our offices on one side of the globe can and does have an effect on others working in an office a continent and several time zones away. We need to break out of our continental-ism and do what we can in our own ways to address and improve the perception of who we are on a global scale. This begins, I think, with reevaluating the meaning of concepts such as citizenship, collaboration and accountability.

Workforce Planning: RSVP Today!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:29:00 GMT

"Strategic workforce planning is about today." That's a direct quote from the materials Jay Jamrog has presented at i4cp seminars held around the country this year. If you look at that declaration - that workforce planning is about today - it seems, at first blush, a contradiction in terms. After all, isn't the very essence of workforce planning a focus on the future? Isn't the whole purpose to figure out what might happen months, even years, from now so we can prepare for it?

Technically, you could say it's both. The today part of the equation involves making informed decisions now in order to maximize the opportunities on which your organization can act … tomorrow. I guess you could say that workforce planning is business-speak for "you reap what you sow." What we do now makes future returns (or lack thereof) possible. What makes it tricky is that we have to plan for people needs. Anyone who's set up a major event or even just hosted a small gathering of friends knows how hard it can be to accurately plan anything involving more than him- or herself. I still suspect that RSVP actually stands for Risky Suspiciously Variable Proposition.

But isn't that the very reason we must master workforce planning? Jay's workshops were immensely popular and well attended by insightful businesspeople who understand that the process isn't easy. It is risky and suspiciously variable. Could we have predicted five years ago how today's workplaces would change? Well … maybe we could have. If we learn only one thing from this dark-night-of-the-economy, it should be that we need to create scenarios about our future and imagine the days ahead for which we - and our organizations - need to be prepared.

So here's your personal invitation to use the insights and the tools that are i4cp hallmarks. We have webcasts, workshops, Knowledge Centers, accessible experts, surveys, peer communities and scenario how-tos. As an i4cp member, you can access the help you need today to plan for a better and more productive tomorrow. You will RSVP, won't you? Research … Share … Value-Add … and Plan.

Drowning in Stock

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:31:00 GMT

Remember how Congress tried to slow down executive pay by limiting tax deductions for compensation to $1 million, excluding certain performance-based pay? Well, companies simply paid their executives a salary of $1 million and made the rest up out of bonuses and stock awards, heavy on the stock. This pushed executive compensation even higher, as CEOs were then focused on getting the stock prices to rise as quickly as possible, increasing the value of their pay packages.

Since the economy took a nose dive, however, many executives are now finding themselves looking up at a big fat zero when it comes to their stock awards. In a study of the 100 largest public tech companies, executive compensation consultants Steven Hall & Partners found that as of July 31, 2009, 90 of the firms had stock options that were underwater. When all the outstanding options held by the top five executives at each company were averaged out across the 100 companies, 57% were underwater. The average underwater option was down 42% from its exercise price.

For the most part, these companies are not responsible for their plummeting stock prices. They got dragged down with everyone else when the financial sector imploded. So this pay that was supposed to reward performance is actually punishing the executives for the performance of the market as a whole, something they have no control over. And it's not just executives being punished. Many companies reward employees with stock options, and these people have even less control over the market price of the shares.

What can a company do? It could issue more options at a new, lower exercise price, but you can bet the rest of the company's shareholders (who are maybe not swimming as deeply as the executives) are not going to get the same deal. Plus, option grants are charged against earnings and dilute the existing stock pool. Re-pricing can be difficult because that requires shareholder approval. But something has to be done before executives and other key talent tire of treading water and swim off to another firm offering a fresh set of dry stock options. How much incentive to stay can there be in this situation, especially when there are newer managers and executives at the firm with much lower exercise prices?

Instead of simply re-pricing options on a one-to-one basis, many companies have instituted value-to-value exchanges, where option holders can cancel their underwater options and be issued fewer options that are priced at the current market price. This averts the dilution problem and does not count as an additional compensation charge. Intel recently underwent such an exchange, although it excluded its named executives and directors from the program.

Does your company have underwater options? If so, are there any plans on how to handle them?

It Takes Good Leadership to Develop Good Leaders

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:30:00 GMT

If you're looking to develop leadership talent in your organization, start by getting the support of your top executives. According to the preliminary results of i4cp's major new study on leadership competencies, conducted in partnership with the American Management Association, executive support is the number-one factor that contributes to proper leadership development. The study, which is now available for download on i4cp's website, shows that, while lower-performing organizations agree that executive support contributes a helping hand, they do so at a significantly lower level than do higher-performing companies.

