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Dear Workforce Why Should We Continue Evaluations if We Cant Give Raises

Dear More Questions Than Answers:

There are few absolutes in organizational behavior, but one is the continuing need for employee evaluations to drive business results. In good times and bad times, employee evaluations provide significant benefit. Consistent evaluations help:

Drive dynamic communication. Employee evaluations ensure that, at least once a year, employees are evaluated on performance. The two-way communication that occurs between a manager and an employee is important. Increased communication within organizations accelerates overall performance. The key is to drive employee evaluations beyond once a year to include monthly one-on-one sessions, routine coaching and consistent mentoring, along with score cards to optimize performance management.

Improve performance. Remember the adage: What gets measured gets done. How can employees improve when they are not measured? The answer: Without employee evaluation, there can be only limited performance improvement. Once given insight into their strengths and development opportunities, only then can employees advance to the next level and deliver on mission-critical business goals.

Foster “same page” mentality. What happens when 100 percent of employees have an evaluation? It creates a culture of everyone “being on the same page.” This is essential for business purposes because top management wants to ensure everyone is heading in the same direction and selling the same service while also promoting the same company mission. “Same page” mentality allows expectations to be established, shared and implemented at various levels. Employees increase productivity when they know what to expect and have a path to achievement.

Generate new ideas. Employee evaluations are an essential component of generating new ideas that could increase sales, enhance products, open new markets and make day-to-day operations more efficient. Once the manager and employees have a series of discussions, there is an ebb and flow of ideas, some with the potential to serve as catalysts within the company. Time must be taken to discuss new ideas and allow them to be nurtured during employee evaluations. By keeping an open mind, both managers and employees welcome new insights that affect your business in a significant and meaningful way.

Provide management consistency. Employees want management consistency across functional areas. The employee evaluation is one tool to ensure such consistency in how employees are assessed. Your company can use a systematic approach to employee evaluations with confidence knowing it has a structured tool that is shared throughout the organization. In the process, employees will feel more engaged and connected.

Show appreciation and value. People appreciate being evaluated. It demonstrates that your company cares enough to invest the time and effort. To truly value the person, focus on the next step: Follow up on the initial evaluation results. If the employee evaluation is one moment in time with zero follow-up, it will not provide the needed business impact.

Boost morale. Think about employees who rarely—if ever—have been formally evaluated. They would not know where they stand or what areas they need to improve. Thus their performance would be limited. Provide the same employees with a regular evaluation and watch their performance rise. As long as performance evaluations are conducted in a systematic and fair way, they can help boost employee morale. Even employees in need of improvement will benefit, since your company is taking steps to support their growth and development. Everybody wins.

Differentiate the business. During a down economy, many companies downsize internal practices focused on employees. It is not unusual for a company facing severe economic challenges to jettison performance evaluations or suspend them “until things get better.” That is a shortsighted approach. Maintaining employee evaluations—especially if the competition eliminates theirs—helps differentiate your organization. The implication: Strengthen your internal employer brand now, so that when business picks up, you will be well-positioned to recruit top talent, clients and suppliers.

SOURCE: Dana E. Jarvis, adjunct professor of leadership and management, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, July 16, 2010

LEARN MORE: Everyday coaching is considered by some to have a greater impact on performance than the annual evaluation.

Workforce Management Online, September 2010 — Register Now!

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Special Report on Rewards & Recognition Getting Personal

The personal touch always makes the reward seem sweeter—especially when there’s little or no money attached.


That’s what some frugal employers figure. At a time when recognition is more important than ever to engage and retain valued employees, companies hope to make nonfinancial rewards more meaningful by customizing them to appeal to individual workers. Localized laurels include such incentives as paid days off, lunch with senior executives, personalized thank-you messages from supervisors and fellow employees, flexible work schedules and even personal artistic tributes. With corporate budgets still tight, 40 percent of employers are focusing on such nonfinancial recognition, and more than half intend to put more emphasis on such rewards, according to a recent survey by consulting firm Hay Group and human resources association WorldatWork.


