The Hiring Insider

Work from home

I currently work from home and travel to other sites as needed to check in with team members and meet with departmental staff. Yesterday I traveled to a site within driving distance. I had to stop for gas (ouch on the price of course). The gas station had an attendant going from pump to pump to offer us coffee and a cookie! Maybe it calms some of us and serves as a distraction while filling up at close to $4 a gallon I don't know. But I thought it was innovative and a nice value add.  I had brought my own coffee but accepted the cookie!

As we look for continued differentiators to attract and retain talent, working from home can be simple and inexpensive to implement. In addition, with many organizations averaging 3-5% increases to salary a work from home offering where possible (and gas savings) can really make a difference in someone's net take home - spend pay.

Do you have a work from home policy or would you like some help developing guidelines? If so - shoot me a note.

Workforce planning

I'm doing some workforce planning for a practice in our US consulting division. Gathering data from finance, including financials, utilization, targets from practice for headcount and open reqs from my own team is taking longer than I'd hoped. Next is to review historical data, select a turnover target everyone can live with (even if we don't like the number!). A review low performers or those on the edge and retirements upcoming, sucession planning, those who might be HYPOs and may move into different roles etc. Don't forget to review any work targeted for offshore or onshore (this does happen!).  Then we're ready to select number of requisitions to add, what practice and geo area and in what quarter!

This is my task. Yours might look different. Do you build your budget on a revenue model, by headcount etc?

While you can do all of this work in excel you must still engage the parties that have the data you will need to make decisions, review, achieve level of agreement and go. Doing a plan by quarter especially if workforce planning is new in your organization allows you enough time to make adjustments and monitor progress.

Questions on workforce planning? How to get started - or what is it and why is it important? email me - happy to chat.

Doing more with less...

If you are in a recruiting function in a corporation (HR) and perceived as a cost to the organization then you know who you are. Your life is not your own. Doing more with less is no longer working - we've blead those resources dry long ago, if in fact they haven't turned over by now.

It's time to renegotiate the Service Level Agreement. What is the talent agenda - what are the resources available (humans and technology) and how big is the GAP? Until those conversations are measured and next steps agreed on, if you are a recruiting manager/director you will burn through staff members on an average of 11-14 months. This costs the organization time and money. You know this. We need to education the whole joint.

So, get your metrics together. Work with finance if they've done a budget based on headcount (this is important!), review and measure the gap. You will have one..I did. Good news is that it's November. And if you are a C-corp then you are likely on a Jan-Dec budget cycle...so there is hope!

It'll be a busy year end for most of us as we close the gap for 2007 and ramp up for 2008 - but information (even if it's scary) is power. I forget where I read the following but say it aloud each day:

"The Best Way Out is Through"

Building Lean Teams

We all understand the reality in publicly held corporations and the need to run at peak efficiency. But I'd like to chat for a moment about how we actually get the work done w/lean and efficient teams these days.

First I'd like to ask that we all agree internally on the service delivery (what you get - what team does and how long is acceptable for it to take). This is the largest gap and greatest area of dissatisfaction in my opinion.

It isn't that we are working with fewer resources on our teams than we'd like (well..it's that too! but I get it). It's that the business can forget that it wanted to pay for the Yugo but drive a Cadillac. No one has time to remind each other and we're certainly running out of professional patience lately.

I'd like to suggest that internal teams around the world unite. Get a cross functional team together from Finance, Strategy, HR (line and functional areas please), Business Leads and Executive leads. Chart desired result, timeline it and assign the resources. Offer more than one option and allow the biz to choose what it gets and what it pays for.  Then all you have to do is deliver. Bon Chances!

Work - Life Balance?

I try to read 2-3 books per month - 2 for "work" and 1 for fun.  I've been reading books written by women this summer and while doing so have noticed that the word balance has been replaced with integration.  I ran across the term again on Saturday after reading the latest issue of "Pink Magazine".

Inside was a feature article on a female CEO and a bit on female millionaires. [Interesting piece - did you know they average 39 work hours a week and gross a little over $400k?]