In fact, lower-performing organizations responded far less enthusiastically than higher performers on every factor contributing to leadership development by 20 to 50 percentage points. Why the lack of enthusiasm? There could be a Catch-22 aspect to this finding. That is, the top leader may not give support for leadership development because leaders aren't developed properly. Until you develop leaders, you don't get the support, but you can't get the support until you develop leaders who give support. Though the full reasoning may be hard to pin down, this lack of emphasis on leadership buy-in leaves lower-performing companies with lots of room for improvement. How does your organization compare?

i4cp's Leadership Competency Study explores these issues and much more, including training practices, performance measurements, and characteristics of successful leaders. Look for more insightful findings from us on leadership competencies in the weeks and months ahead.

Preliminary results from the study are now available for download as both a PDF document and as Interactive Data. Interactive Data allows customization of the results by a variety of demographics, including market performance index (MPI) score, industry, job level, organization size and more, making it easy to benchmark results and identify potential opportunities for improvement.

We also recommend you read last week's TrendWatcher, The Leadership Competencies That Matter Most in Today's Trying Economic Times, which provides broader details of the survey findings.

The Top 10 Factors That Help Organizations Develop Talent

The chart below represents a small fraction of the findings from the study, which includes training practices, performance measurements, characteristics of successful leaders and more.

New Study Reveals How Firms Are Preparing to Retain Workers as Economy Improves

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:15:00 GMT

The silver lining in a lousy economy is employee retention, but as economic prospects brighten, most firms are thinking about ways to retain talent, according to the latest study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) on the subject of organizational turnover and engagement. But that doesn't necessarily translate into big raises for most employees, who have seen few pay raises of late.

In this down economy, the study, the full results of which are now available to i4cp members in both standard and interactive form (a sample of the results may be downloaded here), found that higher market performing companies are more than twice as likely to offer pay raises to keep key talent from walking out the door than are lower performers.

The study showed that 18% of high-performing organizations have already taken the step of increasing compensation levels to reduce turnover, compared to 7% of lower performers. Over the next six to 12 months, the same ratio of high performers (18%) plan to implement pay raises, while almost a quarter (24%) of lower performers have plans to do so.

That doesn't mean, however, that reducing turnover revolves around reward. The favored tactic companies overall have already taken to further reduce turnover is better internal communication with all employees, 81% naming it as the top method. Increased focus on talent management (77%) was the second-highest choice, and increased focus on succession planning (59%) ranked third. Among higher market performers, a full 91% point to communication as their top method of staunching turnover, compared to 71% of lower performers.

What about the future? Steps planned within the next year to reduce turnover by higher-performing companies include increased focus on succession planning and talent management, both cited by 70% of respondents. Leadership training is being planned by 66% of higher-performing firms. Lower performers plan to focus first on talent management issues (71%), followed by 62% who plan to increase internal communication.

"Certainly, employees who are challenged to stretch their personal finances during this difficult economy will be happy to contemplate pay increases," comments i4cp senior research analyst Carol Morrison. "But our research confirms, too, that companies understand how important it is to maintain ongoing communication with their employees, along with strong talent management programs that emphasize a future focus through development and succession."

The study also asked respondents to outline their cost-cutting measures over the last year and a half, and the overall results showed that 40% have made significant cost cuts, while 14% said they have had few or no cost-cutting measures. When viewed from a market performance perspective, however, the numbers change. Twenty-three percent of higher performers said they have instituted few or no cost-cutting measures, compared to 5% of lower performers. On the other end of the spectrum, 62% of lower performers have made significant cuts, while 31% of higher performers said they've undergone steeper cuts.

Regarding steps taken to increase engagement, the study showed that higher performers are more likely to involve employees in the process. Two of 10 respondents (21%) from higher-performing companies admit they have never surveyed their employees about engagement issues, compared to 36% of lower performers. Both higher- and lower-performing companies that conduct surveys are most likely to survey their workers annually. Based on results of their most recent surveys, 49% of higher performers reported an increase in engagement, compared to a quarter (26%) of lower market performing organizations.

The Employee Turnover and Engagement Pulse Survey was conducted by i4cp in September 2009. The full results of the survey are available exclusively for all i4cp corporate members. A portion of the Employee Turnover and Engagement results are available to non-members.

