Talent Management Strategy & Execution

his year, many companies are taking on big data – ramping up tools and technologies to find signals and insight in unstructured, often external and generally messy data. While big data may be ready for business, are business leaders ready for big data?

We all know the financial services industry (FSI) has been under the microscope in the past few years, but a new Deloitte Consulting benchmarking study focuses the attention on a different aspect of FSI operations: HR. What’s revealed may seem like piling on to change-weary FSI organizations. But, as the saying goes, the truth can set you free, or in this case, help you understand where significant improvement opportunities lie and how to take advantage of them.

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.

Most business people have heard the term "BigData," which refers to the analysis of massive amounts of transactional and business data to segment customers, pinpoint marketing, and predict consumer behavior.

CIOs who get out of the office and talk face-to-face with customers can bring back ideas for new products and better systems.

Best-in-class organizations are using assessments not only to understand the skills and traits employees have today, but also their capacity to grow.
As companies are required to do more with less, talent decisions take on greater complexity. The mandate for greater efficiency with fewer resources draws attention to the power of assessments. The data derived from these tools can help to maximize performance and productivity while reducing the cost and risk associated with bad hires. Assessments also can inform workforce and succession planning.

I’ve never felt better about the evolution of pre-employment assessment. In this coming year we’ll see some real progress toward new levels of assessment adoption that will be based more on results then on hype. But there are some significant challenges to be faced.
As we enter this exciting new year, here are the trends that I feel are going to define the future of pre-employment assessment.

y definition, being strategic requires that you look forward — identifying trends, opportunities, and threats. With the December lull looming, now is a great time to plan for the future. I’ve listed the “top 10 talent management trends” I foresee that require your attention.
But you should certainly do your own thinking. I recommend that you start by examining this past year…

The time when HR leaders could relegate technology decisions to the IT department or to HRIS personnel is over. To enable strategic workforce decisions, HR executives need to make enterprise and HR technologies a priority.

In many cases, employees don’t get feedback at work; it’s an acute problem HR technology largely has failed to address. Consider the traditional annual performance review. Technology has streamlined and automated some facets of the process, but sit down with a group of HR executives and ask them if they have ever used the results to improve performance. Few hands will go up because most performance management technology wasn’t built for the way people work today. The too-little-too-late feedback cycle has no value. A tired manager typically sits on an airplane and copies paragraphs of feedback that are meant to be repurposed among employees. This needs to stop, and new paradigms have emerged to help people accelerate performance through micro-feedback loops.

Nokia's new CEO Stephen Elop has written a remarkable memo to his Nokia employees--who, a few years ago, were comfortably working for the most successful cell-phone maker in the world; In a memo, Elop likens today's stumbling Nokia to a "burning oil platform" in which everyone who remains on deck will quickly be burned alive. The only chance Nokia has to save itself, Elop says, is to behave wildly differently than it has in the past--namely, to jump off the edge of the platform into the frigid waters of the North Sea. We've been in business for nearly two decades now, and we don't recall another CEO ever being this honest and vivid about the desperate straits his company is in. (We recall MANY companies being in these straits, however).

Design thinking is a process of empathizing with the end user.  Its principal guru is David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the Stanford design school, who takes a similar approach to managing people.  He believes leadership is a matter of empathizing with employees.  In this interview, he explains why leaders should seek understanding rather than blind obedience, why it's better to be a coach and a taskmaster and why you can't teach leadership with a PowerPoint presentation.

By the time Howard Schultz stepped down as chief executive of Starbucks, in 2000, the coffee chain was one of the world’s most recognizable brands—and on a steady trajectory of growth.