Workforce Planning

If you are a shareholder in a major company, voluntary employee buyouts should alarm you. First, I find them to be the single most costly strategic blunder* of all HR actions. Second, their bottom-line result may actually become negative when you calculate the real costs of paying your best employees to “take the money and run.”

I argue that “rigidity during changing times leads to catastrophe.” Today’s changing business environment requires every recruiting function to avoid rigidity by making several pivots. Pivots are situations where you dramatically shift your tools, goals, and direction by as much as 180°. In my view, TA has no choice but to respond to the numerous shifts in business, health, and …

Dr. John Sullivan presents on how recruiters can thrive in a volatile environment. By planning for economic changes, you can be adaptive, agile, scalable, and able to quickly pivot in a new direction. If you want to be successful in the long-term, you need to start planning for a significant change in the direction or scale of your business. The …

To physically return to work, HR and executives must be prepared for radical workplace social distancing. Here's how it will shock you.

By Annie Nova @ANNIEREPORTER Read the full article here. KEY POINTS Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Google searches for, “What does furlough mean?” are up more than 5,000% over the last 30 days. Here’s everything you need to know about the practice.  Dr. John Sullivan was interviewed by Annie Nova. “Furlough,” derives from the Dutch word, “verlof,” which means “leave of absence,” usually …

Trauma from COVID-19, travel bans, broken supply chains, and new TA tech will all contribute to upcoming recruiting cutbacks. So don’t wait, ask “What have I done to increase my value and job security?” I’m not trying to be alarmist; strategic recruiting leaders always plan for the inevitable up-and-down cycles of recruiting. I am suggesting that now may be the …

Arguments for Separating the Recruiting Function From HR  Note: This “think piece” is part of a series of articles that are designed to stimulate your thinking about strategic recruiting. Corporate recruiting can’t be completely successful in ending the talent shortage while it remains part of HR. If the recruiting function were to be made an independent business function, after being …

Forget the job threats created by the march of the robots, because the new skill sets required by radical new technologies are much more likely to cause you to lose your permanent corporate job! In case you missed it, General Motors recently underwent a dramatic corporate-wide “skills pivot” that resulted in thousands of layoffs. Not because it had too many …

The top 15 most damaging shortcomings of managing using your culture It’s no secret that most in HR and many CEOs are enamored with “corporate culture,” which is essentially the “invisible hand” that helps guide the behavior of your employees. And because every firm has a corporate culture, the mere existence of one isn’t sufficient to guarantee better business results …

If your firm competes against serial innovation and top-market-cap firms like Amazon, Apple, and Google, you already know that you must match their “speed of innovation.” But you might not realize that to reach that speed, you also need “a future-acting workforce” in order to implement the new ideas generated by your innovative employees. Why Increasing Your Speed of Innovation …