Speedy problem resolution and round the clock ‘up-time’

When you’ve chosen to implement an on-line talent management system, you want a service that is available to your people when they need it  - and any problems or questions you have, resolved and answered as speedily as possible.

And that’s what we commit to.

Year after year we invest in our own people and systems to better support our customers and we are delighted with the service level statistics we have achieved for 2012.

During the last 12 months we:

·         Achieved 99.999% service availability on a 24 x 7 basis.

·         ‘Closed’ support calls made to us on average in 43 minutes.

·         99.2% of support calls were closed within one working day.

·         90.4% of support calls were closed on the same working day.

And we’re looking to improve on this for this year.  Watch this space!

Introducing a more formalised performance review process at MeetingZone

MeetingZone is one of the world’s largest independent conferencing and collaboration services providers and offers customers high performance, personalised audio and web conferencing services. It’s a growing business and we are delighted that Jenny Barnes, MeetingZone’s HR Director has appointed Head Light to work with her and her team as they introduce a more formalised performance review process.

Jenny Barnes comments “Our business has expanded rapidly over the last few years – and, indeed, we have strong growth forecasts for the coming years.  We have recruited many new and talented people and I believe that as an organisation, we have reached an important stage where we need to invest in professionalising our HR activities so that each one of us at MeetingZone understands the role we play in delivering the business plan.”

“As a starting point, I wanted to make sure that our performance review processes were robust to manage the complexities of the business and our structure, as well as highlighting areas where prompt action or intervention is required. I and some of the other senior managers have used other systems in the past in other organisations but what really appealed to us as we looked at Head Light’s Talent® platform is the intuitive ease of use and modular approach that can be taken. We have begun to use the performance review module as it suits our needs today, and as we look to develop our talent management activities in the future, we will be able to expand our customised system.”

Ian Lee-Emery, Managing Director at Head Light comments, “MeetingZone set about implementing the Talent® platform by carrying out a pilot before they started in earnest. We know from experience that this is the best way to successfully implement a new talent process so that issues can be raised and problems resolved. We look forward to hearing how Talent Performance® beds down in the new financial year and what impact it has on the business.”

Jenny concludes “Initial feedback from users and line managers has been very positive and our people see this as a commitment to invest in them, and to make a real difference to the performance of the business.”

Why Talent Management is important

Talent Management has broadly existed in various forms for many years with organisations using such processes as succession planning and competency frameworks to identify and develop their high potential performers.

The term itself wascoined in the late 1990s, gaining particular momentum as firms tuned into the fact that having a consistent and focused approach to managing intellectual capital within the organisation would have a positive impact on the business.

Since then White Papers, surveys, reports and articles on the subject abound, each with perhaps a slightly different definition of talent management and each taking their own angle, but all with the same consistent message: there are clear bottom-line benefits to having an effective, integrated talent management strategy which is underpinned by the broader business imperatives and this enables current and future success.

Impact on business performance

Various studies have focused on these business benefits and the role of talent management practices and, with the EU backing a legislative initiative to improve the gender balance in the boards of companies listed on stock exchanges, there is a further argument for having a more inclusive and targeted approach to talent management.

• Huselid and Becker (1995) researched the HR practices of 740 companies and found that those using High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) or integrated talent management practices had significantly higher levels of organisational performance, measured by an increase in market value per employee.
• Watson Wyatt’s European Human Capital Index study in 2002 suggested that there were 36 HR practices and policies which were associated with an almost 90% increase in shareholder value.
• The Institute of Work at Sheffield University conducted a study on manufacturing companies in 2001.  Its research demonstrated that people management practices were a better predictor of company performance (productivity and profitability) than strategy, technology or research and development, accounting for 20% of the variation in the financial performance indicators.
• Ernst & Young in its report titled ‘Managing Today's Global Workforce: Elevating Talent Management to Improve Business’ found that those companies which effectively manage talent consistently, deliver higher shareholder value. They analysed results from a survey of 340 senior executives conducted in 2009 to assess global talent management practices and evaluate their impact on business.  It was found that companies which align talent management with business strategy deliver, on average, 20% higher return on equity than those without alignment; those that integrated their talent management programmes delivered 38% greater returns.

 

Impact on employee engagement

Another strong argument for investing in a coherent talent management strategy is engagement.
There is a growing wealth of data which suggests that an engaged workforce leads to a range of organisational performance benefits.  For instance, the 2009 MacLeod report to Government cited a number of correlates of high engagement levels, many which have been reported by the poll experts Gallup in its studies of engagement.
Among its findings:

• In organisations with strong talent and engagement practices, more employees were likely to recommend the company to others, with 67% of employees in organisations who had strong Talent Management practices advocating their company versus only 33% of employees in the organisations which did not.
• When comparing business units, those with engagement scores in the bottom quartile averaged 31 – 51% more employee turnover, 51% more inventory shrinkage and 62% more accidents than those in the top quartile.  Looking at the same business units, those with engagement scores in the top quartile averaged 18% higher productivity and 12% higher profitability.
• In a study on the earnings per share (EPS) growth of 89 organisations, they found that the EPS growth rate of organisations with engagement scores in the top quartile was 2.6 times that of organisations with below-average engagement scores.

