Workforce Planning & Analytics

Welcome to the Institute for Human Resources Workforce Planning and Analytics! Thank you to everyone for your participation and support thus far in this great IHR Initiative. We are past the half way mark!

This event will be the 3rd event in our series of 4 – we are past the half way mark! Find out what we have been up to and what we have accomplished these last few months. Join Cherise Sortino, Community Facilitator for HR.com’s Institute for Human Resources Workforce Planning and Analytics as she takes a look at what has been happening within the Institute for Human Resources within the last 6 months.

During this short 20 minute session Cherise will take a quick glance at the Institute for Workforce Planning and Analytics thus far; review the certification program, have you signed up? Get updates on the hours accumulated to date, review the sessions scheduled for this event and take a look at what is coming up for the latter part of the year.

During this session you will:

•       Be introduce to the Workforce Planning and Analytics Advisory Board
•       Learn about the Institute and the Certification program
•       Learn how you can become an expert in the Workforce Planning and Analytics space

Learn why this Institute is important to the Workforce Planning and Analytics community and how you can contribute to its success.

If you are new to the Institute for Workforce Planning and Analytics, this introduction will cover not only our past accomplishments but explain why you should continue to participate and be a part of this community.

For those with questions regarding the institute and its content this is your chance to share your ideas.

This session does not qualify for HRCI credits.

What are the right few human capital metrics to help us navigate our businesses through changing environments?

HR professionals – and the organizations they serve – often struggle with how to establish a core set of HR metrics that accurately capture HR’s impact on the organization and generate real business insight. Simply picking measures from a list is like searching for a needle in a haystack. There is a better way.

This presentation introduces a systematic approach for identifying the right metrics for any organization. By using a blend of standardized and customized measures, a company can track human capital performance along widely understood and benchmarked metrics while also creating tight alignment with unique business objectives.

The majority of measures on a human capital dashboard (around 80%) can be standardized, drawing from known metrics with well-established definitions. These metrics are often easier understood by end-users and benefit from readily available benchmarks.

However, a portion of human capital metrics (about 20%) must be customized to reflect unique business conditions and measure, monitor and evaluate organizational initiatives. HR teams can quickly and efficiently determine the best customized metrics for their businesses by employing a “cascade approach”. Working from the top-down, this structured approach starts with the strategic goals of the business and drills down to the detailed metrics that measure whether HR is achieving its strategy.

Participants will take away concrete lessons that they can use to identify the best human capital metrics for their organizations. They will understand how to quickly and efficiently customize human capital metrics based on business needs, use Strategic Metrics Cascades to tailor human capital measures that align with their strategic priorities, and learn the 10 Key Performance Indicators that no organization should be without.

In today’s world, companies struggle to mitigate employment risks. The types of interventions considered by companies to promote diversity fall along a continuum – from defensive to more strategic in nature. Organizations that approach diversity management with a proactive and strategic mindset will be better equipped to meet the evolving needs of today’s business and customers by matching their workforce’s composition with that of valuable new markets, broadening their pool of prospective talent, and positioning themselves to attract and retain top employees. The growing number of companies seeking to strategically close equity gaps represents a shift to a workforce planning perspective – knowledge of where you are, where you need to be, and the levers that will help you get there. Companies need to focus internally to determine which interventions will be most effective for their organization and decide which resources need to be applied to those interventions. We believe the best way to accomplish this is through measurement – by building a fact-based approach to diversity management. The key to effective diversity management is to understand the workforce you’ve created, where it’s headed, and where it needs to go. The goal is to get at the root-source of your diversity issues and identify those interventions that are most effective for your organization. Without some capability to measure the impact of these different investments in your company, you could be wasting millions. Knowing what you get for these investments is crucial to making the right decisions and allocating resources effectively. We believe there are three keys to success to achieving your diversity and pay equity objectives: 1) insist on systems thinking, 2) demand the right facts, and 3) stay focused on value by selecting the highest impact approach to increase diversity and ensure equity. In our presentation, we will teach you how you can manage diversity through measurement and review real-life case examples to demonstrate how the approach is used, and the value it brings.

