Many functional and administrative components of HR management systems (e.g., training, compensation, recognition, recruitment, etc.) are now required to interact with several enterprise wide systems and applications. That being said, what advice would you give to HR seated at the management table as decisions are researched and made with regard to other functional software for the organization? CHARLES D’AMBROSIA: Focus first on employee administration areas like HR and benefits administration, self-service, and connectivity to payroll and your insurance carriers-typically these areas are paper-based and can be totally automated. Let employees change their address, elect benefits, and request leave through ESS. This should leave time for you to focus on strategic HR. MARK D. LANGE: The ERP vs. Best of Breed debate rages on, but the question is becoming less of “one over the other” and more one of “when to use one or the other.” Like many things in life, balance provides solutions that work best. Choose web-based, XML friendly applications that hold the promise of easier data exchange with core ERP systems. SYBLL K. ROMLEY: With today’s technology it is not difficult to integrate and share data from disparate systems. Start by selecting the HR system that meets your HR needs. Then get buy-in from the other managers by showing how your system will benefit them and assuring them that the data will integrate with their systems. SCOTT SCHERR: Whatever components companies select to meet business objectives, we suggest making it a high priority to establish your HRMS/payroll solution as the master data source for all workforce-related systems. A number of our customers are doing this and citing the need to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley controls as one reason for focusing on this effort. In your opinion what are the most dangerous pitfalls or common mistakes to avoid when implementing an HRMS/HRIS solution? CHARLES D’AMBROSIA: This depends on your company size. The key is to get the system implemented quickly so that you can reap the benefits of automation. It is better to get 80% of the correct functionality implemented in 20% of the time so that HR can become productive in key company performance areas. SYBLL K. ROMLEY: Implementations fail when the wrong expectations have been set, by either the vendor or the client and when there is no internal project ownership. Compile and prioritize a list of all the features you want implemented in your new system. Confirm any implementation fees associated with these features. Finally, take project ownership when it comes time to implement. SCOTT SCHERR: One of the most common mistakes in the industry with implementations is underestimating the scope and therefore total cost of a complete HRMS/payroll implementation. We advise buyers to look very closely at the track record of vendors or consultants implementing. Ask for publicly reported average implementation times and talk to references. During difficult financial climates, HR becomes increasingly pressured to justify return on investment for implementation of new HR software products and services. What advice can you give HR on how to effectively measure or quantify ROI of their HRMS strategies? CHARLES D’AMBROSIA: This depends on company size. You may not have the resources to test this out. There are many areas for performance measurement such as errors in your current system. Focus on specific metrics, error reduction, employee and manager surveys, and overall company perception of HR. These are all often reasons for buying the system. MARK D. LANGE: Organizations depend upon multiple applications to complete critical business processes. PeopleSoft Integration and Process Solutions ensure that transactions move between these applications to enable successful business process automation. Now, it is possible to mix and match ERP systems such as PeopleSoft with third-party technology solutions using modular components. This open framework allows you to connect people to processes, integrate disparate applications, and fully leverage your organization’s technology investments. SCOTT SCHERR: Solution providers can help you develop an ROI analysis. Our advice is to work with vendors that will supply you with ROI tools developed by a third-party rather than the vendor. You also need to know exactly how the ROI was calculated and to distinguish between hard, or direct, benefits and soft, or indirect. In the current business climate punctuated by mergers, acquisitions, and questions of corporate integrity, how important are the concepts of vendor stability and trust to the selection process of a software provider? CHARLES D’AMBROSIA: If you’re serious about purchasing software, you have to be serious about researching the software vendor. As a potential customer, don’t hesitate to ask questions, request references, and thoroughly research your potential vendor. If the vendor can’t or won’t answer legitimate questions, consider it a red flag and quickly move on. SYBLL K. ROMLEY: Vendor stability is important and also easy to check, but trust is earned during the evaluation process. A vendor that is open, honest and straight forward about the level of effort required to implement your vision is more likely to result in a long term partnership, and successful business relationship. The Internet continues to revolutionize business. From a futurist’s standpoint, what do you see as the next evolution of HRMS and web-enabled software? SYBLL K. ROMLEY: The evolution of HR will be driven by wireless high speed