Make Believe CIO Magazine Cover - We can dream can't we?

I just finished reading an article on the Financial Times’ site, entitled, “Does the company CIO have a future?” by Mike Cooke.

Essentially, Cooke argues that by the year 2020, the corporate IT function will be so altered that the CIO may be irrelevant. He isn’t saying IT will be no more, but he points to several trends that, if they continue at the current pace, will radically change how companies fundamentally manage information.

Here are a few of the trends he sites:

• Enterprise systems (e.g., ERP and CRM) can be purchased as a service
• The cloud becomes commonplace — data will be routinely stored centrally by employees; little thought will be given to the need to store data locally
• The work force is not only comfortable with technology, but also actively explores new technologies even if they are not officially sanctioned
• The work force is aware of security risks but remains lax in security practices

For those of you who attended our most recent Webinar: HR & Technology Predictions for 2012 and YOUR Guide to Survival, you might recognize some similarities between trends in HR technology, and trends in information technology in general. (If you missed it, you can listen to the recording here.)

In fact, I’m going to go so far as to say HR is becoming a technology trend-setter, not follower. Yes, that’s right! HR is leading, not following!

One of the interesting points Cooke makes in his article is that, in the future, the term CIO will no longer really be appropriate. He argues that there are two sides to information – the nuts and bolts function of collecting, moving, and sharing information, and the strategic side of determining how this information will be used to the organization’s advantage. The former being the CTO, and the latter taking on a new moniker: CSIO – Chief Strategic Information Officer.

Mr. Cooke describes it this way:

“After all, the wealth of information companies will deal with (and it could be argued, deal with today) is considerable. In fact, it offers so much potential value that it warrants a complete focus on understanding and extracting that potential. The role of a CSIO could not be executed to its maximum if that person was distracted by regularly occurring delivery issues and problems that today’s CIO typically deals with. In short, the sheer value of strategic information demands complete focus.”

This is data governance – something we have been passionate about for some time, and have already begun to implement with our clients. Why is HR ahead on this one? Pure and simple: understanding organizational talent has become as important as capital, or technology to business success.

This is an exciting time for HR technology and Human Capital Management as a discipline. As leading enterprise-software companies like SAP and Oracle continue to try move strategically into the HCM space and Workday emerges as a market leader as well, it is clear that the race to cloud is being fought by software leviathans using those who have advanced the furthest, the fastest, and offer the biggest strategic value.

HR leaders, you could be that CSIO! Who else knows the strategic side of data usage better than you? How many times have you heard that in the future, the head of HR will be someone from the “business side” of the house? Dare I say… the future leader of IT may just end up being someone from thee HR department.

Yes, excuse me… HR? Yes, a seat has just opened up… Let me show you to your table.

Another infusion of knowledge…

I’ve written a number of times here about social collaboration trends inside of the enterprise, and HR’s calling to sell the idea to the CEO. In many places, upper management is convinced of the need for their company to get social with clients and customers, but when the conversation turns to social tools for employees, there is less enthusiasm from the C-suite.

We all know the concerns – time wasting, inappropriate language, company secrets being leaked, and an overwhelming need to control corporate information. Thus, the only way HR moves the needle on the issue is to argue that the benefits outweigh the concerns, or risks. After plausible arguments on both sides, we in HR often resort to the “everyone else is doing it” argument (flash back to convincing our parents that every normal 6th grader has cable TV in their room), and stomp back to our office where we read admonitions from guys like me.

Well, today no scolding. I want to share with you a great interview that was posted on the MIT Sloan Management Review site a few days ago. The title of the piece is “What Sells CEOs on Social Networking,” and it is Andrew McAfee being interviewed by David Kiron, the Executive Editor of MIT Sloan Management Review’s Innovation Hubs.

Six years ago, Andrew McAfee was the guy who coined the term “Enterprise 2.0″ for what collaboration tools such as blogging and wikis (and, today, Facebook and Twitter) would mean for companies.

In this interview, he talks about how CEOs see this world today — and what really sells them on the tools. Looking back on the past six years, McAfee shares what he has learned about what he calls the “triggers” that generate CEO interest in social networking.