     “What I’m seeing is less focus on formal awards and more on building a culture of appreciation on a local level,” says Theresa Chambers, chief motivation officer for Recognition Works, a consulting firm in Seattle. Local rewards offer flexibility so that employees can receive recognition soon after they turn in an exceptional performance. “Recognition should happen as close to the behavior as possible,” Chambers says. “Otherwise, it starts to lose meaning and value.”


Great American Insurance Group in Cincinnati offers several local recognition programs. For example, its information technology unit’s High Five program awards points that can be turned into gift cards and other prizes. “You get increased employee engagement very specific to that business unit’s strategy,” says Shelly Gillis, vice president of human resources. “We want that manager feedback, that peer-to-peer recognition. It becomes very personal.”


The only downside to localized programs, she says, is that not all business units offer incentives. “So,” Gillis says, “you have a situation where you have the haves and the have-nots.” But Great American also provides awards based on length of service, a centrally run program that applies to everyone. “It’s important to have both [local and centralized approaches] because you never know what motivates individuals,” Gillis says. “I personally like the blend.”


 Mixing it up
The Everett Clinic, a health care provider with 16 offices in Washington state, also uses both local and centralized initiatives. The human resources department and senior leaders organize two recognition events each year. Meanwhile, managers are encouraged to develop reward programs for their specific departments, and they can receive financial assistance to implement them.


“Managers receive training on recognition to learn new ideas and to refresh existing programs to make them more effective,” says Rochelle Crollard, director of human resources. “Giving the right recognition and making it meaningful takes time and effort, so providing training in recognition skills is key.” However, a recent survey by Terryberry Co., an employee recognition firm in Grand Rapids, Michigan, found that only 27 percent of employers provide recognition training for managers.


(To enlarge the view, click on the image below. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required.)


 


The training clearly seems to be working at the Everett Clinic, where rewards are plentiful. Managers there believe small but frequent tokens of appreciation are more effective than the occasional splashy honor. Both peers and supervisors awarded more than 43,000 HeroGrams last year to their colleagues for exceptional accomplishments. Based on the number of HeroGrams they receive, employees can win such prizes as gift cards and paid days off. Employees also receive instant praise with Caught in the Act cards, which are used in monthly prize drawings. Nearly 3,000 Caught in the Act cards were sent in 2009. To try to enhance customer service, the Everett Clinic adopted yet another appreciation program this year: Employees receive Pat on the Back cards, with a different customer service skill highlighted each month.


Support for the many employee appreciation programs comes from the top. “Our CEO, administrative team and medical directors demonstrate and model the importance of recognition by giving recognition on a daily basis,” Crollard says. “Our CEO keeps a supply of gift certificates and coffee cards in his office for instant praise, and all managers and physicians receive a recognition tool kit with praise cards, candy, and coins called ‘cheerful change’ with special messages like ‘great job.’ ”


The localized rewards are paying off. “Our overall employee satisfaction rate is over 80 percent,” Crollard says, “and our turnover rate is consistently below 13 percent, which is 5 to 10 percent lower than other health care organizations in our market area.”


 Creative touch
Localized programs encourage creativity. For example, the local government in Snohomish County, Washington, developed a popular, decentralized recognition program that started small and grew substantially. Employees draw small, personalized pictures on cards to show their appreciation for their colleagues. “There is no doubt in my mind that having a little, unique and artistic way to support others has caused high employee satisfaction,” says Bridget Clawson, the county’s human resources director. “If you ask about any card, you will invariably learn something about the person who has it, the techniques used and what it meant to them to receive it. The cards encourage us to get to know each other better.”


Clawson herself received an artist trading card when she secured a $25,000 grant for the HR department to build an online onboarding program for new hires.


(To enlarge the view, click on the image below. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required.)


 


Marc Drizin, founder of Employee Hold’Em, a talent retention consulting firm in Indianapolis, likes the decentralization trend because it avoids the one-size-fits-all mentality. Companies “kind of get into that fairness versus equity trap,” Drizin says. “Everything has to be done within the legal guidelines, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look at a specific group of people’s needs.”