For many organizations mobility is the most effective way to fill critical workforce gaps and further develop needed skills. Learn how to measure and better manage mobility.

Mobility is examined as part of a larger strategic workforce planning process. In this session you’ll learn how it is possible to examine actual employee behaviors in much the same way marketers track customer purchasing patterns. The “dollar trail” in all the key workforce events is recorded in modern HRIS and talent systems – job moves, promotions, quits, and so on. While some individual decisions may be idiosyncratic, there are clear patterns in collective outcomes which provide important insights into what is really happening in the organization and how to improve your “internal labor market”.

Today's availability of workforce data, technology, and methods allows leading companies to measure the true impact of policies and practices and optimize their workforce investments. Given the fact that workforce expenditures are often the single biggest investment an organization makes - there is no longer any excuse not to base these decisions on hard evidence derived from actual workforce outcomes and business impact of these investments.

The methods exist, and most organizations have all the data they need to begin to implement an asset management approach to decisions about human capital. A growing number of companies have recognized this opportunity and are joining the ranks of serious practitioners of workforce science.

In this brief session we will review the types of mobility, benefits, costs and how to spot disruptive practices that may be hurting your organization by using some of these new methods.

Every day organizations struggle to answer essential questions about their workforce. How will business be impacted by impending retirements and are we prepared? What skills will we need in the next 5 years that we don’t have in place today? What is the right mix of compensation to accelerate our performance? While traditional HR applications provide standard reporting to help fulfill compliance requirements, they often fall short when it comes to the full spectrum of analytic capabilities that HR professionals need to measure what truly matters.

In its next generation of Human Capital Management applications, Oracle has embedded analytics into the fabric of the HR transaction itself so that you have the information you need right at your fingertips. The system is designed to inform your next action so that the decisions you make are actionable. And seeing into the future? Even that is made possible with predictive analytics that help you anticipate what’s ahead.

•       With the proper team in place the success of your workforce planning project is set with much more confidence. From project management, through detail data skills to proper strategy alignment, the team is critical. We will evaluate the players needed to move workforce planning from a tactical exercise dictated by other departments to a business critical, strategic roadmap for the organization. While addressing risk mitigation and promoting proactive methodology we will study what you can also learn from history.

Workforce planning is not about a few experts in a dark room creating projections. The input about the desired goals, the input about the current state of the employee base, the analysis of the historical trends and the assessments of the gaps are all needed. The plan needs to include the analysis of date, the review and vision of succession planning and replacement planning; projections about the business requirements and possible options need to be entwined in the plan. This involves different skills and knowledge at different phases of the planning process. What-if scenarios are built based on varying strategies and should be a part of the corporate discussion for moving the company forward.

It takes strong leadership to guild an organization and that leadership must include a team with the knowledge and insight of the workforce needed to execute the strategic plan. With the right team planning the workforce of the future a company can differentiate themselves, reduce risk and expense while building a far better employer brand. With the examples brought to you in this session you can build a case for securing strong resources to support the initiative while also improving the corporate wide buy-in the plan.

The key to business growth comes from either investing in physical capital, technology, or human capital. But, how can HR best decipher what it should be investing in?

There is much focus on HR metrics these days because it’s not longer sufficient to be reactive or rely on gut feel. However, using numbers in HR is unfamiliar territory – how can a people-focused function base all its decisions on hard figures when there is always detail more to the story that isn’t readily obvious in stats.

This webinar takes metrics to another level by reviewing how HR can utilize surveys that for the most part it already gathers. To date, these surveys have been informative but they haven’t yet been aligned with existing metrics – by aligning quantitative with qualitative data, the business can get the full picture of the state of and can reduce the information asymmetry problem. The intel can help an organization determine where it should invest its limited funds to maximize its performance and develop the full story it needs to take to business leaders.

The session will introduce the three main employee lifecycle surveys, onboarding, engagement and exit surveys and how to set up the most practical and effective surveys to obtain usable data. Next will be a review on the best metrics to align with these surveys and how to triangulate this qualitative data with metrics. The webinar will also cover details such as how to best present the information to make a compelling business case to your audience.