Engagement is now understood to be a major driver of individual and organisational performance, and has therefore become a management imperative and an important aspect of talent management.
An effective talent management strategy will ensure that critical roles are understood and that key people and your stars of tomorrow are identified, managed appropriately through the organisation, engaged, motivated, empowered and retained.  Effective talent management practices and engagement are strongly linked.

If you would like to read more about developing the talent management strategy for your business - or updating the plans you already have, contact us and we'll send you the first in our series of three White Papers.

Making Talent Reviews more effective

As an HR Business Partner, you need to know where the pipeline of future talent is going to come from within your area of the company. Do you have sufficient internal talent to drive the future growth of the business, as set out in your strategy? What are the gaps between the resources you have and what the company will need in the next 2-5 years? What are managers doing to grow and develop the people in their teams? Are there any critical roles or posts which do not have suitable successors and where your organisation is at risk? What do you need to do or put in place to mitigate against these risks, and ensure the sustained growth and success of your part of the business?

The forthcoming round of talent reviews should help you to answer these questions.

Talent Review Scenario 1

You are an ambitious, motivated person and you want to advance your career as far as you possibly can. You work hard and are keen to show that you’re a valuable asset to the company. Your skills and experience befit a role which is far beyond the requirements of the post you currently hold; you took an entry level job with the company because of the wider opportunities the business can offer. Whilst you consistently exceed your objectives, you get the feeling that your line manager doesn’t always recognise your worth, and you don’t always see eye to eye. But you know that the organisation has a talent review process through which high potential can be spotted and promoted to positions where they can really add value so you’re willing to stick with your current job for now...

Talent Review Scenario 2

You manage a large team in a growing area of the business. You know your team pretty well and they’re all good people; some have clearly reached their ceiling but are happy to remain the solid bedrock of the Division, but others show potential far beyond their current role and you recognise that you can’t keep all of them in the long-term. It is likely that the company will get the most value from them - and that they are more likely to resist the amorous advances of your competitors - if they are given opportunities to grow, develop and ascend the ranks: this is likely to mean that they will not remain in your part of the business, but that’s what good management is all about. It can be as difficult to manage these ‘stars’ as it is to deal with the underperformers, but the organisation has the talent review process in place so this will give you the opportunity to ensure that there are growth opportunities either within your own area , or across the organisation for them. You are looking forward to seeing their careers accelerate...

Talent reviews are an essential element of talent management, since they are the organisation's opportunity to identify and make best use of rising stars, but they are also often poorly managed or misused. In theory, talent reviews should form an integral part of the people strategy and should enable the company to make best use of its assets. In reality, the process is fraught with difficulties and rarely fulfils the needs and expectations of the key stakeholders, as described above.

In this article we will consider why this might be, and share some practical steps that organisations can take to improve the utility of their talent reviews.

Read the full article here

Leadership and Learning Agility

Increasingly we are hearing from organisations that are moving away from highly bespoke, tailored models of leadership effectiveness within their organisations to using generic, cross-sector criteria for assessing their top people, finding talent and developing their pool of leaders.

One recurring theme among these generic models is learning agility. This is not a new concept; in their 1985 paper “Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge”, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus identified ‘the development of self’ as a key dimension associated with success, finding that the majority of successful leaders “are highly proficient in learning from experience’. Sternberg, Wagner, Williams and Horvath (1995) set learning agility out as being distinct from basic intelligence and linked it to concepts such as ‘street smart’, ‘savvy’ and ‘common sense’. However, we may now be seeing the emergence of learning agility as a key, underpinning leadership competency which has the potential to influence the way we select and develop leaders in much the same way as the EQ revolution did. Lominger, the developers of research-based assessment and development tools that can be customised to fit any organisation’s culture or operating style, have Learning Agility as a core concept within their frameworks and have defined it as being “able and willing to derive meaning from all kinds of experience” (Eichinger & Lombardo, 2004).

What does learning agility look like? What behaviours might the ‘learning agile’ leader demonstrate? We think it encompasses the following things:

• The ability to reflect on experience; to learn from one’s own and others’ successes and failures and to use this learning in the future
• The willingness to seek out challenging experiences, opportunities to develop and try out new behaviours and strategies
• Showing an openness to feedback; actively seeking feedback from multiple sources, assimilating and using it to improve future performance
• The ability to perform well in first-time, challenging conditions
• The ability to derive learning from a range of different situations, opportunities and sources
• The ability to apply new strategies, concepts, behaviours and knowledge to novel problems; not sticking to just one ‘success recipe’ that may be inappropriate for the context.

