Workforce Planning

If you are among the many strategic leaders frustrated with your inability to anticipate and handle the volatility and the speed of change in the talent management environment, you should take a few minutes to understand VUCA. VUCA best describes the volatile and chaotic business, economic, and physical environment that we all now face. Unless you have had your head in …

Most organizations do a weak job at succession planning, but as recent events highlight, Hewlett-Packard deserves some sort of award for completely blowing it! While the “entire story” behind the departure of CEO Mark Hurd has yet to be uncovered, it is clear the issues leading up to it were a complete surprise to the board and that no succession …

Breaking the “War For Talent” / War On Talent Cycle Most people in recruiting and talent management are just so busy that they don’t have time to step back and build programs or marshal line managers to participate in programs that successfully let them see the “big picture.” As a result, many organizations are just starting to emerge from another …

What’s hot in talent management changes quite often.  Right now, there’s no hotter topic within the talent management community than workforce planning. The reasons are simple: with the current economy driving revenues down dramatically, many senior executives are examining how to plan ahead in order to increase their firms’ capabilities, reduce costs, and survive the economic chaos likely to continue …

What is Succession Planning? Organizations use succession planning to help mitigate the risk of a vacancy occurring in key management and leadership roles that could impact the organization’s ability to perform. In more strategic organizations, the scope of succession planning is expanded to include high-impact and mission-critical roles throughout the organization. The activity looks at talent within (and in a …

Part B: Plan Output or Success Measures Group 3 – Output measures of plan success The best plans have goals (and measures) that cover each of these areas: Percentage of all management positions filled by internal candidates (this is the broadest measure of development success because it covers all management and leadership positions). A high rate of internal placement (vs. …

Most fear to even to use the word “depression,” but now is the time for corporate HR to begin thinking about such an eventuality. As most people know, there are two key economic drivers that impact our economy: 1) productivity (product and service output) and 2) employment. The government has done a great deal recently to boost the productivity (output) …

When economic times are volatile and businesses are facing a downturn in revenue, many CFOs turn their attention to cost-containment. A logical place to start cutting costs is labor, given that in many industries labor costs account for an average of 60% of all variable costs. The volatility in the business climate not only dictates that labor costs be contained, …

The Downturn is Coming, But When? Many HR individuals I’ve met do not even like to discuss the topic of economic downturns. I presume this avoidance is based on the premise that even “talking” about them somehow will make them happen. Unfortunately, the consequences of not discussing or preparing for downturns might mean that the disruption to the company will …

Most of us have read about upcoming workforce trends like decreasing employee loyalty, differing generational expectations, and the impending retirement of the baby boom generation, but surprisingly few organizational leaders are fully aware of how those issues will impact them. Several of the organizations I have worked with in recent years have discovered aspects of their business that could lose …