Are you looking for people who:

• Take responsibility,
• Have learning agility,
• Are explorative and innovative,
• Are “big picture” minded, and
• Enjoy taking on new challenges?

Then you are looking for Self-powered Careerists. People who understand the changes that are affecting every facet of the organisations, and understand what they need to do maximise the opportunities of the changes – and do it!

So, what then is a “self-powered careerist”? Research undertaken by Career Systems Inc has identified 5 critical attitudes typically found in Self-powered Careerists. These are:

1. They step up and take responsibility for what they want and what is needed and don’t blame the “system” for what goes wrong.
2. They are “talent rich” – they have a potpourri of skills and abilities and know instinctively of new talents necessary and go about developing them.
3. They are inquisitive, they ask questions, and they understand the learning needed to power both themselves and the organisation.
4. They don’t see just their aspect of the organisation. They see the “bigger picture” and understand it and know their contribution.
5. They put up their hand when challenging situations arise and are not afraid to take a calculated risk.

But there’s a quid pro quo. Self-powered Careerists need an environment that allows them to be “self-powered”. They need an environment that:

• Has a clearly defined career lattice throughout the organization with no limitations or restrictions,
• Facilitates career conversations and enables people to achieve their goals through achieving organizational goals,
• Allows people to work in areas that taps into their passion, strengths and personal goals,
• Enables people to build a “personal brand” and market that brand as an asset to the organization,
• Creates career opportunities that makes peoples work and lives in the organization a truly win-win situation, and
• Provides the necessary work environment and tools that enable people to perform at their best.

It is up to managers to create this environment and this in turn would ensure:

• Improved productivity,
• A more innovative organization,
• A more engaged workforce, and
• Better retention of critical skills.

That sounds like a “win-win” to us. How about you?

If you would like to create a career lattice for your organization or know more about creating an “engaged” workforce, call us.

For instance, some answered that “Human capital is the driving force behind an enterprise”, and “Human Capital is the “source of revenue generation” for most organisations today.” Others responded “they are the the People of the business. The Profit and the Loss – The heart, the soul. They are the body that powers the mechanism”. And ultimately “What people can bring to those roles is one aspect to consider – the key to what they will contribute is based on how they feel their overall capabilities (beyond technical skills) are valued and respected.”

Clearly the line between Human Capital Management and Human Resource Management is blurred. There is a huge difference between Human Capital Management and Human Resource Management. They are NOT the same thing, and BOTH are necessary. The key questions are where is the line between them, and where does the responsibility lie?

Human Resource is about “people”, whereas Human Capital is about “assets”. People in and of themselves are not “assets” (to an organisation let me quickly add). It’s their skills, knowledge, attitude and aptitude that are the “assets” to an organisation. This is the “value” that “people” bring to the organisation. If “people” don’t have the skills etc that the organisation needs to achieve it’s goals, they are no longer an “asset”, but could effectively become a “liability” to the organisation. But they are still “people”.

Because the line between Human Capital Management and Human Resource Management is blurred, HR generally tries to take on both roles. This is, in my opinion, neither correct, nor workable.

Take a car for instance, different people drive the car than service the car. The driver wants to get the furthest quicker and at the lowest cost. The service person wants to maintain and protect the car. It’s the same with Human Capital Management and Human Resource Management.

Human Capital Management needs to drive the value of their assets (including human assets) to achieve business goals. Human Resource Management needs to service and maintain the “human assets”, which should include ensuring that they have the skills, knowledge, etc. that the organisation needs to achieve its goals.

Human Capital Management is a function of Line Management. Their role is to drive organisational performance through effective use of these assets. This includes ensuring that they have the right environment in which to function effectively, as well as ensuring that they are, in fact, functioning effectively.

Human Resource Management is a function of HR. Their role is to build, maintain and service the human assets, which includes developing the right skills in Line Management that will enable them to function effectively as managers of “human assets”.

There needs to be a partnership relationship between Human Capital Management (Line Management) and Human Resource Management that creates a Human Capital Strategy that ensures that the organisation has the “right skills, at the right time, in the right numbers and at the right cost”.