So, 3 writers I've come across in just the last 8 weeks are discussing balance - what it means - is it possible and well does it matter? 

Personally I like the word integration. Balance to me seems like another to do..something else I have to add to my daily list of things to get done. I'm usually behind before I wake up every day. Integration feels like I'm fitting it all in and not stressing out if I get there 50% or 90% that day. It's much more zen to me...Cut yourself some slack and get some integration in your life!

Recruiting Models - What's yours?

There is always more than one way to get things done. But in staffing/recruiting these days it seems there are so many choices that it's the stumbling block to getting anything done at all.  Heard of the war for talent??

Allstate is outsourcing their gig to IBM. Yes, IBM. While there is a strong technology solution not so sure about the process and method. More to come in future. Some are using RPO services. Some have inhouse staff and haven't decided to fully equipping that staff (yes, going half way) so they blow the budget wide open in Q3 or 4 to finish objectives for the year.

Worse yet, some organizations still aren't tracking even basic metrics therefore are well - somewhat clueless about building a model out since they don't have any information on need, costs, historical trends or what they need to "buy".

A recruiting model like any other starts with the end in mind. What do you need to get done and what will that look like? Once the end state is defined only then can you create benchmarks, use metrics to track and build out and buy tools and well people to get the work done. Watch in coming weeks..we'll build out plans right here and begin to take the mystery out of RPO (what it is and when you might want to buy in).

I want that job filled yesterday!

It's not just where you work. Everyone wants everything done yesterday. Agendas change, change some more and then well, they change again. It's hard to get folks to think about building out, over time. But as a talent acquistion manager, recruiter, agent etc...you know this is what works best.  We need to create audiences to market to. Your audiences may be in different buckets and the messages you market should be customized to that group. You might have an alumni newsletter or portal to stay in touch with a very different message than that you send to a new - cold lead. You might have a group of professionals you invite to a quarterly webcast to stay in touch and share goings on to continue to build a bridge and allow them to opt in to the culture when that time is right for them.

Job posts and cold calls once you've hit disaster just won't do it. Be brave and stand firm...creating pipelines will help you fill more, faster.

Interviewing candidates - Talent Acquisition

While reading a blurb from Business Insurance last night I saw yet another instance where a company acquired another. I'm also working internally on a consistent interviewing process by level for both internal and external candidates. It got me thinking.

Do you have a consistent process for interviewing candidates you hire into your organization? Few actually do. Creating a process (behavioral interviewing, assessment, selection, onboarding) can be a challenge but well worth the time and implementation. As more of us "go global" it becomes even more important that talent is acquired consistently since folks now come and go on international assignments etc.

If you'd like to learn more or actually roll out a program, contact me to get started. Happy to work with you from wherever you are ready to begin.

Strategy drives structure

I participated in a global HR call today, likely one of my last as I depart the corporate world of work and re-enter independent consulting (glad to be back!). Our CHRO stated something simple yet profound, strategy drives structure. So what does it really mean to you where you work?

Do you have a strategy or plan in place to drive results to support and assist your lines of business?  Do you have the technology in place to execute the strategy to begin with?

HR services directly support their lines of business, allowing them to perform, meet and exceed revenue, spend more time with their clients...well you see where I'm going.

If I am a line manager and it takes me 3 phone calls to find a person to onboard a new hire rather than clicking on a link on my own desktop - how much time does it take away from other activities that are core to my role? What if I hire 4 people a month on average and my revenue goal was increased by 6% for the year? The gap gets wider and as you can see that's only one activity - multiply that times 8-10 other activities I am responsible for as a manager. If you are thinking what I'm thinking you play catch up on Saturdays and 1 or 2 times out of the month an occasional Sunday afternoon as well.  For those hard core HR folks out there, I am not absovling hiring managers of their "hiring" responsibilities, I'm just saying we need to make it easier and more efficient.

Technology is one piece of the puzzle - but the largest and most critical to drive strategy whether it be recruiting new talent, onboarding them or doing performance management once they are on staff.