Theory is important but application is vital. The trap with metrics is that much theory abounds but it’s often difficult to envision how to make the theory a reality. This session will review a detailed case study from Canada’s largest credit union, Vancity, adding to the HR professional’s treasure box of practical knowledge that can be readily applied to the workplace.

This financial institution has been on a HR metrics journey familiar to most – from struggling with data quality to standardizing metric formulas. Vancity has moved beyond these barriers to start benchmarking and has shown innovation with its annual reporting which includes both financial, community impact and employee data. Learn in this webinar how Vancity has taken its surveys to the next level and its learnings from the past three years. Examples will be provided on potential presentation formats for maximum impact and a discussion on what research tells us about the value of engagement surveys. Finally, participants will receive a guide to the presenter’s favourite resources for practical knowledge on HR metrics.

The session will be presented by Vancity’s HRIS Analyst, Helen Luketic, CHRP. Helen has brings more than ten years of HR experience to her current role. For her innovative achievements in HR metrics, benchmarking, and analytics at Vancity, Helen was the recipient of the BC Human Resource’s Association’s 2008 Rising Star Award.
In a previous role as Manager, HR Metrics & Research at BC HRMA, she combined her CHRP, B.A. in Economics, HR information systems knowledge and experience in HR metrics to develop the HR Metrics Service which includes the HR Metrics Standards & Glossary, which has been declared to be the source of truth for HR data in four Canadian provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia.

To excel in today’s global workplace, you need to know how to empower and motivate, train and retain employees across cultural and linguistic boundaries.

Leveraging analytics to improve methods of attracting and retaining talent is essential in today’s competitive race for global talent management. Reflecting on best, next practices for applying the right data and tools to the people processes is essential for successful deployment across cultures within a global workforce.
Our starting point will be from the assumption that you have already identified potential talent shortages and excesses.

Our discussion will focus on how answering the following questions will impact the success of your workforce planning:
-       How does your organization leverage the value of diversity from your people around the globe?
-       How can organizations incorporate global and local needs to generate optimal results in an ever-changing work environment?
-       To what extent and in which circumstances do Cultural Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence impact communication between an organization’s global employees?
-       What competencies do your managers need to lead effectively in today’s global workplace?

Minimizing the cost, avoiding the failure and maximizing employee engagement from the out start are key ingredients to success. Knowing that top employees are a company’s greatest asset and often the largest expense.

How does a company get the right employee in the right job at the right time and for the right reasons?
•       Organizations which can efficiently identify what actions by management will have the greatest impact on business will save millions in hiring and training costs for new associates.
•       Review competency –based tools for determining success factors in intercultural environments.
How do you monitor employee engagement?
•       Operating units with highly satisfied employees have higher revenues, lower costs, greater employee retention and superior customer loyalty. What does that look like when comparing workforce talent in North and South America, EMEA and PACA regions?

How do I know when to staff up or cut back?
•       Reflecting on political and legal implications across the globe in ‘what if’ scenario planning is not only beneficial but necessary.
Why do employees choose to stay with- or leave- my company?
•       Employee performance data – knowing what employees value most and how they can boost retention rates allows companies to design personalized performance incentives or decide when to promote someone. When you hire talented people, you want them to succeed. Knowing if they are misplaced, or poorly managed is essential.
How should my workforce needs adapt to changes in the business environment?
•       Data needn’t be perfect but must be culturally adapted. Mastering talent analytics means being aware of managers measuring behavorial data without culturally calibrating its efficacy. The frequency with which customer-facing staff members smile may or may not be correlated with customer satisfaction in countries where smiling is not customary.

No organization embraces an analytics-only method of managing, motivating and retaining employees. Knowing how to balance the data with people focused language is what well-balanced workforce planning is all about.

Experts say 40% of M&A, RIFs and reorganizations fail to meet business objectives. With the workforce accounting for nearly 70% of costs, how downsizing or growth is handled is often a primary factor in the success or failure of any major organizational change.