This means that Line Management needs to get a lot better at Workforce Planning, Workforce Metrics, and Workforce Engagement. They also need to get a lot better at measuring the effectiveness of their “assets”.

It also means that HR need to become more cognizant of the skills required by management today, and they need to play a more facilitative role that ensures that there is an effectively workplace in place that stimulates the behaviours and motivation of the “human assets”.

And this is where the break-down happens. Line Management don’t take on their responsibility and HR try to take it all on. Abdication and dissipation.

To find out more about developing effective Human Capital practices in organizations, call us.

I’m exploring STRATEGIC employee engagement. What does that mean to you? (I’m not looking for tactical ideas – I’m looking for suggestions on how organizations create strategy around engagement)

TalentAlign response:

Hi Vicki.  I think first we need to all get on the same page regarding “what do we mean by Strategy”.  For me, the “father” of Strategy is Michael Porter, so I will start by some of his definitions.

Firstly “Operational Excellence is Not Strategy” – so management tools, such as total quality management, benchmarking, outsourcing, reengineering, and change management may lead to operational improvement, they are not, in themselves Strategy.  ”Operational effectiveness” is about performing similar activities to your competitors, but doing it better than them.  Strategic positioning, on the other hand means performing different activities or similar activities in a different way.  Porter says “a company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve”.

So, back to your question.  If we are going to do justice to this, we need to acknowledge that Employee Engagement is not a single thing or activity that an organisation does.  In fact, Employee Engagement has a number of “drivers”, and each “driver” can be approached from a number of ways.  Marcus Buckingham, in his book “First Break all the Rules”, which describes how the concept of Employee Engagement was researched and was brought into being (a must read), describes the four “levels” of getting to Employee Engagement as being similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  In other words, there are different levels of need to achieve Employee Engagement, and lower level needs have to be satisfied before higher level needs can be addressed.  The four levels of need that he defines are:

1. Employees needs to know what is expected of them, how much they will earn, and will they have the tools and resources to do the job properly.  Once these needs are satisfied they can move to the next level.
2. At this level employees need to know how they are performing in the job, that there are aspects in the job in which they can excel, and that there is someone in the organisation who encourages their development.  Once these are satisfied, they move on.
3. This becomes a critical phase in the lives of most employees.  At this level they need to know that they belong in the organisation –  are they comfortable with the way the organisation does business, can they align (culturally and otherwise) with the mission of the organisation, do others in the organisation have the same drive and value system, do they get on with those around them, and do their opinions actually count.  Only when these needs are met – as well as the previous 2 levels of need, can the employee move on to the next level.
4. Research tells us that the majority of people leave because this level cannot be achieved in that organisation.  At this level employees need to know how they can grow in the organisation, what career choices do they have and what do they need to do to grow their career, do they get “stretch” opportunities in their job.  This is the “innovative” level – employees want to innovate, to learn to do and make things better, for themselves and for the organisation.  When this and the previous 3 levels have been achieved, you have an Engaged Employee.

So, “Strategy” is about how each organisation tackles each level.  How they use the tools available to them, how they use different combinations of these tools, and how they create new tools, in order to achieve the goal – which should be:  at least 67% of the workforce should be Engaged!

Sears have a great model that they use (you can Google “Sears model”).  They will tell you what the model is, and what the measures are that they use, but they won’t tell what makes up the “strategy” that they use to make it work and drive organisation performance and customer satisfaction.

At TalentAlign we specialise in defining and implementing Employee Engagement for IT departments and organisations.  We have developed a number of tools and processes to assist organisations with getting through Level 1 and onto the more dynamic levels.

• Just 13% of managers and employees thought their year-end reviews were effective.
• Just 6% of CEOs thought year-end reviews were effective.

I’m less interested in the “Why’s” of this finding, having been through numerous of these procedures in the past. I’m much more interested in “How do we change this?”. If the “Performance Appraisal” is a critical element of the Performance Management process, then it stands to reason, for me at least, that making the process more effective will lead to improved Performance Management. So how do we achieve this?