This is a must-read article, in my opinion, but let me share a few thoughts…

The first “trigger” McAfee suggests is to approach knowledge management in a different way. He reminds us of the movement throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s that spurred many companies to invest big dollars in knowledge management software, only to shelf most of it. So, if you’re pitching the idea of social tools as “knowledge management,” don’t. It won’t work. McAfee suggests a different way to pique the CEO’s interest…

“One useful trigger is to use a quote that I first heard a while back that is attributed to Lew Platt, who was the old CEO of Hewlett-Packard. He looked around his organization, which is a big, very well-run, hugely respected company in America for decades. This is not a poorly run company. He looked around Hewlett-Packard and said, ‘If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive.’ Whenever I say that to a room full of executives, you can see the heads nod.”

This is true of every organization. There is simply no way to codify company knowledge, in my opinion. It is created through failure and triumph, deals won and lost, and resides in the experience of the workforce (often not remembered until someone asks), not a database, not a document. If your company only knew what your people could share with one another…

This is something your CEO can relate to – it is one of those things that keep him or her up at night.

To combat the idea that an enterprise social network would be a complete waste of time, McAfee offers the concept of “weak ties,” which are connection between those that are not close, personal colleagues.

This is an idea that emerged in his book, Enterprise 2.0 (Harvard Business Publishing, 2009), that is built on research in sociology that shows that if you want innovation, or expansion into other areas, your weak ties a better place to go than your strong ties (those that share the same deliverables). As McAfee points out, “Your weak-tie network is an extremely valuable thing for you. The problem is that before the 2.0 era, we had terrible tools for building and maintaining and exploiting a network of weak ties.”

Think about that. The very foundations of many social networking platforms are built on the concept of “weak ties” networking. Do we care what Jim from the Piedmont High Class of 1988 is having for breakfast? Please say we do not. However, if Jim knows someone who knows someone who can solve a problem for us, or has a specialized skill we need, we have an instant connection to a resource we could have never known about in the past… all we have to do is ask.

The article goes on to discuss how to get the CEO involved, improve your chances to get funding for social initiatives, evidence of competitive advantage, and a mini case study where some of these ideas have played out.

Please take some time to read the entire interview – I promise it will “trigger” some great ideas for how you can pitch social collaboration to your CEO.  The other thing that I hope it “triggers” is an unwavering belief that business collaboration and business social must be part of each HR technology strategy today.  If it is not, you are leaving more than knowledge on the table.

Another infusion of knowledge…

A marketers goal is to elicit a response – a “call to action” – not just provide information or specs on their product. And even when it seems like there is no specific, “call here,” “click here,” “order now,” command, good marketers are attempting to compel an emotional response with their pitch.

Most marketers are limited by the communication channels they can use to get their message to potential consumers. 99% of businesses can’t afford television, some local business like radio, some larger companies use print advertising, but the majority of marketing is done through the mail, including email.

The total volume of “junk” mail delivered every year is around 103 billion pieces, according to the USPS. It now accounts for 25% of all mail, and is literally keeping the USPS afloat. And Symantec tracks anywhere from 30 billion to 50 billion spam emails PER DAY!

So, you can see why marketers need to be creative, clever, and even sneaky, to get you to respond to their message. We are enticed by “internet only pricing,” encouraged to play a game on the company’s website, or scan a QR code, among hundreds of nifty ideas to get us to respond to the message. It’s almost as if the message doesn’t matter, just as long as they can get us to do something, anything, to say they got “a response.”

Well, it turns out the response rate, for all that money, effort, and trees, is about 1% across the board. That means 99 people out of 100 filter out the message in one way or another. In marketing journals, blogs, and trade associations, marketers are being told that the era of direct mail is dead. Some have obviously not been keeping up on their reading.

So how does that affect us? Well, if we still want to take our communication cues from marketers (and we do), let’s see what they are doing to respond to the fact that their “call to action” is not calling, or causing action.

First thing, and this is my term: ridiculous personalization. Imagine getting a postcard or email with something like…“Jason, we know you are passionate about HR technology and Human Capital Management. We are too, and that’s why we’ve created www.jasonaverbook.hr-expert.com to offer you the best in HCM reading.”