So, if we are saying that these qualities are essential for leadership effectiveness, how can we 1) select leaders who have this quality, 2) can we develop it and 3) if the answer to 2 is “yes”, how do we do that?

There are a number of ways in which we have seen learning agility measured as a competency:

• Use the behavioural markers of learning agility to conduct a 360 degree review
• Give an individual an exercise (e.g., a problem solving activity). Let them do it, give them feedback and then administer a parallel exercise and look at how their approach differs - through observation and by interviewing them afterwards on their rationale behind doing particular things
• Conduct a critical incident-based interview which focuses on how the individual has learned key concepts, skills, abilities, knowledge and behaviour, and how they adapt their approach to different situations
• Use a psychometric test such as the Cognitive Process Profile, which consists of simulated problem-solving exercises and monitors candidates on their ability to explore, link, structure, transform, remember, learn and clarify information. This test also provides an indication of the cognitive level at which the individual is currently performing, and the level to which they might be able to develop to, given appropriate opportunities. It gives feedback on an individual’s ability to explore and use new information, analyse, structure, solve problems and their capacity to learn from the process and incorporate that learning into subsequent problems.

Can learning agility be developed? The underlying principles on which the CPP was developed would suggest so. Some practitioners take the view that it cannot be taught, but can be developed in those who have the innate trait. But aren’t all human beings capable of learning? If we accept that we engage in a huge amount of learning throughout our entire lives, then why can’t we learn to be more agile in our learning? Whilst we are not saying that some individuals are naturally more agile than others, we think there are some ways in which we think that learning agility could be encouraged and developed:

• Leaders could be helped, through coaching, to adopt the practices employed by effective learners (e.g., taking time after key events to reflect on one’s own performance and to note lessons for the future, to become more aware of one’s own learning preferences and to actively engage in all four stages within Kolb’s learning cycle, etc)
• Supporting individuals in deliberately seeking out experiences which would stretch them out of their comfort zone
• Ensuring personal development or career plans include a range of different learning opportunities, which tap into different learning styles or modes
• Engaging in team or peer reviews to analyse the efficacy of decisions made, gathering a range of views on how different people would approach the same situation and to collectively explore alternative strategies.

It could be also argued that being an agile learner must be a pre-requisite for developing other key leadership skills and that it is also important that senior managers role model learning agility in order to create a culture of continuous learning and personal growth. It’s also something that an individual can demonstrate in any role, regardless of the stage the individual is at in their career. So if learning agility is closely linked to leadership success, then it’s probably something we could focus on as a marker of potential for the highest-level leadership positions, which makes it a highly useful concept.....

Is your organisation ready for 360? Think again...

There is no doubt that a well implemented 360-degree review and feedback process will make a significant and cost-effective contribution to your organisation. But, is now the time? We share what we consider to be the main considerations for maximising the effectiveness of 360 feedback programmes. If you come up short on any of these, do think carefully about the timing.

1. Ask yourself – is it still a step too far?

360 should be approached as an evolutionary way to capture feedback. If there is no historical approach to feedback being a fundamental and accepted part of the culture it may encounter significant obstacles. It may be that a formalised review processes and one to one feedback needs to be introduced to lay the foundations for the full 360 and help to realise the value it can add to an open, honest culture with a genuine desire to improve performance. Perhaps a pilot in a certain part of the business (usually the top) might be a better starting point?

2. Can I create a ‘What’s in it for them’?

When positioning the 360 with the end-user it is imperative that a clear purpose is defined. Is the overall outcome designed to support Management Development, Coaching, Career Development or Performance Management? Are you introducing new competencies, ways of working or bonus schemes? It may be some or all of these. By exploring with the users it will help to sell the “what’s in it for me” gaining buy-in and provide clarity to how the organisation will use the results.

3. Can I deal with ‘emotional’ objections?

Explain how the 360 will be administered, who will ensure it happens, who will collate the results and how, when will they receive the feedback and who from? Ensure that the process is transparent and all can see what the desired outcomes are. It is useful to show at this stage that the 360 process will be revisited to allow individuals to see how they have improved based on feedback captured over time.

4. Can I create a ‘What’s in it for the Management population’?

Is there an overarching strategy or goal that the organisation is working towards? 360 can be extremely effective when clear links can be seen between the outcomes and the future vision of an organisation. Are there values or a core mission statement that the behaviours link to?