The Top Five Leadership Competencies of Tomorrow

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Picture quarterbacks who can freelance their way to great plays in the face of the unexpected blitz. Or envision teachers who can keep 35 kids organized and energized even while getting them to be creative.

Now look around for the people in your organization who are, at some level, equally able to thrive amid chaos and help others prosper as well. Those will be your future leaders, suggests a major new study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp).

Findings from the new study, recently released to i4cp members, are now available in both standard and interactive form. Respondents, many from i4cp's member base of Fortune 1000 organizations, were asked to write in the top five words or phrases that came to mind to describe the leadership competencies they perceive will be critical in the future.

The top five leadership competencies of the future clearly emphasize fast change and uncertainty as hallmarks of the next 10 years. These competencies are:

Leadership agility and flexibility

"Tomorrow's leaders will need to be able to manage on the fly," says Kevin Oakes, CEO of i4cp. "Not only will they need to be mentally agile and flexible, they'll need to instill those qualities in others, even while keeping things from becoming chaotic. I picture them as excellent business athletes."

Innovation

Another of the top five competencies is innovation. "Innovation is, in fact, one way to stay agile," notes Oakes. "You react to changes in the business environment by doing things differently and by quickly inventing new products and services that help you gain a competitive advantage."

Communication

In an environment where the world is awash in social media and instant messaging, leaders will need to be exceptional communicators, able to cut through the morass of information overload with well-honed messaging.

Change management

The critical nature of change management is highlighted not only in the write-ins but in other parts of the i4cp study as well. When i4cp asked about the degree to which organizations emphasize certain management competencies, it found that the more that organizations stress change management skills, the higher they score on i4cp's Leadership Success Index.

"From this perspective, the future is already here," notes Oakes. "Change management skills will not only be needed for the future, they're paying dividends now."

The i4cp Leadership Competencies study examined a variety of leadership issues. i4cp members can currently download the results via a standard PDF report or through i4cp's exclusive Interactive Data functionality, which allows them to benchmark against other organizations according to criteria such as size of organization, market performance and leadership success. If you'd like to gain access to the report, please contact i4cp at http://www.i4cp.com/contact/

i4cp is also debuting other findings of the study in an interactive webinar later today, October 8, at 1:00 p.m. EDT, titled, The Leadership Competencies That Drive High-Performing Organizations. Sign up for free.

Future Trends of HR Metrics

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:19:18 GMT

This article was co-written by Jay Jamrog and Mary Ann Downey.

We've been asked a lot lately about the future of HR metrics. In order to answer that question, it's essential to first see how far HR analytics and metrics have come. And, although the past isn't necessarily a good predictor of the future, it's a good place to start.

Over the past 25 years, much has been written by practitioners, consultants, academics and gurus calling for the HR profession to step up and install better ways to measure not only the efficiency but also the effectiveness of the various HR functions. Even more important is a call for the measures that will show the impact that HR is having on the organization as a whole. The theory is that this would lead to more enlightened strategies for managing human capital and give HR the long-lost respect that the profession deserves.

So, how far have we come in 25 years? Unfortunately, the answer is mixed. While a few organizations are making good progress, the vast majority are not. The results of i4cp's 2009 survey on the topic showed that while almost three-quarters of the respondents said that they had HR measurements in place, most were measuring only the efficiency of various HR functions and programs. Less than a quarter were attempting to develop effectiveness metrics, and very few were measuring the impact on the organization (unless you believe that engagement and satisfaction surveys are providing a reliable gauge for measuring the impact that HR is having on the organization).

No board or CEO would ever accept this paucity of data from any other department. If marketing were measuring efficiency only, they would be reporting something like, "Last year, marketing placed more ads in more magazines at less cost." This wouldn't be greeted favorably by decision-makers. They would demand that marketing give them data on the effectiveness and impact of the campaign: "Did it boost sales? Did it increase marketing share?"

So, what can HR do? We know from studying those companies that are making progress in measuring the efficiency, effectiveness and impact of HR that building a thriving human capital management metrics process takes four ingredients: good people information, a culture that makes decisions based on data, effective tools and dedicated resources. But we also know that most organizations aren't willing to devote much time and effort to this process. As a result, absent a major breakthrough, we believe that for most organizations, the measurement of human capital management will look only incrementally better 10 years from now.