Or how about… “Jason, want personalized Boston Red Sox gear? Just visit www.jasonaverbook.biggest.redsox.fan.com and check out your customized gear today.

Yep, that’s happening and it’s call a PURL – a personal URL. Tell me you’re not clicking on that link out of sheer curiosity.

Next, marketers are being told that the “call to action” needs to be replaced by a “call to conversation” (again my term for it). Loosely translated… nobody is falling for you goofy “buy now” gimmicks any more – people talk, share, rate, review, research, collaborate, check-out, compare, and talk some more before making a purchase. Get people talking about your product! That’s all.

So let’s wrap this up and make sense of it for HR. Two of the trends we’re tracking in 2012 are the idea of HR meeting micro needs (a service model to address individual department, division, not just “enterprise”), and socializing everything HR.

We will be sharing more about that, but for now, understand that today’s technology allows you to create an individual experience for every person in your organization to interact with HR in a very unique, specific, and meaningful way. Begin to change your thinking from one-size-fits-all to individualized HR service.

Remember, 99 people out of 100 will filter out your message unless you get people talking. Socializing HR means building in “social” to everything you do. Publishing a report? Do it in a blog and ask for comments. Rolling out a new program? Ask for feedback, suggestions, ideas, comments, and concerns before telling everyone how great it will be. There are dozens of ways to socialize what you’re doing and get people talking right now. Start doing this today, and get good at it.

Then, after you hire your Marcom Manager, get busy hiring a Social Media Manager – you’re gonna need one.

Another infusion of knowledge…

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2012 has been set up to be a bullish year for talent management investment. Corporate profits are strong; more and more C-level executives realize talent is key to their organizations gaining and sustaining competitive advantage; and skills shortages persist despite high levels of unemployment.

These are all drivers for investment. Respondents to Knowledge Infusion’s 5th Annual Talent Management Survey of HR Executive Magazine readers affirmed this cautiously optimistic stance with the vast majority indicating they will either increase or maintain their annual spend across all areas of talent management this year. The two areas most commonly cited for increased investment in 2012 – learning & development and performance management.

Despite this bullishness, challenges to managing an organization’s are plentiful and varied. Anyone reading this post can attest to that. And so did respondents to our survey when we asked them to indicate what is stopping their organizations from managing talent effectively. Let’s take a closer look.

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First, some good news. Talent management buy-in is there.

• Only 13% cited ‘our leaders don’t buy into talent management’ as a show-stopper or significant challenge. Leader buy-in is critical to both investment sponsorship and driving change when deploying new talent management programs.
• Only 1 in 4 cited not having ‘the money to invest in talent management as a show stopper or significant challenge.’ About half cited insufficient funds as a somewhat significant challenge. This is a problem to be sure, but it is a bullish indicator that business cases have been made or are being made by HR executives who have earned a proverbial ‘seat at the table.’

Now the bad news. Many of the challenges cannot be solved for quickly.

• More than 4 in 5 indicated ‘managers do not know how to manage people’ as being at least a somewhat significant challenge. Not having people managers to align the efforts of their teams with the needs of the organization or to motivate and develop them is a huge drag on individual productivity and organizational performance.
• Nearly 4 in 5 pointed to inefficient or antiquated processes being at least a somewhat significant challenge. Given we’re talking about talent management processes, any changes to modernize them will need to be put into place and communicated with large swaths of the workforce. Part of this modernization will entail ensuring these processes yield the data need to drive smart decisions about talent and supporting these processes with the right technology – both of which were also cited as challenges by the majority of respondents.

Of course all these challenges represent opportunities for HR to strategically support the development and execution of smarter talent management in the future. While some of these opportunities will take years to fully cease, they share a common starting point. HR needs to engage the rest of the business as a capable partner who can help solve for them. How? Here are some quick tips on how to start tackling each one.