access-essential information anytime, anywhere on a variety of devices. The value proposition will be in the analytics and decision support tools that will be available plus enormous improvements in communications, information dissemination, and knowledge sharing. SCOTT SCHERR: Newer forms of outsourcing will become the dominant form of HRMS/payroll delivery in the future. Taking the responsibility for managing systems in-house out of the equation gives companies the opportunity to select best-of-breed solutions, whatever the platform. Wireless access to rich HRMS/payroll functions will also become increasingly prevalent. What kind of new functionality for hiring management or applicant tracking systems should HR make themselves aware of and what functionality should be closely examined when investigating these products and services? MARK D. LANGE: Some of the newer functionality we see emerging in work class recruiting includes: bidirectional integration between core HRIS and talent acquisition systems, more aggressive attention web branding and candidate management, a focus on global recruiting requirements, use and demand on on-line screening and assessment tools, adoption of tools to manage the contingent as well as traditional workforce. HR and management teams are increasingly looking at streamlining and improving their overall training delivery and functionality for their companies and are seeking out information on new “learning management systems.” What are the most pertinent questions or checklist items that HR and management should ask or be aware of when investigating a learning management system (LMS) or learning content management (LCMS)? MARK D. LANGE: Enterprise and departmental deployments each require their own distinct set of evaluation criteria. Organizations looking to standardize on a single enterprise LMS, should consider the following:
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Even the “Most Admired” Companies are Chock-full of Workforce Challenges
Executives at the “most-admired” companies say they are not effectively using their workforces and as a result are losing revenue, according to a new study.
Convergys led the project; the research was conducted by the Saratoga Institute in conjuction with the University of Michigan. Interviewees were C-level and top human resources executives at U.S. and European companies listed as “Most Admired” by Fortune.
Half of all executives said they don’t have enough information about their workforces to remain competitive. Eighty-four percent said they were unable to take advantage of their workforce’s full potential.
Other findings:
- Only 16 percent of respondents describe their companies as “flexible.”
- Fifty-five percent of executives say that a major barrier to getting the most out of their talent is that work is based around jobs, not based on skills and competencies. Bonnie Tichman, a vice president of marketing at Convergys, says that at most companies, people have “a job, a role, a boss, a set of goals.” At consulting firms, which she sees as generally more nimble, consultants move from project to project based on clients’ needs.
Less than 20 percent of workforce management executives say their company is highly proficient at retaining and developing their most skilled employees.
Dear Workforce How Do I Convince Our Managers That Training for Skills Development Provides Value?
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Dear Workforce What’s the Value of a Human Resources Certification
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Communicating effectively in writing and aloud.
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Treating people with integrity.
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Getting the most out of people, inspiring people and earning others’ trust.
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Understanding business in general, and your organization and industry specifically.
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Knowing what has made respected companies like the Container Store and SAS successful.
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Having an understanding of topics such as workforce technology, employment branding, retention and workforce planning.
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Harvard Criticized for Allowing Gender Goals to Slip
The percentage of women hired for tenured positions at Harvard’s main school is headed downward, according to reports on CNN and by the Associated Press.
In the 2000-01 school year, 36 percent of tenured job offers went to women at the arts and sciences school. That percentage plummeted to 19 percent in the 2002-03 academic year.
CNN reports that 26 professors have asked Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers to address the issue of gender diversity. The Boston Globe says that in a letter to Summers, the professors wrote: “‘There is a perception that in the change to a new administration, and with the press of numerous new initiatives, such efforts have lagged at Harvard.”
The “new initiatives” refers partly to Harvard’s efforts to find rising stars, academics who are often getting attention at the very age at which women are temporarily cutting back for family considerations.
Summers, according to the Globe, points out that Harvard is “pouring $25 million into an outreach fund to help recruit women.” It is also creating a fellowship to bring female scholars to campus for a year in the hopes that they will become candidates for jobs at the university when the year’s up.