Employers should find out how individuals like to receive recognition at work. For instance, a rewards ceremony may be uncomfortable and embarrassing for some people who prefer low-key recognition. What’s more, with four different generations in the workplace, customization is increasingly important. To appeal to the Millennial Generation, some employers use social media to develop and promote rewards programs. People give public kudos to colleagues and upload photos of employee recognition events on such sites as Facebook and Twitter.


“It’s not how much you spend on the rewards, but it’s how effectively you deliver the recognition,” says Chambers, the chief motivation officer at Recognition Works. “It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, but it’s something that we need to do more of all the time. It does need to be sincere and be true. You can’t give recognition for recognition’s sake.”


Workforce Management, September 2010, p. 24, 26, 28-29 — Subscribe Now!

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Weighing the Risks of Social Networking

The prospect of establishing a corporate social networking site inevitably raises concerns about privacy and security issues. But doing research in advance and putting ground rules in place before launching the site can ease fears and minimize risks.


It’s crucial to set usage policies and convey them to employees. “The reality is, if someone stands next to the water cooler and says something wildly inappropriate, they’ll be in trouble,” so the same should hold true with social networking sites, says Charles Coy, director of product marketing for Cornerstone OnDemand, a talent management software company in Santa Monica, California. Unlike a fleeting verbal dispute that might arise in an office, he says, “you can’t erase digital history” on social networks.


Whatever is posted should be closely monitored because a company is liable for content that an employee might consider to be harassment or defamation, says Heather Sager, a labor and employment attorney with the firm Drinker Biddle. However, a successful defense argument can be made, she adds, if the company removes the post as soon as it is made aware of offensive comments.


Andrew Wootton, a senior consultant with HR consultancy Towers Watson & Co., believes employers must prohibit anonymous posts. “Once you put someone’s name on it,” he says, “you don’t have the same anarchy as you have on the Internet.” Wootton also cautions companies to make sure employees retain control over their profiles in the company directory and that nothing is posted without their authorization. In some cases, employees don’t even want their photos posted with their company profiles.


Some companies fear that valuable proprietary information might be leaked. “People say things that perhaps they don’t mean to, or they don’t know who has clearance to hear what they’re saying,” says Darren Cahr, an intellectual property attorney for Drinker Biddle. “Trade secrets have been leaked ever since there have been trade secrets, but an inadvertent leak of trade secrets is more likely” through internal social networks.


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Appealing to Workers’ Civic Side

The first time Comcast Corp. took part in a community service event, 50 employees at the cable television company’s corporate headquarters signed up to work at the local Philadelphia Cares Day.


Employees were so enthusiastic that the company started its own annual service day. That was nine years ago.


This April, more than 60,500 employees, family members and volunteers teamed with local and national nonprofit organizations for the company’s latest Comcast Cares Day. They planted gardens, cleaned up riverbanks and filled food baskets at 560 locations around the country.


Like Comcast, more companies have discovered that sponsoring community service days is not only a high-profile way to create good will in cities where they do business but also an effective means of attracting and retaining employees. Dozens of companies hold annual community service days, including Deloitte & Touche, IBM Corp. and Starbucks Corp.


During a five-week Community Days campaign in 2009, 1,639 employees at Hospital Corporation of America worked close to 10,000 hours on 108 projects in central Tennessee, an in-kind donation worth about $200,000, says spokesman Ed Fishbough. And GlaxoSmithKline recently pledged $500,000 to a national community service day planned for September 11, 2011, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.


A recent Deloitte study shows how companies are monitoring employee morale, retention and recruiting to measure the success of their volunteer efforts. According to the 2010 Deloitte Volunteer Impact Survey, 51 percent of the 303 companies surveyed measure employee morale to determine whether community service programs are effective; 36 percent, employee retention; and 30 percent, recruiting success.


Civic engagement is becoming especially important as companies recruit members of the Millennial Generation, who are more likely than older employees to factor a company’s social responsibility and community outreach into their career decisions.