• Do many of your organization’s managers not know how to manage people? Point out to business leaders how incapable managers threaten business performance. If you do not have hard data, anecdotes are often effective and augmented by those of the business leaders themselves based on their personal experiences. Partner with them to define what a good manager of talent looks like. Then set realistic goals for assessing current managers against these capabilities and putting appropriate management development and recruitment programs in place to close any near or longer-term gaps.
• Are your talent management processes are inefficient or antiquated? Engage business leaders by validating what the outcomes of each process should be (i.e., what’s the point?!). Then set some guiding principles for talent management as a whole (e.g., each employee owns his or her career development) to help define who plays what role in each process. Then start looking at your own processes – many of which may not have changed in 20+ years – and determining where there is fat (i.e., unnecessary steps) to be trimmed.
• Don’t have the data to tell you how talent should be managed? Ask key stakeholders inside and outside HR what data they need. Or better yet, tell them what data they need. When they ask why they can’t get related reports or access to a dashboard with the push of a button, quickly explain why. In doing so, you should start to get buy-in on things (think standard job titles, common rating scales, investments in automation) that they can eventually help you sell the business.
• Don’t have the money to invest in talent management? Do your business leaders not buy in? Cull through your organizational leaders’ goals and business plans. I guarantee the vast majority can be enhanced with some investment in talent – whether it involves building it, buying it, borrowing it, or bouncing it.
• Don’t have the right talent management technology? Define business requirements based on your discussions with the business. Then ask yourself, ‘Do we really not have the right technology?’ In my experience, clients often do not know what has been made available to them in recent releases of software to which they already have access. Doing a quick fit-gap against requirements. It may surprise you. If not, then start working on a business case to change your portfolio. With all the innovation and consolidation that has happened in the talent management technology market over the past 5 years, you may save yourself some money in the process by streamlining the number of vendors you need to manage.
• Many of your organization’s HR Business Partners not equipped to consult with the business? Take a similar approach summarized by the tips on assessing and adding the necessary manager capabilities. In my experience, the successful deployment of truly transformational talent management involves the development of some HR business partners and the reassignment of others.

Another infusion of knowledge…

POST UPDATE:  We failed to properly give credit to Nick Cronin over at Tech Crunch for his article that introduced us to the idea of Labor Efficiency.  Our apologies.

Over the past couple of years, the number of workers who operate as free-agents (contractor, consultant) has been steadily growing. Some now believe that around 20% of the workforce is unattached to any one company, and that number could grow as high as 50% by 2020.

There seem to be dozens of reasons for this migration, but the two that seem to keep coming up are technology and the economy. Technology has all but rendered the physical office building a thing of the past.

For many, outside of free coffee, there really isn’t a good reason to go there. It used to be we needed the “things” and people kept in these buildings to get our work done – and for some that is still true. But for a growing number of others, technology has made where you work, completely irrelevant.

The economic downturn has produced a new kind of worker – regardless of age – that no longer feels comfortable relying on the stability of “the company” for their livelihood. While some have been forced into an independent role, many more have opted to look beyond the confines of a traditional job, and strike out on their own… but in a little different way than the previous generation would have done it.

Driven by inspiration, or maybe a “take-this-job-and-shove-it” moment, our parents would have left the stability of their 9 to 5 to start their own business – improve on what their employer was doing, or invent a better mouse trap. They would open a shop, hang a shingle, and hire some help with the dream of growing a new company, creating a new brand.

Today’s “entrepreneur” is armed with a laptop and a LinkedIn account, and isn’t out to build a company – they are out to build themselves as the brand, offering niche skills, darting in and out of projects and accomplishing things in super efficient and lean ways.

If you aren’t actively exploring this supply of labor, you’re missing a huge opportunity that your competitors are taking advantage of.

Yes, managing these types of workers is different (not harder, not impossible, not overhead that’s not worth the result… just different), but the benefits to both the company and the workers are huge.

For the company, you get access to a diverse marketplace of skills where the work you need can be accomplished by the right people, at the right time, and at the right price. The free-agent has little or no overhead, can work from anywhere, at anytime, and is only limited by how much work he/she wants to take on.

Pretty sweet deal for all involved, and the basis for an emerging business metric, HR can begin take upstairs: Labor Efficiency

Labor efficiency (an outcome/metric of Workforce Planning) is about having the right people for the work that need to be accomplished. And you have to think beyond just a couple of areas where specialty skills are needed, and include all tasks, in all areas of the business.