Well, let’s start off by looking at the traditional “Performance Appraisal” process. For 12 months, sometimes six months, work is carried on by the organisation’s workforce. Then, in the 12th month (or 6th month where applicable), each manager is expected to hold a review with each member of their specific workforce. To facilitate this, they are given a sheet of paper with a number of “qualities” and a rating scale – generally 1 to 5. The idea is that the manager will discuss each of the “qualities” with members of staff and, together, they will agree on the rating of that staff member for each of the qualities. The “scores” are then totaled to give a total for each employee.

The burning question is why do we do this? The answers are one or more of the following:

• To review how each person completed their job for the prior year
• A pay review
• A review for bonuses
• An assessment of the employee for promotionTypically the procedure is paper based and HR is the custodian of the information. Where Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) have been introduced, the paper-based system is computerized, but is still based on the same process and outcomes. Just looking at this, it’s no wonder that everyone, including management, hate the process and it’s no wonder that it’s not effective. It becomes an exercise in futility.So, what’s the alternative? The “new” concept of Performance Management provides the answer. Performance Management today is a system that aligns individual and team performance to organisational strategy and performance.They start with understanding the role that individuals and teams play in the success of the organisation, and cascading corporate goals as well as team and individual goals down the organisation. From the individual perspective, Performance Management starts at the beginning of the period (year, quarter, month, etc.) and defines what is expected of each employee for the next performance period. The definition includes specific objectives for the period, backed up by a job description which includes the normal expectations for that position

  Then, the manager meets with each employee on a weekly, or at least a monthly, basis, to judge whether or not the performance goals and objectives for the period will be met. If not, the manager can implement specific interventions to ensure that the employee achieves the goals necessary for individual, team and organisational performance. The emphasis on modern Performance Management is on ensuring that goals and objectives are met, rather than reviewing why they were not met – when it’s too late to do anything about it.

  In this way a Performance Diary is maintained for each employee on an ongoing basis making an Annual Review more meaningful, more relevant, and more fair to both employee and the organisation. This process, as part of the manager’s normal “people management” role, is more effective and is enjoyed more by both manager and employee as the focus is on improvement and achievement, not blame and retribution.

  If you are interested in knowing more about the “new” Performance Management and how to implement it, contact us.

Furthermore, a recent study of 704 CEOs by the Conference Board as reported by the Wall Street Journal confirms what we’ve known for a while – CEO’s rank “Talent” as the number 2 priority behind “Growth”.

So, I suppose, it should come as no surprise that the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) together with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) are in the process of developing standards for Human Capital financial reporting. The recommendations for public comment will, evidently, be available early in 2012 and, should ANSI certify the standards, we can expect a strong marketing campaign aimed at the investor community. If the uptake is significant enough, as is expected, other standards bodies, such as accounting standards bodies, will be under some pressure to get involved.

The newer Human Capital Management (HCM) systems enable organisations to understand and manage their Human Capital in a much more analytic, metrics-driven way than was possible in the past. So, for organisations that have adopted Human Capital Management principles and technology, the move will not be that onerous.

From executive management perspective, if you know that what you are showing in your financial statements will bring investors, then surely it makes sense to include the information. Much of the investment marketplace today is based on metrics and ratios derived from traditional financial statements. The potential of Human Capital Financial Statements as a tool for measuring and identifying the long-term potential of an organisation can only improve investor decisions.

So, how could it possibly work? Jeff Higgins, CEO of the Human Capital Management Institute, has created a detailed set of statements equivalent to the (financial) Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow statements. These measure the “impact” that investment and good Human Capital practice has on the financial returns of the organisation, and the financial value of the workforce at a point in time. Metrics include a “Human Capital ROI ratio” and a “return on Human Capital Investment” that measure the Total Cost of Workforce (TCOW) with revenue and operating profit respectively.

The set of Human Capital financial statements provide the answers to the following questions:

• How do we quantify the impact human capital has on financial performance?
• How do human capital metrics integrate with commonly accepted financial metrics?
• How do we measure total workforce costs to drive workforce effectiveness and efficiency?
• How do we quantify value creation in the organisation across the talent management life cycle?
• What is the impact of training on profit, productivity and total human capital value?
• What is the differential human capital value creation of different job roles?
• How do you measure workforce flow, changes, and growth like a cash flow statement?