Recession-induced layoffs may have curtailed recruiting for the short term. But as economic pressures ease and companies start hiring again, more need to think about the community image they project if they want to attract not just Millennials but civic-minded employees of every age, says Erin Barnhart, volunteer initiatives director at Idealist.org, a nonprofit group that helps organizations find volunteer opportunities. Even in a tight job market, highly sought after workers may choose one company over another because of its corporate social responsibility programs, Barnhart says.


Comcast didn’t start its community service day to attract and retain employees, but that has been an unintended, positive consequence of the program, says Charisse Lillie, head of the company’s community involvement program and executive vice president of its nonprofit Comcast Foundation.


Comcast now incorporates information about all of its community service projects in the new employee onboarding process and on its website, says Lillie, who previously served as Comcast’s vice president of human resources.


Workforce Management, August 2010, p. 3 — Subscribe Now!

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Staffing Firms Still Getting Work Despite Push for Federal Insourcing

Staffing firms contracting with the government say there’s plenty of business heading into 2011 despite the Obama administration’s edict last year to cut outsourcing and boost federal hiring.


“The federal market is growing for Kelly Government Solutions,” says James Hoen, vice president and division manager of the organization. “Our revenue has grown in the last two years,” though he declined to say by how much.


With 1,600 people and more than $100 million in revenue at Troy, Michigan-based Kelly Government Solutions, Hoen sees plenty of opportunities, even if contracting is cut in the future.


“The federal government will outsource when they have niche requirements,” he says. “It’s much easier for Kelly Government Solutions to hire for project work than it is for the government.”


Citing the rise in federal contract spending to more than $500 billion in 2008, President Barack Obama issued his memorandum to the heads of all federal executive departments and agencies in March 2009. Obama sought an overall reduction in contracting, with “inherently governmental” functions to be moved back to the civil service.


Yet Crystal Blackwell, president and CEO of Decatur, Georgia-based Staffing One Inc., says she’s racing to keep up with all the contract work her 200-person firm is receiving.


“This administration doesn’t want to increase the number of contract employees,” she says. “But we’ve seen a dramatic increase in contracting opportunities across all disciplines. Last year, it got busy around July 4. This year, it started around Memorial Day.”


Blackwell added that the government is spending the money earlier this year for two reasons: They have more of it, since more funding was appropriated this year for certain projects that call for outside staffing, and they must spend it all before the end of the fiscal year or they’ll lose it.


The acceleration of government contracting is expected to slow while government hiring grows with the start of fiscal 2011. “For the community of contractors, there will be a possible downturn of about $36 billion—the annual revenue of Lockheed,” says Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at consulting firm FedSources and the author of the report, “Federal Budget Analysis—2011.”


“While this will create havoc for contractors, will it be precipitous?” Bjorklund asks in the report. “It won’t be overnight. The hiring practices of the government tend to be as slow as molasses in winter.”


Niche staffing needs should prop up contractors through a lean winter and spring. Kelly Government Solutions provides more than 1,400 researchers to the National Institutes of Health.


“The government looks for specific skill sets they may not need for a long time,” Hoen says. “These researchers may be needed for two years to three years, so NIH doesn’t want to hire full-time federal employees [for those positions].”


Even with the predicted $36 billion cutback in 2011, contractors could find themselves called on to help federal agencies.


“The government must figure out how to recruit, hire more smartly, train and retain new government hires and do the actuarial work to figure out how to pay them,” Bjorklund says. “There are emerging opportunities for all these workforce development activities.”


Workforce Management Online, August 2010 — Register Now!

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Workforce Staffing Could Hit Pre-Recession Levels in Two Years at Many Large U.S. Firms

Just over half of large, recently downsized U.S. companies plan to boost staffing and reach pre-recession levels by 2012, according to an Accenture survey released Monday, July 19.


The New York-based global management consulting firm’s annual Accenture High Performance Workforce Study also found that among U.S. companies surveyed, only 13 percent of executives said that they plan to reduce their employee base over the next 12 months.