5. Can I enlist their support as opposed to just agreement? 

Identify the key stakeholders to act as “Champions” supporting the pilot of the process and promoting its worth and usefulness as a management tool. These may be a Senior Management Group or well respected members of specific business areas. This group would then define and promote the organisational need for the 360 i.e. to identify current skills against those required for future growth and develop training plans to assist this.

6. Are the questionnaires fit for purpose and considered relevant? 

Here possible ensure that the questions reflect the desired competencies. If the organisation does not use competencies ensure that the language used is common across the organisation, appropriate to the respondents and can clearly elicit the desired responses. It is useful to discuss the design of the questions and format with a pilot group of differing levels to ensure your format will deliver what is required and provide one clear consistent message of its worth. Do see our other resources on this subject.

7. Are these outputs aligned with other core Talent Management processes? 

Wherever possible align the feedback to the Personal Development and Career Planning process within the organisation (you do have those don't you?!). Formalising action plans based on the feedback and reviewing quarterly shows commitment to the users. It also ensures the feedback is revisited and discussed regularly keeping the process alive and helping to embed it into the organisations culture. The choice should be given to the individuals to discuss the action plans with their manager or a mentor. Sharing by choice in this way can then help to naturally encourage a feedback rich team who seek to adopt the process into every day operations.

8. Are those tasked with delivering and receiving the feedback ready, willing and able?

Be specific when and how the feedback will be delivered. Ensure that the individuals are briefed on the stages on feedback - shock, anger, rejection, and acceptance. This helps them to mentally prepare for the sessions and understand their emotions are natural and expected. In our experience individuals can move more quickly to acceptance (and therefore action) when they understand the stages and the reasons for their feelings. Thus helping the feedback to be digested and understood more fully. Ensure each individual understands that by being a willing participant in a 360 feedback process, they own the feedback. By accepting to be involved, make sure any ground rules are laid out in advance and that choosing to decline is 'ok'. It is only they that can act upon the feedback and use it to provide deeper self insight. Also explain that what they receive is in no way altered or edited - it is the views of their chosen respondents as provided on the forms.

How fine should the fine print in competency frameworks be?

Much of the work we do with clients involves, at some level, job analysis or competency frameworks. Working with large numbers of these you do begin to see patterns and consistent themes, but we do also see a great variation in the depth, breadth and structure of competency models. When developing a framework to underpin your talent management efforts, it can be fiendishly difficult to strike a balance between something that will apply to most and making it too generalised to be useful. The potential application and therefore level of detail and specificity required in a framework is therefore something well worth debating before you embark on a competency development project.

Research by James Meachin and Stephan Lucks (recently reported in the BPS’s Assessment and Development Matters, Vol. 2 No. 3, 2010) explored the optimal level of ‘granularity’ for competency frameworks when used as predictor measures and assessment criteria. Research into the effectiveness of various personality constructs to predict job performance suggests that some of the broad measures, such as the Big Five, have limited predictive validity, but that this might be improved when you correlate job performance with some of the finer-grain sub-traits, such as ‘dependability’. This would suggest that better predictions of job performance are made by fine-grain, or more specific, behavioural criteria.

Based on the literature, Meachin and Lucks hypothesised that assessment centre ratings which were based on a fine-grain competency framework would produce better correlations between conceptually-matched job performance measures (line manager ratings). In other words, they’d result in a more accurate prediction of high performance on the job. Interestingly, what they actually found is that the predictor measures showed stronger correlations with line manager performance ratings as they became broader, not narrower. Aggregating the competency scores into a general, overall measure of performance seemed to be a more reliable way of predicting high-performing individuals than picking on their performance in specific competency areas.

For practitioners, this is useful information. In order to create robust assessment processes, which differentiate between higher and lower performing candidates, a job analysis or competency framework has to provide depth and a level of detail which makes explicit the behaviours and competencies which are important to success or which demonstrate effectiveness. Undoubtedly, in the arena of assessment for development purposes, the value is in the detail – in helping people understand the specific aspects of their performance or behaviour which makes them more or less effective. But in recruitment, by being overly reliant on the detail and by honing in on one or two areas which may be deemed to be crucial to the job, we could be missing the bigger potential picture.

So, perhaps the optimal situation is to have a detailed, granular competency framework, which sets out the specific behavioural indicators across a number of competencies (no less than 6, and no more than 12?). By collecting assessment data against your framework (through performance appraisal, assessment processes, or 360 degree feedback), you should then perform a factor analysis on your competencies to determine whether there are any higher-order (or coarse-grained) factors underlying it (this may result in a general, overall performance construct or perhaps two or three clusters of competencies). Aggregating competency scores in line with these underlying factors and making decisions based on these broader measures is likely to improve the reliability of the framework, and ensure that you’re not letting potentially good candidates slip through the net.