HR Technology® Conference opens in Chicago
The importance of using evidence-based management, instead of relying on assumptions, was stressed during the opening keynote address on Wednesday, while other experts addressed outsourcing, talent management, learning management and other pressing issues later that day.
By Staff Writers
In the opening keynote of the 9th Annual HR Technology® Conference and Expo, Jeffrey Pfeffer reiterated his now-recognized and published caution to the HR community to consider truth and evidence before purchasing or implementing new programs.
A record-setting number of more than 800 attendees registered for the annual three-day conference at Chicago's Navy Pier, which also drew about 215 exhibiting companies.
Referring to what Pfeffer said were failed systems of the past and present -- such as forced ranking, social promotion in schools and merit-based pay for teachers -- he warned listeners that HR has yet to consider facts and learn from mistakes before moving forward.
"Bottom line: We don't pay attention to evidence," said Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's School of Business and co-author of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management. "We live in a world where truth is an endangered species."
He encouraged his audience to treat their organizations as unfinished prototypes where ideas and initiatives are introduced through "experimenting/learning mind-sets" rather than assumptions.
One faulty assumption, for instance, occurred in the auto and airline industries, he said. Many organizations sought to increase performance by cutting wages and benefits, "based on the assumption that this will, indeed, improve performance." But leaders never considered the reaction of employees to such cuts -- as they fell into "active disengagement," he said. The companies assumed cutting labor costs was equal to cutting labor rates, but "if I cut your wage and you respond by doing less or nothing, I haven't saved anything, have I?"
Consider, too, the messages a company sends out by the incentives it introduces, he said. If incentives are intended to speed up service, make sure the program doesn't backfire, as occurred in Albuquerque, N.M., where truck drivers responded to such incentives by missing pick-ups, receiving speeding tickets and failing to empty trucks because drivers were more interested in the incentive pay than in the services they provided.
In the world of HR and IT, he stressed, consider what vendors are selling and demand the truth from them. "If a vendor will not put you in contact with unsatisfied as well as happy customers, will not tell you the downsides and risks of their product or service, will not tell you what might go wrong, what has gone wrong in the past and what they have learned from the process, find another vendor," he said.
Applying evidence-based management to HR technology means "taking the time to experiment with an investment or initiative," he said. "Take the time to reflect on it, question it. What are the goals, and does the system really support them, and has it done so in the past? Spend time looking back on significant past decisions -- technology implementations, mergers, whatever -- not to assign blame, but to reflect and learn how to do it better next time."
The LMS of Tomorrow
In his session, "What You Still Need to Learn About Learning Management Systems," Josh Bersin, CEO and principal of Oakland, Calif.-based Bersin & Associates, shared some key highlights of the new frontier in learning-management systems.
Unlike corporate universities of five and 10 years ago, he said, "the new LMS is moving toward being totally integrated into the organization; no longer will learning involve providing employees with a place to go."
Unfortunately, though the university model is obsolete now, many companies are still using it and need to move to performance-oriented, process-centric and measurable "learning services that come to you," he said.
With demands growing for workforce performance in today's business environment, LMS needs to be a core HR competency, but picking the model that's right for your organization requires due diligence and preparatory research, Bersin said.
Walking his listeners through his three organizational models for training -- centralized, federated and anarchy -- Bersin pointed out that most companies follow the second model, with learning applications and programs running independently, in silo formation, throughout. "Many companies would like the centralized LMS model, but the vast majority of them don't have the structures in place for success."
The goal of every future system, he said, "should be to integrate performance management competencies with training competencies in a more centralized model," but the timing has to be right.
Good candidates for such models, he said, are companies wanting to consolidate information and reduce overall training expenditures, those with highly customized systems that no longer can be upgraded and those whose vendors are not providing adequate support or research and development on the products.
On the other hand, companies that should postpone such a change would be those with no financial justification for a centralized system at this time; those still dealing with decentralized training budgets, control and authority; those with no shared-services experience or organization; and those for whom the cost of implementation, integration and support does not yet justify the potential savings.
"If the business doesn't feel enough pain to undergo such a massive IT project, it isn't worth it," Bersin said. Sooner or later, however, it will become an imperative change.
Buying into Talent Management
Getting buy-in from senior leadership and operations is crucial to a successful HR technology implementation, said Brian Bohling, senior vice president of human resources for Hess Corp., the $23 billion energy company headquartered in New York.
Bohling offered that advice at a session during which he explained how his company adopted an integrated talent-management suite to accommodate the company's needs for a global workforce -- ranging from third-shift workers in convenience stores throughout the northeastern United States to petrochemical engineers in Jakarta, Indonesia.
"We have a very complex and very diverse workforce on a global basis, so for HR tech, [the question is], 'What's going to work?' "
The answer for Hess, he said, was a combination of Authoria's talent-management suite and mySAP enterprise resource planning software.
Hess needed a new system because the company faces hard-to-recruit talent due to scarcity of skills as well as some unappealing locations around the world. Adding to the complexity is an aging workforce necessitating massive entry-level hiring, and a diverse array of HR technology systems that failed to interact effectively.