The percentage of U.S. companies focused primarily on investment in growth-oriented activities, such as hiring, will rise from 24 percent today to 37 percent within the next 12 months, according to the survey, which was conducted by GfK NOP Ltd. from January to May. At the same time, significantly fewer U.S. companies will be focused on controlling costs: 18 percent in 2011, compared with 41 percent in mid-2009, according to the study.


Yet the planned growth won’t come easily. As in past booms, highly skilled workers will be at a premium.


“A lack of relevant skills may present a hurdle for companies as they position themselves for growth,” said David Smith, the survey’s managing director. “Companies need to rethink how they equip employees with the skills required to be competitive today.”


The survey included 117 senior executives at U.S. firms with revenue of more than $250 million. Overall, it involved 674 executives worldwide.


The survey also touched on a number of other workforce issues. Surveyed executives identified sales and customer service as the employee groups most important to their business. Yet those departments offer challenges, they added.


Among those executives who rated sales or customer service as one of their organization’s most important work groups, only 23 percent said their sales forces perform at a high level and only 34 percent said the same about their customer service workers.


—Rick Bell

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Dear Workforce How Do We Handle Merit Increases When Changing to a Focal-Point Appraisal Process

Dear Moving Targets:
Many organizations have moved or are considering switching to a focal appraisal and salary review date. The “common review date” approach has a number of advantages: It strengthens the performance evaluation process as managers are comparing and ranking all employees at the same time. Also, it provides an opportunity to align pay internally based on performance, contributions and competencies, and it reinforces the pay-for-performance link. Organizations find that these benefits, as well as the ease of salary planning and administration (one time rather than every month), outweigh an often-heard objection: that it requires a greater time commitment to conduct all appraisals and salary reviews at the same time.
Timing of the focal appraisal and salary review date also is a consideration. Many organizations use a date a few months following their year’s end. This allows performance to be assessed based on end-of-year results and then provides sufficient time for managers to complete all performance assessments. For organizations whose year ends December 31, salary increases are often scheduled for an April 1 time frame.
There are many methods that can be used to determine an appropriate pay increase for each employee, ranging from a flexible approach with general parameters for management to a more disciplined one with specific guidance. The method selected is a function of the organization’s culture and goals.
One option is to give managers general criteria and guidelines to make an informed pay decision. These could include evaluating the employee’s absolute performance, relative performance (versus peers), overall contribution, market competitiveness, importance of skill set, high-performance potential and retention risk. This is an opportunity for the organization to make decisions about the allocation of increases among different employees based on their performance and contributions.
As a specific example, a focal-point appraisal allows a manager to provide an up-and-coming performer who clearly surpasses others with a greater increase and better pay alignment, relative to the steady performer who doesn’t contribute much beyond what is consistent with expectations. This approach is particularly relevant today, given the uncertainty of increases over the last few years in many organizations and the critical need for organizations to retain key employees.
Another approach is to establish a more formal framework whereby individual increases are ratably adjusted to reflect the shift in the timing of increases. During the conversion to the focal or common review date, some employees will receive an earlier-than-expected review and others will have their review date delayed. It is preferable to delay increases scheduled a few months before the common review date so employees won’t receive two salary increases within a short period of time. The increase can be prorated and provided as a lump sum or folded into the merit increase.
Example: If an employee is scheduled for a 3 percent increase on a common review date of April 1, but would have ordinarily received it January 1, then he/she could get a prorated increase of three months (January, February and March) either as a lump sum or folded into the merit increase. In this case, it would be 0.75 percent of the base salary as a lump sum or 3.75 percent added to base salary.
If the same employee were to receive an increase three months early, then 0.75 percent would be deducted from the 3 percent and the employee would receive a 2.25 percent increase.
These prorated calculations can minimize perceptions of inequity or being “shortchanged,” but no solution is perfect. For instance, the employee whose increase is delayed doesn’t have access to the raise as early as expected. However, the eventual percentage increase received is larger than for the employee who receives an early increase.
Whatever approach is ultimately selected, it is important that managers have tools available to explain to employees how their performance was evaluated and their increase was determined. The real key to a successful transition is communication.
SOURCE: Linda Ulrich, Buck Consultants, Secaucus, New Jersey
LEARN MORE: Please read how to change employee perceptions about performance appraisals.
The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.
Workforce Management Online, July 2010 — Register Now!
The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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With a Sour Economy, Psychiatrists Are in Demand

Demand for psychiatrists is growing faster than for other medical specialties, according to Merritt Hawkins, the physician search division of AMN Healthcare Services Inc.