Qualcomm’s Favorite Schools
Here are the colleges and universities where Qualcomm is focusing itscollege recruiting this fall:
Arizona State
Calif. Poly-San Luis Obispo
Univ. of Calif.-Berkeley
Univ. of Calif.-Los Angeles
Univ. of Calif.-San Diego
Carnegie Mellon
Univ. of Cincinnati
Univ. of Colorado-Boulder
Cornell
Georgia Tech
Univ. of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign
Loyola Marymount
MIT
Univ. of Michigan
Montana State
Univ. of North Carolina-Charlotte
North Carolina State
Purdue
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rutgers
San Diego State
Stanford
Texas A&M
USC
Univ. of Texas-Austin
Univ. of Texas-Dallas
Virginia Tech
Univ. of Waterloo
Univ. of Wisconsin
Projected Salary Increases for 2005
The following information is from Hewitt Associates.
| Salaried Exempt | Salaried Nonexempt | Nonunion hourly | Executive | |
| Atlanta | 3.5 percent | 3.4 percent | 3.5 percent | 3.9 percent |
| Boston | 3.8 | 3.7 | 3.7 | 3.8 |
| Chicago | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3.3 | 3.5 |
| Dallas | 3.7 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.7 |
| Houston | 3.6 | 3.3 | 3.3 | 3.5 |
| Los Angeles | 3.8 | 3.6 | 3.4 | 3.9 |
| Milwaukee | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3.4 | 3.6 |
| Minn./St. Paul | 3.7 | 3.5 | 3.8 | 4.3 |
| New York | 3.4 | 3.4 | 3.4 | 3.7 |
In Iraq, It’s Tough to Stop Talent from Leaving
After the fall of Baghdad to coalition forces, many Iraqi exiles came home. Many are still there, and are active in the interim government.
Still, with parts of the country dangerous and chaotic, some of the country’s best and brightest are leaving, according to reports in the Christian Science Monitor, ABC News and the Center for International Disaster Information. Many Iraqis are going to Jordan, Syria and the United Arab Emirates; ABC News says some are going as far away as Australia.
The Monitor reports that “more than 40,000 Assyrian and other Iraqi Christians are estimated to have fled since war’s end, hastened by a series of church bombings this summer.” Hundreds of the country’s best professors have taken jobs in other countries. Some doctors and judges are also relocating.
“The brainpower of the country is leaving,” Isam Kadhem al-Rawi, a geologist and president of the Association of University Teachers, tells the Monitor. “It happened after 1990 and it’s happening again now.”
According to IRIN, a news service affiliated with the United Nations, there are indeed hoards of Iraqis lining up for passports. Some of them, however, merely want to learn what business is like elsewhere. Nidham Hamoudi al-Taie, a judge, says “”I want to visit Syria and Jordan to see how commercial law and private law are practiced there,” al-Taie says. “I want to see the difference, but I want to return back to Iraq to help my country.”
Washington Talent is Up for Grabs
With many senators and members of Congress retiring or facing tough campaigns, a bounty of employees in Washington, D.C. is ripe for the picking. The Washington Post reports that many key players on Capitol Hill are looking for jobs now, even before the election, knowing their bosses either are bowing out of politics or may lose the campaign. A similar trend is going on within the Bush Administration.
Jackie Arends is a consultant for the executive-search firm Spencer Stuart, and is a former special assistant to both President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. While “in any election year you’re going to have high turnover,” Arends tells Workforce Management that even some Bush Administration employees who are confident of victory are looking for jobs. “When the incumbent wins, people who have been there for four years are tired,” Arends says. Contrary to what people might think, government employees “work really hard,” she says. Fifteen-hour days are common, and Arends says that people start saying to themselves, “For (only) a hundred thousand a year, I should be doing something else.”
Arends says that the type of employers who covet Capitol Hill employees vary by industry. Defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin like people who have experience working on armed services committees. Health-care companies prefer those who have health policy experience. Also in high demand: people who have worked on the appropriations committees, the powerful panels that dole out money. General Motors, Arends says, will court people who have worked for Michigan senators. An agricultural company like Cargill will prefer people who, by virtue of having worked for North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, have farm-state insights. Of course, their access to a former boss doesn’t hurt, either.
Arends says that companies will evaluate people by position. A chief of staff for a member of Congress is likely to have good managerial skills. A press secretary understands the media. Fortune 100 companies, she says, are looking at the most powerful players on the Hill right now and asking themselves, “Can we get that person?”
Dear Workforce How Do We Know If Ethics Training Is Working?
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