This means creating a lean, flexible workforce which expands and contracts as the business demands – and is why the free-agent market is becoming so attractive. More and more, savvy employers are taking the time an effort to parse up tasks (once thought to be only doable by full-time staff) and bringing on independents to complete them and move on.

Think about the costs associated with hiring someone (beyond the compensation package) – recruitment, onboarding, training, lost opportunity when they don’t work out, HR time and effort, and on and on – we all know the exponential costs of hiring.

The other key component to this is the technology, if you are not looking at internal, external and “free-agent” applicants and labor in the same system; you are missing some huge opportunities at optimizing your talent communities.  The concept of Integrated Talent Management and the Talent Management Suite should never just be for employees and applicants, but contractors or “contingent labor” as well.

In the free-agent market, you don’t pay all of these up-front costs. Instead you spend the resource effort up front to break up the work into projects and find experts to do them very efficiently – only paying for the work completed, not the secondary costs listed above.

Spend some time thinking about labor efficiency in your organization. Are there ways to invest effort up front to “projectize” work, and build a contingent labor force to get it don? Are there ways to get tasks from answering the phone, to filing paperwork, to designing new products done at a fraction of the cost you’re paying now? Can you begin to calculate what a particular task is costing your organization?

Begin to talk about labor efficiency in ways that your business leaders can appreciate and support. I guarantee you’ll have an engaging conversation and may even come away with a few new initiatives.

Another infusion of knowledge…

Corporate culture is a hot topic these days among businesses who want to attract top talent, translate their values to their products and services, and show customers what they’re really all about. But what is culture, exactly, and why do so many companies try (and fail) to create it?

Shawn Parr, a blogger with Fast Company gives us a pretty good definition, and reason behind the culture craze.

“Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation.”

Parr goes on to say, “A strong culture flourishes with a clear set of values and norms that actively guide the way a company operates. Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy.

Performance-oriented cultures possess statistically better financial growth, with high employee involvement, strong internal communication, and an acceptance of a healthy level of risk-taking in order to achieve new levels of innovation.”

If you want an idea of what a company’s vibrant culture feels like in the real world, Parr suggests you get on a Southwest flight to anywhere, buy shoes from Zappos.com, pants from Nordstrom, groceries from Whole Foods, anything from Costco, a Starbucks espresso, or a Double-Double from In N’ Out Burger.

A company’s culture is often misunderstood and thought of as a touchy-feely thing that belongs to HR. The truth is, culture is not an intangible or a vibe you get, or the cool office furniture, or hip lobby décor.

Culture is, in fact, one of the most important drivers of long-term success and must be set, tweaked, monitored, and nurtured, just like other pieces of the business strategy. Quite simply, your culture is the environment in which your strategy and your people thrive or die a slow death.

Now here’s the tricky part. Culture cannot be artificially created. It must be genuinely nurtured by everyone from the CEO down. Think about it like a nurturing habitat for living creatures. You wouldn’t let your fish bowl go all green and icky and expect your goldfish to thrive. Your company culture is no different. It is what sustains (or kills) the life of your company.

Here is a little exercise:
While at work, you run into your culture every day (whether you know it or not). So, consider these questions:

• Does it inspire you, or get in your way, slowly and methodically wearing you down? 
• Is it overpowering, causing you to back down from making that extra effort, or does it inspire you to overcome challenges? 
• Is it power and position that people respond to, or encouragement and empowerment?
• Is it driven from top-down directives, or company-wide collaboration? 
• Finally (and this is really all you need to know)… What are the private conversations like after a meeting? Are the troops fired up, or commiserating and second guessing?

We often have a tendency to look at companies like Zappos, Google, Virgin, Whole Foods, or Southwest Airlines and admire them for their passionate, engaged, and active cultures, and immediately assume that can’t be us.

Sure, building a vibrant culture takes hard work and a deep commitment. And yes, you can’t get a checklist of items, knock them off and declare victory. But there some very basic things to put in order:

1. Dynamic and Engaged Leadership
A vibrant culture is fueled by leadership that is actively involved and informed about the realities of the business. They genuinely care about the company’s role in the world, are passionately engaged, and are great communicators and motivators – they set the vision, mission, values, and goals and create an environment for them to come alive.