The company noted 179 requests for psychiatrists from April 1, 2009, through March 31, 2010—up 47 percent from the previous year and up 121 percent from three years earlier.


“When the economy goes down, mental health problems tend do go up,” said Merritt Hawkins president Mark Smith. “But there is more to the rising demand for psychiatrists than the recession. A combination of factors is driving a psychiatrist shortage that could soon reach crisis levels.”


More than half of all psychiatrists are 55 or older and nearing retirement age as fewer medical school graduates are showing an interest in psychiatry, according to Merritt Hawkins.


Meanwhile, demand for psychiatric services is expected to increase by 19 percent from 1995 to 2020.  


Filed by Staffing Industry Analysts, a sister company of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.


 


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Serious Progress in Strategic Workforce Planning

Five years ago, strategic workforce planning—the HR-led effort to ensure that an organization has sufficient talent to achieve future success, seemed like a nascent trend in the business world. Unfortunately, today the paradigm-shifting practice still remains more nascent than trend. But that may soon change, according to a recently published study by The Conference Board, a global business research organization.


Conference Board senior human capital researcher Mary Young, the study’s primary author, says that the severity of the global economic downturn in the late 2000s stalled the growth of strategic workforce planning, also know by its acronym, SWP. Companies were forced to focus on survival at the expense of preparing for the future.


“You couldn’t get business leaders to think long term when they were being forced to lay off workers and their companies were on the line,” Young says. “HR was compelled to be pretty much tactical.”


But as business conditions improve, Young believes that companies will return to developing strategic workforce planning, which she defines as “ensuring that you have the right people at the right time, in the right place, at the right price.”


The report presented case histories of a handful of early adopters who have forged ahead in linking human capital development with strategic goals, and for whom strategic workforce planning has been an effective tool. Their success bodes well for strategic workforce planning’s eventual wider acceptance, according to Young.


“SWP enables companies to make decisions based upon sound data and analytics,” Young says. “It’s all about figuring out where is the best place to make investments, where you are going to get the best return on human capital, where your business is growing and how you’re going to build your resources there. It’s about anticipating future demand and having the supply of critical skills and competencies to meet it.”


In particular, the study looked at four global organizations: 3M, UBS, Sun Microsystems and Saudi Aramco.


The study found that strategic workforce planning uncovered significant differences among business units and locations in terms of demographics, skill levels and labor costs. That, in turn, enabled the companies to get a more accurate picture of how well equipped they were to achieve strategic goals at the ground level and to make changes to meet their future human capital needs.


3M, for example, utilized strategic workforce planning to facilitate its business strategy of shifting from being primarily a domestic business into one with a global focus that sold 70 percent of its products outside the U.S.


3M’s early efforts at strategic workforce planning in 2006 foundered, mostly because they were not connected well enough to the company’s larger strategic planning and goals. But in 2007, after 3M chief executive George W. Buckley mandated companywide productivity gains, countries and business units found that they had no choice but to grow their headcount-to-revenue ratios, either by cutting workforces or increasing sales. That put more pressure on them to implement strategic workforce planning so they could analyze and project the economic return on their talent, according to the report.


Eventually, 3M became so effective at the process that it could not only track how its spending on human capital influenced revenue, but it also developed the ability to compare its metrics with competitors. More important, 3M was able to figure out how to gear its human capital efforts to take advantage of market opportunities, the report found. 3M’s strategic workforce planning team consulted with recruiters to learn about local talent supplies in various countries, and charted how future needs matched with supply.


3M’s effort was able to project “the demand for any workforce category, in any business, in any part of the world,” Brian Ronningen, 3M’s manager of human capital management, told The Conference Board.