TalentAlign is introducing these new concepts in Human Capital Management at the TalentAlign / CSSA Human Capital Management Seminar scheduled for late February 2012. So look out for the notices. This is going to make a huge difference in the lives and methods of management in the future.

If you would like information in the meanwhile, please contact us.

• Are part of the Organisation Design process,
• Define the role that needs to be performed,
• Are part of a lattice of career paths in the organization,
• Enable the Business Processes of an organisation,
• Are living mechanisms of the workplace
• Lead to Organisational Performance.

A “business process” is an activity or set of activities that will accomplish a specific organizational goal.  Business Processes generally focus on meeting the needs of the “customer” and delivering a good or service that will fulfil that need.  In most cases, the business processes are actually a collection of interrelated processes that function in a logical sequence to achieve the ultimate goal.

Job Descriptions define the requirements for people performance at specific “nodes” of a Business Process.   Job Descriptions define and describe the activities to be performed at a specific time in the Business Process to ensure that the process is complete, or can be completed in accordance with organisational goals and objectives.

Job Descriptions today need both process and governance to manage the integrity, consistency, and coherence of information that is critical to the success of the organisation – the sets of activities that need to be done to achieve organisational goals.

Process of Job Descriptions

The organization needs to be structured in such a way that it is able to achieve its goals within budget and quality requirements.  So the first step in the Job Description process is to evaluate the organisational structure and ensure that each defined job plays a role in a business process that leads to the achievement of organizational goals.

The next step is to ensure that the structure also provides a clearly defined Career Development Roadmap^TM of careers in the organisation.  This should be defined to show coherent and logical growth from one level to another.  This will avoid the bad practice of defining a Job Description around an “individual”.

Once the Career Development Roadmap^TM is defined, the Competency Matrix can be created that shows the level of competence for competencies relevant to each job, for all jobs across the organisation.  This becomes the Competency “blue print” of the organisation against which individual development can be mapped, but also can be used to identify areas of the business “at risk” of not have the competencies needed to achieve the required goals.

Finally we can start drafting the Job Descriptions as we now have all the fundamental information needed to define job “outcomes” (or deliverables), job responsibilities and job performance indications, job competencies, as well as other ancillary information generally found on a Job Description.

Governance of Job Descriptions

Governance is needed for Job Descriptions to ensure:

1. That new Job Descriptions are created only in line with the strategy and business processes of the organisation,
2. That there is a managed “Change Management” process in place to manage and control changes to Job Descriptions to ensure that they remain in line with the strategy and processes of the organisation.  The Career Development Roadmap^TM is the foundation document used for Governance purposes.  Any new or changed Job needs to be mapped into the Career Development Roadmap^TM and approved before the Job Description can be drafted.

Having a proper process and governance in place for the definition of Jobs in the organisation has a number of direct and indirect benefits:

• It ensures that the Jobs defined are those that are needed to deliver the strategy of the organisation,
• It reduces job redundancy, overlapping of tasks, and inconsistent job levels in the organisation,
• It makes it easier to align with remuneration practices,
• It facilitates both Succession Planning and Sourcing requirements,
• It facilitates the management of performance, both employee and organisational,
• It provides the logic that enables HRIS and HCMS systems to be implemented more quickly and easily and provides for the management of data input to these systems over the longer term.

As anyone in leadership knows, good planning at the beginning leads to better results and reduced costs over the longer term.  Job planning and Job Descriptions are no different.

If you would like our assistance with putting both process and governance around your job environment, contact us.

I believe that this is part of a “legacy” culture still pervading the “people management” space in many organisations.  What do I mean by “legacy” culture?  I mean the old Theory X and Theory Y “models” taught at business schools 30 or so years ago.

What do I mean by “randomly and inconsistently created”?  I mean created for a specific purpose – a hiring situation, or remuneration situation – and then filed away in a drawer and never referred to again.  I mean Job Descriptions that are inconsistent with each other and inconsistent with the new requirements of the workplace.