The first step to creating a new system was engaging senior leadership¿s buy-in to the program, he said. If the leaders attempt to "duck" in their support, he refuses to go forward, Bohling said.
"If you are not going to support me or give me money, don't ask me to do it. . . . You have to have both," he said, noting that if senior leaders attempt to duck their support in a conference room when the program is being discussed, then they will probably duck it when the front-line managers attempt to push back against the changes.
In addition to the buy-in from leadership, he worked hard to get the entire workforce engaged by including operations personnel in the planning of the new system. Five of the eight people on the planning team were from operations, he said.
"I told my boss, 'OK, so it took an extra 90 days but now it's going to get executed and implemented."
Dealing with Disaster
In a session on disaster recovery and emergency planning, Joel Ronkin, executive vice president and chief administrative officer for Miramar, Fla.-based Elizabeth Arden advised those attending to "expect the unexpected, because it's going to happen."
Whether it's having facilities in the hurricane-prone areas like South Florida or being vulnerable to terrorist attacks and power outages that can happen anywhere, having a thorough, well-tested emergency plan in place is essential to ensuring disasters don't create havoc for the business, Ronkin said.
Ronkin suggested HR leaders ask the following questions in preparing a plan:
* Who should be on the emergency planning team?
* What are the priority-one systems that must remain in working order during a disaster?
* Is there a need for a tiered preparedness plan for "disasters" that last longer than three to seven days?
* What lines of communication will be used for both employees and customers once a "disaster" has struck?
Ronkin noted that when Hurricane Wilma hit Florida and affected one of its facilities, management found a hotel room and set up operations there to ensure payroll was processed. "We never missed a payroll," he said.
Bill Hicks, chief information officer for Weston, Fla.-based Ultimate Software, which performs HR and payroll services for Elizabeth Arden, added that companies need to think about three things: Who needs to go? Where do they need to go? And what is needed in terms of technology and computers?
Thinking through the process, "we realized the need to give more people laptops," he said. "Employees can go to Orlando and pretty much work in any hotel" in the event of a disaster.
During the presentation, Hicks pulled out a wallet-sized laminated card that included the contact information of everyone he was responsible for. "It was a simple solution" to ensure people could be reached, he said.
Integrating Systems
Integrating performance management and learning management systems -- with the integration of succession planning in the works -- "gets everybody on the same page" about alignment of individual and business goals, said Marquam Piros, director of performance management for Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Seagate Technology during a session he presented along with Dave Watkins, CEO of Softscape, based in Wayland, Mass.
That integration was especially important to Seagate, a global disk drive manufacturer, he said, because the business has been built through acquisitions, resulting in an abundance of legacy systems.
Previously, the company had multiple, manually tracked LMS systems, paper-based performance management systems and succession planning was "a buddy's name in a drawer." Nothing was tracked or linked together.
In creating the new system, he said, it's important to "make it easy for the managers. If we are not making it easy for them, they are not getting engaged with us."
He noted that HR professionals spend their days focused on issues such as learning management or performance management, but for managers, such issues may take 10 to 15 minutes a day. Systems need to be transparent. They need to make sense. And they need to be easily understood, he said.
Piros offered six guidelines to other companies considering such a move:
* Ensure executive commitment;
* Conceive a well-defined process;
* Create and maintain critical partnerships;
* Pick the right partner;
* Structure the project team properly; and
* Have a vision.
At Seagate, Piros said, people-management issues are given the same priority as profitability, innovation, customer satisfaction and growth.
HR Outsourcing Outlook
The HR outsourcing landscape has changed a great deal during the last few years, with the biggest change being that it's no longer a buyers' market. That's according to Mark Hodges, chairman of New York-based consulting firm EquaTerra, who spoke before a packed room at the HR Technology Conference.
"The HRO providers' capacity is strained and pricing has stabilized," he said. "A few years ago, multinational firms could count on having multiple bidders for their business. Today they may get only one."
The reason? Demand has far outstripped capacity, said Hodges.
Hodges defined "HRO" as the process of outsourcing at least five HR processes to a single firm under a contract with a duration of at least five years. Many HRO providers have all the business that they can handle at this point, he said, and as a result, prices have stabilized and have even trended up, in some cases.
"Customers could get great deals a few years ago," said Hodges. "Not anymore."
There are approximately 75 large-scale HR outsourcing contracts in effect at this point, he said, valued at almost $15 billion and covering 2.5 million employees. Even so, the market has a huge amount of potential growth, with the Global 2000 market barely tapped, said Hodges. Meanwhile, more providers continue to enter the market, offering the potential for prices to go down a bit in the next year, he added.
"It's not a mature market yet," he said.
Read our report from
Thursday's sessions
at the HR Technology
®
Conference.
Check out the opinions expressed during the
Second Annual PeopleSoft Users' Panel
.
Here's more information about the
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October 5, 2006 Copyright 2006© LRP Publications
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