Slipping through the crux

Couple of my Blog readers, Sunita a leader in HR Programs and Talent Development and Alex Richey brought this up in one of their mails to me and I thought its time I blog it.
Alex comments were simple, How we as HR allow Valueable Talent to leave the organization ? Knowing, fully well how much we spend on making them productive in the first place

We have all been witness to vast amount of quality talent been let go without really much of a push !!!
If only we wish, someone could understand how much effort and money goes into training and deployment of resources. In today's tough labour markets where the resource pool is getting short, there is more than a thought that needs to be applied on how to retain talent.
Organizations need to align retention policies to the need of employees. Retention may not be for the long term. Retention has to be viewed in context of meeting employee needs vis-a-vis the efforts spent on making him / her productive.
For key positions and roles, talent management has to be driven with a process support that cuts across career planning, individual developments and trainings. Global exposure adds to it, so does a change of role to include more challenging assignments.

But this is easier said than done. Do organizations have the answer to the following

1. Who is important to me ?
2. At what level do i track my talent ?
3. What are the skills that would be important for my business 5 years from now ?
4. Do we have the requisite number of people needed to meet business requirements for next 3 years?
5. Do i need to hire or do I have sufficient right people internally to meet my current business requirement.

To answer these questions a lot of information is required. A lot of information to get a clear view on where the talent lies, and where the business is heading. The first problem is even though organizations have huge amount of data on this, they dont know how to use it.

Whats the solution then ? organizations would need to take this issue more seriously and really look at ways of measuring both the talent and the processes around them.
But is it really HR's call or Business too would have a contribution to make ? HR can be a facilitator, beyond that business has to identify and spot the right talent and ensure that they are given the right support to develop.
Till then Slipping through the crux would continue !!!

Enterprise 2.0 and Human Network Management

This might be one of the most futuristic post by me !!!

I see a huge change in the roles and responsibilities of a CHRO as we move forward into the Entetprise 2.0. What would HR Organizations look like around ten years from now.

Before knowing that, Lets see whats driving this change.....
As more and more organizations start responding to Enterprise 2.0 changes, there is something very interesting that beckons them. A very high level of technology usage, coupled with a change in the very basics of management. Are organizations ready to change ? Thats where they need a strong agent to manage this change. However with the changing times, the change agent has to be someone who can don multiple colours and yet appear a single face for the organization.
Can it be the CIO / CBO/ Marketing officer/ CFO ? Perhaps NO, because this change is all about people and how they would determine the changed look of organizations of future.
That obviously makes CHRO as the best person to not only manage this change but also help organization transition through this.
With time, we have all seen the trasition of this role from administrative to strategic, and bigger changes beckon the role as we move forward.

1. HR Marketing - HR function is going to assume a strong brand ambassodor role going forward. The two prime reasons for this are, HR would need to communicate the new face of organization in enterprise 2.0 times and HR would continue to become a strong lever for the " Employee brand" it associates with. This would call for a strong brand identity management and outward facing HR organization.
Change from yesterday
Shed the inhibitions, walk to the world and say what you are.

2. HR Technology - The HR Organization of future is driven by technology and more and more of it. Voice enabled employee response systems, networks and communities of people, both internal and external. HR systems that can change with each organization change dynamically. HR is surely using more of technology.
Change from yesterday
We are not shy of technology, we are the best adopters.

3. HR Finance - HR Managers of tomorrow would be loaded with data, loads and loads of it. Dynamic in nature and predictive in formats. These data's would be able to drive projections, growth trends. Thats where HR would be able to take a better control of the costs related to HR Proceses and interventions. And No, I am not proposing CFO to be in HR department, HR would be able to drive a significant amount of cost management going into future.
Change from yesterday
Now we understand the language you finance guys speak and yes we deliver on it too !!

So now the question that comes to every mind - Is HR going to become the owner of all functions - Marketing, technology and finance ??
Not at all, however with focus on networks, people and usage of technology to connect all of this gaining prominence, HR would in all probability become a more powerful function.
Organizations would be investing significant $$$ in their Enterprise 2.0 strategies and that would call for reinventing everything around them, their processes, the owners, the roles and the deliverables.
While the entire picture of the plethora of possibilities that this new order would give is still hazy, one thing is clear, HR organizations would need to take more responsibilities to make it happen and thats precisely what makes me think that this would also be an opportunity for HR to reinvent itself.
Whether it happens or not, remains to be seen.......

CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey - Available Now

I came across this interesting survey from CedarCrestone, the HR Systems Survey 2008 -2009. I have been following their surveys for quite sometime and find them to very insightful and information oriented.

This time around the survey would cover broad HR technology adoption including
• Talent management and business intelligence applications
• Self service, portal, and Web 2.0 innovations
• Sourcing choices. Do you keep processes, technology, and people in-house or do you
outsource?
• Current year expenditures and next year’s budgets
• Metrics such as employee/HR staff ratios, administrative costs per employee, and many others that will be invaluable benchmark metrics

Some of the benefits of taking this survey for your organization.
This survey would provide you an opportunity to understand your current systems adoption for HR systems and sourcing, and benchmark it against your peers in the industry. It would also help you identify leading trends and how they could help you.

How to take the survey
The survey would take approximately 30 min and is available on http://www.cedarcrestone.com/hrssv53. Though it has many sections, you need not take all at the same time.
The deadline for completing this survey is 30th July,2008.

Decoding the World of SaaS for HCM

SaaS ( Software as a Service) as a concept originated sometime in 1999 when organizations first allowed hosted services to be adopted. Since then this concept has grown leaps and bounds. I would like to investigate here, from a SaaS vendor perspective and customer perspective whats the reason for this hype and how real is the result of this,

First from a vendor perspective.
The key characteristics of SaaS software, according to IDC,
1. network-based access to, and management of, commercially available software
2. activities that are managed from central locations rather than at each customer's site, enabling customers to access applications remotely via the Web
3. application delivery that typically is cloHCMser to a one-to-many model (single instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model, including architecture, pricing, partnering, and management characteristics
4. centralized feature updating, which obviates the need for downloadable patches and upgrades.
SaaS applications are generally priced on a per-user basis, sometimes with a relatively small minimum number of users and often with additional fees for extra bandwidth and storage. SaaS revenue streams to the vendor are therefore lower initially than traditional software license fees, but are also recurring, and therefore viewed as more predictable, much like maintenance fees for licensed software.

SaaS implementation can happen at the following four levels.
Level 1 - Ad-Hoc/Custom: At the first level of maturity, each customer has its own customized version of the hosted application and runs its own instance of the application on the host's servers. Migrating a traditional non-networked or client-server application to this level of SaaS typically requires the least development effort and reduces operating costs by consolidating server hardware and administration.
Level 2 - Configurable: The second maturity level provides greater program flexibility through configurable metadata, so that many customers can use separate instances of the same application code. This allows the vendor to meet the different needs of each customer through detailed configuration options, while simplifying maintenance and updating of a common code base.
Level 3 - Configurable, Multi-Tenant-Efficient: The third maturity level adds multi-tenancy to the second level, so that a single program instance serves all customers. This approach enables more efficient use of server resources without any apparent difference to the end user, but ultimately is limited in its scalability.
Level 4 - Scalable, Configurable, Multi-Tenant-Efficient: At the fourth and final SaaS maturity level, scalability is added through a multitier architecture supporting a load-balanced farm of identical application instances, running on a variable number of servers. The system's capacity can be increased or decreased to match demand by adding or removing servers, without the need for any further alteration of application software architecture.

From a customer perspective now
SaaS is based upon the assumption that the services provided are commonplace and well defined, hence economies of scale and balancing of supply and demand becomes possible. This assumption holds true for those areas of IT that are ubiquitous, a cost of doing business and commodity-like. SaaS is therefore not suitable for innovative or highly specialized niche systems, though SaaS may be used to provide one or more components in such systems.

However there are lots of areas which need to be addressed, which need to be sorted out.
1. SLA Definition and articulation - SLA's need to be in sync with the customer business objectives. SLA should be tangible, measurable and defined.

2. Identification of the right system - Right system is scalable, web based and easily configurable.

3. Identification of the right service provider - Localized support, quality of resources.

4. Definition of a roadmap - Roadmap for adopting the solution. Phased interms of solution footprint, phases.

With this in place, organizations can look at adopting solutions that not only free them from the transaction burden of managing the solution.
Over the next few blogposts, I would also be covering other business models and their viability.