Managed ineffectively, downsizing or reorganizations expose you to numerous risks including:

•       Costly delays
•       Errors
•       Lawsuits
•       Talent loss
•       Lack of compliance
•       Damaged reputation

Often managed manually with spreadsheets, email, and phone calls, voluntary or involuntary RIFs expose organizations to not only risks but undue costs. As organizational change becomes the new normal, effectively managing change should become a top priority for organizations to ensure agility and growth.

By employing best practices along with technology for managing reorganizations, progressive organizations are successfully reducing risk, cost and key talent loss during workforce reductions. Attend this webinar and learn best practices to think about when initiating a reorganization or reduction in force such as: What are the key components of the process? What information should your organization understand and evaluate in order to mitigate risk? How do you ensure that all key stakeholders communicate clearly and are involved at the right level of the decision making process?

Also, learn about:

•       How to manage compliance issues, especially when the employee population has different sets of business rules
•       Streamlining the reorganization process—from one to thousands
•       Implementing a scalable system to manage the processes
•       Sustaining positive reputation after a reorganization or RIF
•       Managing complicated business rules applying to multiple populations
•       Optimizing value of existing technology systems

There has always been a lot of talking and hoping going on around aligning a corporation's workforce with their strategies for competing successfully in their markets. Unfortunately, that is where progress towards a Strategy-driven Workforce grinds to a halt for many. The reason is simple. They lack a rigorous methodology for quantifying or measuring their current strategic priorities.

Registered participants to this session learn about four fundamental competitive strategy orientations: [1] Market Alignment, [2] Sales Power, [3] Transformation Efficiency, and [4] Purchasing Power. Participants experience how to measure the nature and strength of their corporate strategy, and then translate strategic priorities into the competencies that support strategy execution. Dr. Tom Janz will illustrate the phase one process of defining strategy-driven performance models with one or two examples taken from registered participants who complete a brief Strategic Priorities Survey sent out a week prior to the workshop.

The Strategy-driven competencies, taken together with technical / functional and cultural competencies, offer comprehensive, measurable, strategic performance models. Kevin Rutherford will lead participants through the steps involved in putting these SPMs to work, begining with exploring the strengths and gaps in the current workforce. He will offer specific processes for talent re-alignment and coaching to maximize strategic fit. He will also cover how to review existing competency models and hiring methods to make sure that people entering the organization, particularly in highly leveraged positions, fit with the strategically aligned performance models developed in phase one above.

These are the practical steps needed to have a fighting chance of earning the strategy-aligned workforce that most executives want to have. What they often have instead is a worforce-aligned strategy-- meaning that they end up having to pick a strategy their people can execute, instead of picking the market-optimal strategy and then aligning their workforce to execute on it. Executive thought leaders like Jack Welsch and John Chambers repeatedly point up the limits of a "Command and Control" orientation to achieve big results. Having a set of clear, sharable goals, linked to market-optimal strategies executed by a strategy-aligned workforce takes effort, vision, and tenacity to achieve. But with the steady decline in the average Return on Assets across all publicly traded companies over the past 30 years, 'more of the same' just isn't going to work.

The current economic climate, Reductions In Force (RIF) Workforce Analytics / Optimization Career Pathing and Strategic Succession Planning & Management present entirely different and significant challenges - But what if there was ONE SOLUTION THAT COULD ADDRESS IT ALL? This session will present a way to produce positive, measurable and sustainable results in a cost-effective way. In short, there is nothing else on the market today that can compare to this solution; just ask the US ARMY, agency and corporate recruiters, provincial Governments and the private sector in North America, The UK, The EU, the Middle East and APAC.

In this session participants will learn: 1) The secret for compressing 50% of the Recruiting cycle (e.g., 7 – 10 weeks) into less than 1 minute resulting in a valid, reliable, EEOC compliant and legally defensible rank ordered list of ALL job applicants for any job - regardless of how many; 2) How to deploy and re-deploy current employees in a way that makes them more engaged and productive while lowering attrition and improving customer retention; 3) How to quickly and effectively focus on Business Continuity and avoid politics for Reductions In Force (RIFs) by ensuring you have the best talent now - and in the future. This session includes a demonstration of live, competency-based web-enabled system to assess and rank order job applicants while also showing how it can optimize the contribution employees can make to your organization. You will also see in real time how the same competency-based tool expedites decision support for Training & Development Needs Analysis, Career Planning & Pathing, Progressions & Promotions, Succession Management and RIFs. This webinar will show you how to clearly increase your role as a strategic partner in the organizational value chain.