In the new “performance-base” culture of people management, Job Descriptions are, or at least should be, an extension of Organisation Design, not some random exercise.  Organisation Design defines the structure of the organisation and the roles needed for one purpose only – that is, to implement and drive business strategy to the achievement of business goals.  So the definition of the roles includes, minimally:

• The outcome, or deliverable, of the role, e.g. “Servers that are operational to Service Level Agreements”
• The Responsibilities covered by the extent of the role, e.g. “Manage and maintain the organisation’s core business process servers to meet required Service Levels”.
• The KPIs, or, how will the job be measured, e.g. “Percentage uptime of business process servers”
• The Competencies, and level of competence, needed in order to be able to deliver the outcomes within the performance measure.

All other aspects of the Job Description either expand on these 4 core elements of a Job Description or are descriptive of a potential candidate for sourcing purposes.

• Tasks – expand on Responsibilities
• Qualification – expansion of Competencies
• Experience – expansion of Competencies
• Prior Knowledge – expansion of Competencies

Even worse, when organisations implement HRIS systems, after the initial “takeon”, there is virtually no control, or governance, over what jobs are added to the system, what jobs need to be removed from the system – or made redundant, how to ensure consistency of similar roles across the organisation, whether or not there are incumbents in each of the defined roles, how one grows from one job to the next, ….  Data integrity is a major concern with most implemented HRIS systems today.

So, what are the problems, and what do we need to put in place to ensure better integrity of the Roles defined to drive business performance.

1. Job Descriptions written around a person, or incumbent, rather than the outcomes that are needed by the business.  Job Descriptions are often changed to follow the movement of the original incumbent.  This generally happens when remuneration issues become apparent.  In today’s performance-based culture, this is particularly bad practice.  There should be a Job Description for each level of a job that defines the requirements of the level of the job.  Incumbents are then able to grow from one level to another in a structure predefined by strategy.
2. No process around what tasks need to be performed and how to combine them into a job.  Similar to the problem above, tasks are sometimes grouped into a Job Description depending on the ability of the present incumbent.  This is a legacy of the old method of Job Analysis used by many HR consultants.  As with the above, this is just not good practice today.  Tasks should be grouped to meet outcomes at a specific level, taking into consideration the complexity of the tasks for each level.
3. There is no governance to manage what Job Descriptions are developed and how they are managed, changed and used in the organisation.  In many cases a “job” is created out of expedience instead of out of strategic necessity.  There could be a interdepartmental communication problem and, instead of fixing the problem – improve communication and co-operation, a new job is created to “bypass” the problem.  When creating a new job, the career path of that job needs to be taken into account.  When this happens, inconsistencies will soon be identified.
4. Most often a Job Analysis means interviewing incumbents of the role to determine what they do, and then Job Descriptions are drafted from this information.  Instead, the structure of the organisation needs to be reviewed together with management to establish the roles needed to drive business performance.  Job Description should be drafted from this information with reference to Subject Matter Experts when necessary.
5. Job Descriptions are quickly put together for specific hiring situations, and then filed and never used again – unless a legal situation arises, and then it’s generally too late!  Job Descriptions should be written for the structure of the organisation based on the roles needed to deliver strategic goals.  If you find that you are needing to draft a new Job Description for an urgent hiring situation – STOP, this is a classic symptom that something is wrong.  There is a deeper problem in play.

All of these problems really point to a lack of Workforce Strategy and Planning and a lack of focus on the tasks that need to be performed and the competence needed to perform them in order to drive business performance.

Please contact us if you are interested in how to implement a “performance-based” culture in your organisation.

The research was conducted by 24/7 Wall St on behalf of the USA Bureau of Labour Statistics. The Bureau’s 750 major job categories were analysed to identify the jobs that are going to add the largest number of new positions — at least a 20% increase — and from that list the jobs that had a median annual income of at least $60,000 were identified. These reflect the best-paying jobs that will also have the highest demand for new workers in the future.

And two out of the final six are from the IT industry. Which are they?