2. Live Your Values
It’s not enough to have plaques in the lobby or PowerPoint slides in the sales presentation that espouse company values. Departments and individuals must be motivated and measured against the way they model those values. A values-driven culture hires people using the corporate values as a filter.

3.Responsibility and Accountability
Strong cultures empower their people, recognize their talents, and give them a very clear role with responsibilities. It’s amazing how basic this is, but how absent the principle is in many businesses.

4.Celebrate Success and Failure
Most companies forget to celebrate their victories both big and small, and they rarely have time or the humility to acknowledge and learn from their failures. Celebrate both victories and failures in your own unique way, but share them and share them often.

Another infusion of knowledge…

As many of you know, volunteerism and giving back to the community is a vibrant element in the KI culture.  We’re participating in something amazing next week, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to share it with you.  We’re supporting a cause that is so close to so many of us – and I’m sure to many of you.  We’re helping end breast cancer – and we’re doing it by raising funds to support cutting edge breast cancer research – HOW we’re doing it is the crazy part….

We’re sponsoring and running in the 110% Give Harder 110 Miles for $110,000.  That’s right, I said 110 MILES.

Beginning on Saturday, February 11th, 2012, a team of dedicated solo runners and 2 relay teams will set out on a 110 mile journey in Jacksonville, Florida. Each of the solo runners will run nearly 84 miles through the night to get to the starting line of the 2012 26.2 With Donna Marathon. The runners will continue onto the course of the Donna Marathon and will run another 26.2 miles until the finish line.

The 110% Give Harder Foundation was founded in Ponte Vedra Florida by the passionate athletes and leaders of 110%.  110% makes an innovative line of Compression + Ice gear that empowers athletes to push themselves and play harder (I know this, because I wore a pair of their calf sleeves in a half marathon recently, and they were awesome!) Ultimately, 110% Give Harder seeks to raise $110,000 for donation to the 26.2 with Donna Foundation to support breast cancer research. 100% of the funds raised will go directly to the 26.2 with Donna.

The 110% Give Harder team has raised over $70k at this point, but they’ve got another $40k to go!  If you’re interested in supporting the cause, you can donate here on KI’s sponsor donation page. Every dollar of every donation goes towards the 26.2 with Donna Foundation.  If 110% Give Harder is successful in raising $110k, their donation will help trigger a matching donation of another $100,000 from the Weaver Foundation!  http://donate.breastcancermarathon.com/2012Marathon/Team_KI

Thank you for anything you can give.  What is most important is that you are a) aware and b) realize that we can beat this thing if we all work together.  Don’t just sit there, DO SOMETHING!

Another infusion of knowledge…

The current issue of Harvard Business Review is dedicated to employee happiness.

Here’s a little taste of what’s inside this issue…

SPOTLIGHT: The Happiness Factor

Why write about happiness when so much of the global economy is still in a funk and people are manifestly unhappy across the world?

Because emerging research from neuroscience, psychology, and economics makes the link between a thriving workforce and better business performance absolutely clear. Happiness can have an impact at both the company and the country level. And the movement to measure national well-being on factors other than GDP could be game changing: As we know, what gets measured gets managed. We’ve learned a lot about how to make people happy. We’d be stupid not to use that knowledge.

So, what makes employees happy? More money? More vacation time? Free food? Yes, yes, and yes, to a degree, but we’re not talking about happy for a day, we’re talking about sustainable happiness, which leads to engagement.

Rob Markey, a HBR blogger, shares some interesting insights on that question…

“We have been studying the links between employee engagement and customer loyalty for a few years now, and we’ve found that the only route to employee happiness that also benefits shareholders is through a sense of fulfillment resulting from an important job done well. We should aspire not just to make employees “happy,” but to do so by helping them achieve great things.”

But when many employees feel fortunate just to have a job—let alone one that makes them happy — and companies remind them of this frequently, isn’t focusing on whether or not employees are in good spirits a bit much?

The thing that trips up folks here is confusing happiness for contentment. Being content, in my mind can lead to complacency. A better way to describe what we’re after is a “thriving” employee. A thriving employee isn’t satisfied with the status quo, they push to create an idealized future for themselves and their employer.