Another successful practitioner of strategic workforce planning was UBS, which used the process to ensure that its expanding Chinese operation in the late 2000s had an adequate supply of talent to succeed.


After UBS began tracking human capital data, it made some painful discoveries about its staffing strategies. It found, for example, that its Chinese operation filled 56 percent of its positions by hiring developed talent, and that such acquisitions accounted for 75 percent of its sourcing costs. Additionally, the workforce had an unsustainable attrition rate of 20 percent.


Based upon such data, UBS planners came up with recommendations for how to better develop and retain talent in China, including an incubation program for middle managers, a graduate training program for new hires and improved career mobility across business units, so that employees could seek opportunities and gain experience within the organization.


In contrast, Saudi Aramco, a government-owned oil company based in Saudi Arabia, was motivated to develop strategic workforce planning for a different reason: About 40 percent of its aging workforce will be eligible for retirement in five years, and Saudi Aramco must have capable replacements in the pipeline.


The company employs 400 planners to analyze and model Saudi Aramco’s workforce needs for the next decade and beyond, based on both productivity targets and historical data, such as the typical time needed to train workers for various jobs. That modeling helps Saudi Aramco make decisions about the timing and capacity of new training facilities and project what its future company housing needs will be. Additionally, because the plan’s long-range projections show a slim supply of immediately ready Saudi job candidates, Saudi Aramco has developed a system of hiring the kingdom’s top high school graduates, sponsoring their college educations and further developing them through job experiences and training.


At Sun Microsystems, the strategic workforce planning effort made extensive use of data mining, aggregating information about international markets from a wide range of external sources—from World Bank and European Union statistics to articles in business publications—and integrating it with internal data on workforce trends, compensation, local labor regulations, revenue forecasts, and product and marketing information. That information is combined with observations gathered by HR professionals in the field. The aggregated data is analyzed and translated into scorecards, such as a graphic comparing the IT workforce supply and other factors in several Chinese cities, that assist Sun executives in making decisions.


The development of such sophisticated analytical tools will help drive the strategic workforce planning trend, according to Young. “Data mining, and the ability to combine data across different locations and make sense of it, is transforming business, and SWP is a perfect example of that,” she says. “Just as automation turned inventory and procurement into supply chain management, these tools are going to revolutionize human resources.”


The Conference Board researchers found that for strategic workforce planning to be effective, business leaders must learn to think of it as a source of business intelligence, rather than just as operational HR data.


For example, executives need to start integrating strategic workforce planning and other types of planning, such as risk management, supply chain and customer relationship management, to shape a unified, coherent strategy, Young says.


“I suspect that over time, we’re going to see companies merging their workforce data with lots of other analytics,” she says. “We’re already beginning to hear them describe it in the same way. They’re starting to think about optimizing the workforce, the way that they try to optimize the supply chain: How do you put your people to the highest and most productive use?”


Workforce Management Online, July 2010 — Register Now!

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KKR Paying $356 Million for Japanese Staffing Firm

Private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. announced plans to buy the staffing subsidiary of Tokyo-based Usen Corp.


KKR said it will pay 32.5 billion yen ($356 million).


The Usen subsidiary, Intelligence Ltd., provides direct hire, temporary staffing and outsourcing as well as job-search advertising. It operates the Doda brand in Japan. Intelligence has the second-largest market share in direct hire staffing in Japan, according to KKR.


“As one of the few recruitment services firms in Japan providing such a comprehensive offering, [Intelligence] is well positioned to take advantage of an anticipated upturn in economic activity,” said Shusaku Minoda, managing director of KKR and CEO of its Japan operations. “Further growth of the recruitment sector is also expected as a result of the evolving human resource needs of companies, as well as increased mobility of domestic and international labor markets due to growing awareness of career development opportunities.”


The deal is expected to close in July.


Usen ranked No. 41 on Staffing Industry Analysts’ 2009 list of the largest global staffing firms. Usen is a cable broadcaster and media content provider.  


Filed by Staffing Industry Analysts, a sister company of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.


 


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