Human Resources

People have been predicting boomer brain drain for years. In 2008, a SHRM / AARP study warned about the impending brain drain. Yet, companies haven’t been too worried, partially because the economy has made it impossible for people to leave.

It might be time for that relaxed attitude to change.

Recently, one of my clients was surprised to learn that 28% of their workforce would be eligible to walk out the door with full benefits within the next two years. That’s a lot of people and a lot of institutional knowledge. With the market in recovery, they decided it was time to act.

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CIOs are having a hard time finding good candidates for open positions. They’re not alone.

According to ManpowerGroup’s annual survey, 52 percent of employers in the US are struggling to fill mission-critical positions. The number of employers experiencing difficulties is at an all-time high, despite a high unemployment rate.

So, what should a CIO do? Keep searching as current employees become more frustrated because they’re overloaded trying to cover extra work? There’s another way.

Get the Kinks Out of the Acquisition Cycle

The first thing to do is to sharpen the acquisition process. Talent acquisition is a notoriously leaky process. Companies lose money through slow screening, ineffective matching, and incorrect selection processes.

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Squirrels are great at foraging for nuts, building nests, and finding ways into my “squirrel-proof” birdfeeder (that’s not a picture of my personal birdfeeder, but it gives you the idea). But they’re never going to be great swimmers. Similarly, some leaders are never going to be great at managing people. So what do we do?

Good-Bye Manager, Hello Individual Contributor

The most obvious answer is to shift poor people managers into individual contributor roles. With this solution, people aren’t forced to do something they can’t do well. At the same time, the company doesn’t lose their knowledge and experience.

There are two problems, however.

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Oops: the employee who just resigned was running an entire function and we didn’t realize it. Oops: the new executive left after three months on the job because she couldn’t build strong relationships. Oops: we thought we staffed our mission-critical project team with influencers and high performers, but the team is failing.

These are the talent management failures that no one wants to experience. Yet many organizations face situations like this every day. Forty percent of leaders going into new roles fail, according to The New Leader’s 100-Day Plan. And companies regularly fail to recognize the value of individuals or roles until they’re gone.

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I’m delighted to announce that November 28, 2012 is the release date for Handbook for Strategic HR: Best Practices in Organization Development from the OD Network. 

This volume draws on the best thinking on strategic Human Resources from the premier OD practitioner journal, OD Practitioner. I worked on this project along with a fantastic, smart group of OD professionals: Editor-In-Chief John Vogelsang, Judy Vogel, Annie Viets, Lynne Valek, Cathy Royal, Matt Minahan, and Dave Jamieson. I edited the chapter on Employee Engagement with Annie Viets and the chapter on Change Management.

Here’s the blurb about the book from Amazon:

The role of human resources is no longer limited to hiring, managing compensation, and ensuring compliance.

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Workforce planning, tech leaders with poor people skills, and critical job vacancies are three topics I’ve recently covered for a new blog called the Future of Work Enabled. The blog explores issues of IT leadership in the networked, hyper-connected enterprise.

Here’s the description of the blog:

New forces are changing the way corporations are organized, how they get work done in the most efficient ways to meet their goals, and how employees approach their workdays. Information technology that makes all of these changes possible – but only when the IT group and its partners in the business community select the right opportunities, the right technologies, and the right strategies to enable this new way of getting work done.

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On May 17, at the NEHRA conference, Maya and Keli talked about how to use hidden organizational networks to identify and develop high potentials. The slides are now posted (click on “More” to access). It was a great session. Thanks to all who attended!

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“It’s not the technical stuff that worries me. It’s the people.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this from IT leaders. They feel confident with the infrastructure, budgeting, project delivery, support, and project management aspects of their jobs. It’s the people stuff that does them in.

It’s not surprising. People are annoyingly complex, creative, and stubborn creatures who continually find ways to do new and interesting things (when you don’t want them to) or resist change (when you want them to change). However, most IT people already have a hidden asset to help them manage people: their understanding of networks.

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Every organization has a hidden system: a web of relationships and informal networks that people use to complete day-to-day work. This system has its benefits: it helps get things done, disseminate knowledge, and incubate innovation. However, most leaders are unaware of how these networks influence productivity or workflow. By ignoring human networks, leaders miss out on an important network dynamic that can make or break talent management and change initiatives.

Within every network, 5 – 10% of nodes (in this case, individuals) represent critical connectors. These individuals have disproportionate influence over the whole. The critical connectors are:

Hubs – Highly connected individuals who communicate directly and frequently;
Gatekeepers – Individuals who manage information flow between areas or around expertise; and
Covert Brokers – Quiet, behind-the-scenes influencers who subtly lead and learn.

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How often have you realized, only after an employee has left the company, how critical he or she actually was to the business? Have you ever found your company in dire straits because key positions have been empty for too long? Or have you hired a promising new executive only to see that person fail after just a short time on the job?

If so, you’re not alone. Sixty-four percent of new executives hired from the outside fail at their jobs, according to HR Review. And companies regularly fail to recognize the value of individuals or roles until they’re gone.

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