But organizations willing to devote the resources to sustain the effort over the next 10 years will see real progress. Over time, continued collection of historical data on efficiency, effectiveness and impact - along with external data - will help them to build better predictive models. These models will help them gain a deeper understanding of how people add value to their processes, leading to even better predictive modeling and, subsequently, better decision-making. These cutting-edge organizations will eventually have predictive models that will help determine which roles, skills, knowledge and behaviors increase productivity, drive profitability and give the organization a competitive advantage. Through better employee planning and development, employee engagement should increase with new transparency and empowerment. There will be a virtuous cycle, because the talented and driven will want to join these companies, making them the new employers of choice and role models of the organizational world. They will represent real-world versions of a modern managerial ideal: the organization that is so excellent in so many areas that it consistently outperforms most of its competitors for extended periods of time.

Is your organization in the forefront, or are you being left behind?

Why Companies Should Take Advantage of Job Shadowing

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Job shadowing provides a better understanding of organizations, develops skills, facilitates succession planning and helps retain employees. Despite those benefits, most companies don't offer this opportunity to their employees, according to a recent study by i4cp. Today, only 31.3% of organizations offer job shadowing, although another 14% say they plan to implement a job shadowing program in the coming two years.

Of the companies that do offer job shadowing programs, ownership varies considerably. Job shadowing is a part of an organization's mentoring program, according to 56.5% of respondents, and over half said that any employee can participate. Individual business units are responsible for job shadowing programs in 34.8% of responding organizations, while training and development or HR are each responsible in a little over one-quarter of companies.

Measurement of job shadowing programs is a bit mixed. While almost 70% of respondents said that they keep tabs on employee participation, only 8.7% said their organizations measure the monetary value of job shadowing. The success of the program is generally based on feedback from participants (80.6%) and managers (70.1%).

The study did reveal some gaps that low-performing organizations could take advantage of to improve their job shadowing programs. While over 40% of respondents from high-performing organizations - those with considerable growth and market share over the last five years - said they allow employees to shadow only their strongest employees, only 9.1% of low-performing organizations said they do the same. Furthermore, a similar percentage of high-performing organizations introduce job shadowing as an option during the onboarding process, whereas only 7.7% of low-performing organizations do the same.

New Podcast: Digital Shadows and Their Productivity Implications

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:43:49 GMT

Total Picture Radio's Peter Clayton recently interviewed i4cp's Mark Vickers about his most recent TrendWatcher, titled Digital Shadows: The Rise of New Workforce Productivity Issues. Their discussion is now available in podcast format for download.

The podcast examines how employees' actions - both in the workplace and in their personal lives - are leaving a digital imprint. This digital imprint is made up of stored data collected from cell phones, laptops, credit cards, Facebook accounts or the plethora of other communication or information technologies that are available today. Several companies already track day-to-day performance down to the keystroke, and recruiters are looking on social networking sites to screen candidates. While there are plenty of benefits to this data explosion, there are also negative productivity implications that, without the right tools, can lead to data overload and result in unnecessary work and even more distractions in an age where multitasking is already a significant challenge.

Download the podcast now or visit Total Picture Radio for other TrendWatcher podcasts.

Should the Head of Human Resources Report to the CEO?

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

The answer is: yes, if you want to be like other high-performing companies.

With many human resource departments still grappling with how to become more strategic, a recent study by i4cp revealed several opportunities based on how HR is typically organized.

In the study, respondents were asked to specify how their HR organization was structured on a regional, functional and team level. Results varied by company size, understandably, but several gaps were identified between higher market performing organizations - those companies that have shown considerable revenue growth and increased market share over the last five years - and low-performing organizations. Some of these gaps are listed below (for organizations of 10,000 employees and more):

High market performers are more likely to have HR structured with a combination of centers of excellence, shared services and HR generalists (65% versus only 44% for low performers).
Global high performers tend to decentralize by country, whereas a vast majority of lower market performers decentralize by region/continent.
More than 78% of higher market performers have the head of HR reporting directly to the CEO, versus 67% of low performers.
Higher market performers rely much more heavily on multifunctional temporary team-based structures (43.5%) than low performers (28%).
HR sets up more cross-functional teamsin higher-performing organizations (47.7%) than in low-performing ones (only 35 %).

More respondents from high-performing organizations (55.6%) said that their HR budget represents 3-5% of their organization's operating budget, whereas HR departments in low performers tend to receive a smaller percentage.