HR analytics in the form of metrics and scorecards are critical tools for assessing and communicating success (or lack thereof) in the management of valuable human resources. No doubt it is essential to get right the technical issues involved in workforce analytics, such as the development of reliable and valuable measures, and ensuring adequate information and data management systems. As important, however, is change management, an often overlooked success factor in workforce analytics implementation. This session introduces the change management models of Kurt Lewin and John Kotter that provide the conceptual foundations for many of the recommendations offered by today’s change management consultants and experts. Lewin advocates a 3-step model of unfreezing, moving, and refreezing employee attitudes and behaviors regarding workplace changes. Kotter takes this model and expands it to 8 practical change management steps, including the following: establish the need for urgency, ensure a powerful change group, develop and communicate the vision, and ensuring short-term wins.
In this session, I will discuss ways to use these change management frameworks to identify key opportunities to enhance the success of workforce analytics implementation, and to highlight common, avoidable change management mistakes in the implementation process. Examples of metrics and scorecards will be shared and areas of potential hesitance or resistance on the part of managers and employees will be discussed. Included in this discussion will be ways of turning resistance into positive outcomes in the workforce analytics implementation process. Overall, the session advocates for devoting time to change management planning and concepts in the design and implementation of HR metrics and HR Scorecards.

With the generational turnover of Boomers retiring, Gen X rising and Millennials filling in the gaps, it’s no surprise that companies are scrambling to prepare the leaders of tomorrow. As investments in leadership development increase, so does the demand on human resources professionals to prove the impact. Human capital initiatives have traditionally been considered too difficult to quantify, let alone able to be improved through data-driven insights.

Advances in the field of human capital analytics have given HR professionals a new tool kit with which to approach leadership development. Not only can HR use business data to calculate an ROI on soft skills, but statistical modeling and data analytics provide insights into leadership development that make the initiative stronger and the spend smarter. This presentation will explore the work of thought leaders, including John Boudreau and Tom Davenport, who have unlocked HR’s ability to quantify investments in people.

Advanced analytics can help prepare tomorrow’s corporate leaders by showing where—and with whom—the investment is working and where it can be improved. A case study of first-level leader development at ConAgra Foods will show participants how a leading organization applied key concepts in measurement and evaluation. By conducting an in-depth study into their leadership initiatives, ConAgra’s HR executives were armed with powerful data to report successes to upper management and a plan for continuous improvement.

Strategic workforce planning has bubbled high on the priority list of many organizations. The process itself has been around for many decades - at least in scientific and best –best-practices - but it is now getting renewed attention because of changes that are driving the business world today.
Externally, changes in demographics, new employment models, emerging markets, and faster economic cycles are all contributing factors but their impact varies according to the type of business, industry and region.

Internally, high cost of human resources, long lead time to fill jobs, business focus and relevance of corporate functions to drive margin goals and major strategic transformations are some of the main drivers pushing organizations to accomplish more with less people.

To be successful in their business, critical jobs need to be staffed with the "right" people, and in order to ensure that the right people are on board, there needs to be thorough and long term planning of the workforce. These workforce plans have to remain "alive" and thus it is imperative to track progress and dynamically make regular adjustments as required to meet the ever-changing nature of business.

Learn how strategic workforce planning can impact your company’s ability to successfully execute on its business strategy while managing personnel costs and improving bottom-line revenues.

Gain greater visibility into your workforce composition so that you can manage your talent on a strategic level and align your workforce with your business goals.

See a demonstration of how the SAP BusinessObjects Strategic Workforce Planning solution provides transparency, enables the modeling and "futuring" of your resource supply and demand, and helps to identify and analyze gaps. The key objective is to ensure that you always have the right talent in place to support your corporate strategy.