• Number 4 on the list – Computer Applications Software Engineers (known in South Africa as Developers and/or Programmers). The anticipated increase in demand for these skills is 34% (between 2008 and 2018) with a median income of $94,180. With the new technologies entering the job market (Cloud, Mobile, etc.), this is going to be one of the most sought-after skills in the IT market. Generally a Bachelor Degree with some considerable experience will be required to get to this level, however, those entering the industry should persevere – the rewards are going to be good!
• Number 6 on the list – Computer Systems Analysts (known in South Africa as System Engineer or Network Engineer). The expected increase in demand for these skills is a little over 20% with a median remuneration package of $77,740 (from 2008 to 2018). With the proliferation of networked applications (including Cloud and Mobile), the need for skills to design, build and implement complex and secure network solutions is key to success for organisational business processing. Although a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science is preferred, it is possible to grow in this IT field with a Matriculation (Grade 12) Certificate, a Diploma or Certificate in IT and specific system and networking certification.

The really interesting aspect of this is – these jobs are actually over 30 years old. Yes the technology is changing, but the jobs remain high demand and well paid. So, if you are considering your career, or you are a parent or teacher guiding a young adult in career selection, and you think that IT is a “dead-end”, think again! A job in IT is not only exciting, vibrant, and dynamic, but you can get paid a top salary for the pleasure – and it is a lot of fun – of getting up and going to work each day.

If you would like more information or you would like advice from one of our Career Coaches, contact us – gails@talentalign.com.

There is a lot going on between HR and Line Management in most companies today. Trying to decide what their roles are in relation to “people management” in the organization, who is responsible for what, and how they will play an effective part. There are many ideas and the development of “people management” as an organizational function, follows a “maturity” pattern that is now fairly well defined.

However, all this maneuvering does not take into account what is actually happening in most workplaces still today. And, if we are to move forward, this needs to be both understood and acknowledged.

The problem is that our workplace is currently dysfunctional – not all workplaces, but surely most of them! Dysfunctional – why? Well, for most organizations “management” is still steeped in the concepts and practices of the “industrial era”. “Management” today are mostly either late “Baby Boomers” or “Early Generation X” – meaning, between the age of 45 and 55.

This “generation” of management was brought up on concepts such as “Theory X” and “Theory Y”. If they were trained in “management”, they were trained in the “Four Functions of Management” as being:

• Plan – Planning requires administration to assess where the company / function / department / team is presently going, and where it would be in the future.
• Organize – Management must organize all its resources to put into practice the course of action to achieve what was planned.
• Direct – The control and supervision of the staff within their span of control.
• Control – Establishing performance standards that are of course based on the company’s objectives.

But the problem is, the workforce has now changed, and this “style” of management is just no longer applicable.
What was successful in getting our organizations to where they are today, is no longer applicable to ensuring their success in the future. Have a look at the graphic below. On the left are the different “requirements” of people in the workplace. The graphic itself shows, at the top, how managers today are still trying to manage, and, at the bottom, how the workforce of today wants and needs to be managed.

In “First Break all the Rules”, Marcus Buckingham identifies the new “Four Functions of Management”:

• Select – Select the talent, not just skills and experience, for the company and for the position.
• Set Expectations – Define and agree the job outcomes, responsibilities and performance, not just the tasks.
• Motivate – Transform each person’s unique talents into performance.
• Develop – Develop each individual to find the right fit in the organization, not just the next step up in the hierarchy, by building on strengths.

This is Human Capital Management. Human Capital Management is the new competence that every manager should have going into the future.

1. Managers spend all day in planning meetings, but no one makes a decision about anything
2. Much energy is spent getting new customers, but no-one understands how to keep them.
3. Every manager has a completely different idea about company strategies – and each one demands that you pursue his.
4. Your organisation prides itself on rewarding seniority rather than merit.
5. A-list talents prove themselves and then routinely bolt to the competition.
6. Your office is so lifeless and sterile that you can hear colleagues cough from across the floor.
7. The company embraces rote processes because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”
8. No one in the building actually uses the stuff you sell
9. Your boss always seems angry about something, but won’t ever tell anyone why
10. You spend off-duty hours worrying about work; you spend working hours hoping the day ends soon

If this sounds too familiar, perhaps you should consider doing the TalentAlign Employee Engagement survey (www.talentalign.com) and find out what is really ailing in your workplace – and the reason behind it.