Thriving employees are easy to spot; they are highly energized, no matter what the climate around them. They show up and contribute, are less likely to quit even when things get tough, they go above and beyond their job description, and most importantly they attract people who are just as committed to the work as they are.

They are not your sprinters, they are your marathon runners, and they all have two recognizable characteristics.

The first is vitality: being alive, passionate, and excited. Employees who experience vitality spark energy in themselves and others. Companies generate vitality by giving people the sense that what they do on a daily basis makes a difference.

The second is learning: the growth that comes from gaining new knowledge and skills. Learning can bestow a technical advantage and set one apart as an expert. People who are developing their abilities are likely to believe in their potential for further growth.

The two characteristics feed off one another; one without the other is unlikely to create a thriving employee and may even damage performance.

Learning, for example, can create momentum for a time, but without passion can lead to burnout. What will I do with what I’ve learned? Why should I stick with this job? Likewise, vitality alone—even when employees receive plenty of praise for delivering results—can run out of steam. When the work doesn’t provide opportunities to learn, it’s just the same thing over and over again.

The combination of vitality and learning produces employees who deliver results and find opportunities to grow. In short, they are thriving because they are performing well today and in command of their future – something to be very happy about.

Another infusion of knowledge…

I wish all could be here and experience the energy, passion and excitement of global HR leaders around the future of our craft.  It is time to “think different” and I hope you are as excited as I am about our future.  Take a watch of the video (it is only 5 minutes of your day).

I just read that SHRM recently reported that 60% of employers said they checked credit histories for some or all job applicants. The rationale in using credit histories in hiring decisions is that a bad history of paying bills can be a pretty good indicator of an employee’s reliability.

I thought… maybe in the past, but that’s not fair for those re-entering the workforce after what we’ve been through economically in the past few years. Surely, companies CAN’T be tying an applicant’s credit history to potential workplace performance in this climate.

And, in fact several states have recently passed laws restricting the use of credit reports as part of the hiring process. California has new laws that took effect in January, (similar to existing laws in Hawaii, Maryland, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, and Connecticut) that now limits when employers, except for financial institutions, can lawfully use consumer credit reports in hiring decisions.

Good, I thought. (Insert tirade about what really caused the economic crisis to begin with).

But then I found an article that was posted about 18 months ago (during the height of the Great Recession) by Voluntary Benefits Magazine that told of a ‘silent killer’ afflicting 30 million employees in the US—a quarter of the American workforce—and warned that it could be eating away at businesses up to $15,000 per year per affected employee.

In mid-2010, it was estimated that 70% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck, creating a financial stress epidemic. This means…7 out of 10 employees, co-workers, and associates were only one paycheck away from disaster. It was not good.

The warning to businesses was that all of this financial stress was responsible for reduced employee productivity to the tune of about 20 hours-per-month-per-employee. That’s how much time on-the-job, the article said, a financially stressed employee spends distracted by their personal financial difficulty. Spending work hours with things like calls from creditors and banks, worrying about how paying the mortgage, medical bills, or college tuition, or driving across town to pay a bill to avoid a utility being shut-off.

According to the same study, 15% of American employees were said to be having financial problems at the time – and many have not fully recovered.

All of these distractions decreased the employee’s ability to concentrate, increased absenteeism, and created a flood of frequent personal phone calls. Not to mention HR department distractions, higher health care costs and the risk of fraud and/or theft.

Without question, financially-stressed employees were spending several hours per week on their employer’s dime, focused on their own bottom line, rather than doing productive work to enhance their company’s bottom line.

Two things come out of this for HR and people managers.

First, ignoring the financial problems of (new or established) employees will cost your organization in lost productivity. So, it’s not just a moral imperative to help employee who have fallen behind – it may be a financial necessity.

Second, there may be some value of using a candidate’s credit score. I don’ think it can tell us anything about an applicant’s ability to do the job, but it may be able to help manage risk and avoid potential bad hires as organizations once again ramp up staff. But then again…something about it seems unfair.

I would love to get your thoughts on this one. Please take a minute to add your voice below.

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Another infusion of knowledge…