Whitepapers

Why Utilize Metrics? While researching my book "HR Metrics, The World-Class Way," I found that many HR professionals realized a need for more metrics, but lacked the vision to create them. They didn’t have criteria for where to apply metrics or a methodology to figure out which activities it even …

What Exactly Is A “Corporate Culture?” All organizations have a corporate culture, just as all organizations have an employment brand.  What differs is the degree to which someone’s notion of corporate culture is documented and protected.  You tend to hear more often about corporate culture in organizations with a long …

But Aren’t Best Practices Shared Already? I had often suspected that within large corporations best practices in people management were not being shared throughout the organization, a suspicion that was later proven time and time again through my advisory work in the area of employment branding.  While working with such …

What Is "Old Think" In HR? "Old think" is a form of thinking dominated by the capstone view of HR as an overhead function with no direct impact on productivity and profits.  It focuses on preserving antiquated processes, reporting about what has already happened, administering benefits few employees use and …

STOP COUNTING ONLY HALF OF THE REAL COSTS When times are tight, everyone is encouraged to reduce their budget, and budget cutting is not necessarily a bad thing.  Unfortunately, it can cause serious damage to an organization if the cuts reduce spending too far in one area and not enough …

“Our #1 opportunity is to build a competitive advantage, not to build benefit plans for our organization” –VP of HR Cisco I’ve met/ worked for over 100 VP’s of HR and dozens of CEO’s over the last few years and although there are clearly exceptions, I’ve found that CEO’s and …

What Exactly Is A Metric? Metrics are measures of output or results.  While some managers use “words” to describe results, metrics require the use of numbers to more accurately “describe” output or performance. When they are correctly developed, metrics take away all doubt about what was and was not accomplished …

HR as Supporters of "Equal Pay" vs “Differential Pay” Capitalists learn that you must differentiate rewards in order to improve performance.  What is needed is not "reward them all equally" or "reward each according to their need,” but rather reward those that produce the best results.  In contrast, most compensation …

Same situation but different results – An example Let’s start with a basketball analogy. First compare two teams that play in the same league and the same city, the L.A. Lakers and the L.A. Clippers.  If you compare the two teams you will find that both are exactly the same …

HR “work” can be classified into five distinct levels from the basic to the most strategic. Those levels include: Level One –Information Management and Basic Transactions Every HR department must provide basic information, answer employee and manager questions and complete operational level transactions. These most would agree are the oldest …