Workforce Planning

Many HR organizations have a desired destination in mind, one where they have the analytics capability to make predictions about their workforce for which they can then develop targeted responses. For example, they want to be able to predict the likelihood of turnover for a particular role or individual, so they can devise specific retention strategies. Or they want to predict which high potentials have the best chance of success as a senior leader. In our experience, there are many steps on the workforce analytics journey and organizations sit at different points along the journey based on their information maturity.

Despite a new wave of uncertainty, many leading companies are pressing forward and reshaping their talent strategies. Many executives foresee leadership shortages in the year ahead and are looking at programs to accelerate leadership development within their companies. At the same time, given the stalled economy, many companies are seeking new sources of growth and are tailoring talent plans to address differing regional needs to support effective talent strategies and business operations.

It’s fitting that 2012 is a leap year, since a number of converging market trends are driving HR organizations to make significant leaps in capabilities and performance. HR faces a critical, dual imperative in 2012 — a focus on enabling both their organization’s overall growth agenda and on driving efficiency in the business of HR. This dual focus demands decisive action as the stakes are greater than ever.
The top eight human capital trends outlined in the report include:

• In 2012 growth is job #1
• Operation globalization
• Fast-track to the top
• People risk is risky business
• Seeing around corners
• #social #mobile @work
• Clouds in the forecast
• Stay in front with an effective sales force

Businesses are calling on HR to leap ahead and help manage change in the face of complex challenges that touch so many parts of the enterprise. Understanding the 2012 Human Capital Trends — what they mean for both leading HR and for leading the business — is a great place to start.

One by one,  a 4-year-old arranges a cluster of wooden blocks on a table top, hoping to win a token prize. The contest isn’t happening in a classroom or a living room, but rather, in a board room at KSB, a €2 billion German manufacturer of pumps and valves and provider of related services. A company recruiter carefully watches his every move. He’s looking for a winner, but more importantly, he’s eyeing the future of the company. KSB hosts contests and workshops with 4-year-olds to attract them to industrial careers and measure their aptitude for jobs within the company. KSB will follow the paths of children with potential in an attempt to eventually add them to its workforce.

Employers and business groups are trying to stop an Obama administration effort that calls for federal contractors to hire a minimum number of disabled workers and could penalize those who don't by revoking their contracts.

While you're planning your expansion, you're going to find that talent is in short supply, especially in these five areas.

The U.S. created 227,000 new jobs in February, exceeding what economists predicted, and adding to the optimism that the economy is on the mend. The unemployment, as expected, held steady at 8.3 percent.

Big Data is attracting big money — $100 million at Accel Partners, the VC firm.
“Big data is one of the biggest transformational changes in the data center and IT landscape,” said Ping Li, a partner at the VC firm Accel Partners, which is running a $100 million Big Data fund. “It happens once in a generation,” he told the audience at a Churchill Club panel in Silicon Valley.

From an economic standpoint, it’s hard to lament the loss of the Wal-Mart greeter. The prospect of getting paid minimum wage to stand at the front of a store in a “How May I Help You?” vest is hardly the stuff that inspires future generations to dream big about their careers. Yet news in late January that the world’s largest retailer has removed greeters from the overnight shift at its 3,800-plus U.S. stores—and is redefining the role of daytime greeters, too—evoked a reaction that borders on disbelief. Analyst David Strasser of Janney Montgomery Scott called the strategy “risky,” while editorial writers at the Chicago Sun-Times admitted that the move “bums us out.” Never mind that customers will likely be better served by having those workers stock shelves instead. For some, the idea that a 30-year tradition at America’s largest private employer might end is cause enough to mourn.

Ravin Jesuthasan sees the management of human capital risk as a natural fit for the HR profession.
"HR first became a profession when it was about ensuring compliance," says Jesuthasan, global head of talent management at Towers Watson in Chicago and co-author of Transformative HR, a new book he co-wrote with University of Southern California Marshall School of Business management professor John Boudreau.

This paper emphasizes the importance of visualization tools that transform data into instant organizational views relaying valuable, comprehensible business insight; and that provide a foundation for modelling future organizational scenarios.

This paper, authored by HumanConcepts CEO Martin Sacks, takes a contemporary look at how precisely and continually organizations must make staffing decisions in our post-recession economy.

Brazil is on track for yet another year of above-average GDP performance. This boom, however, poses challenges for the country. Chief among them is a shortage of qualified labor.