Talent Management | Talent Vanguard

Jan 20

HR Capacity Building

I really enjoyed this recent Forbes article “Don’t Just Bash HR. Help it Succeed.” In it, Ron Ashkenas talks about the transition that HR is going through, and the fundamental shift in some organizations’ thinking about where many HR accountabilities should reside. Here’s a quote from the article:

“So HR’s evolution…does not just concern changing HR. It’s also about helping managers take more accountability for people and culture, and eventually blurring the rigid distinction between ‘HR’ and ‘management’.”

For me, this quote sparked with an idea that’s been rattling around in my head for awhile, based on one of the many things I’ve learned since I entered the non-profit sector a little more than 2 years ago: the concept of capacity-building. Read more

Dec 30

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Will the Rise of the Contingent Workforce Make us Dumber?

I have to admit that I love the days and weeks before a new year begins, as we’re compelled to look back, take stock (and produce a flood of ‘Top 10’ lists), as well as look ahead, making predictions about the unknowable year in front of us. HR predictions (like most predictions) are always a dodgy business, but I think that there are a few safe bets- trends that we can all agree are already coming to pass. One of these that will have significant and lasting repercussions for HR, organizations, and the economy as whole, is the rise of the contingent workforce. Already a demonstrable trend, arguably accelerated by the recession and the ensuing tepid recovery, this change has the potential to significantly impact virtually every aspect of HR (and in many cases has already done so). Could the traditional employee become an endangered species in the years to come? Read more

Dec 30

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Performance Advisor – Vision of Christmas Future or Existential Crisis?

The end of a year is frequently a catalyst for reflection on the past and attempts to predict the future. I know I’ve been thinking about the future of HR, and my place in it, and have enjoyed reading (and re-reading) many of this year’s visions of HR’s Christmas Future.

One of the more intriguing visions of HR’s next incarnation that haunted our profession this year was the role of the ‘Performance Advisor’. Read more

Dec 3

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Engagement, Transparency and the Human Brain

Let’s face it: HR has engagement-fever. If you and your organizations haven’t been infected yet, it’s only a matter of time (or maybe a matter of one more headline trumpeting yet another study correlating ‘engagement’ with organizational performance and even profit margins). Combine this incessant stream of engagement coverage with the current abysmal employee engagement numbers (such as those presented by the recent Ipsos Reid study I discussed in my last post), and you have a recipe for organizational hysteria.

But let’s put aside (for a minute), the need for a much clearer definition of what everybody means (and does not mean) by “employee engagement”, and the need for an increased understanding of the relationship between engagement and the other organizational data it has been correlated with. Put that aside, and jump on the bandwagon with me for a short ride to consider engagement, transparency, and the human brain…

Nov 27

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The State of Canadian Employee Engagement

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a Canadian Management Center National Thought Leader Series presentation, delivered in conjunction with Ipsos Reid, on some of the results of a recent study conducted by Ipsos into Canadian employee engagement. The data contained some real surprises for me, including how my fellow Gen Xers are apparently falling off our collective “organizational engagement radar”, and the rather frightening numbers associated with Canadians’ views about the trustworthiness and credibility of their senior leaders.

Nov 22

More Value than Complexity!

I have a post-it note stuck to the wall behind my desk with these words scrawled across it: “More value than complexity!” I’m not sure where I saw this phrase, and I barely remember writing it on the post-it note, but every day there it is, floating in my peripheral vision. It’s a powerful idea; one that I think should guide our approach to developing and improving HR programs and processes. Too often, processes become overly complicated and bureaucratic, and attempts to improve them may focus on making things easier for the process administrators, rather than employees, managers or candidates.

I am so attracted to this concept- the idea of instilling elegance and logic in processes and programs, that a few years ago I signed up for a course at a local university focused on business process analysis and management, with mixed results.

Nov 7

The Neuroscientists Made Me Do It…

Are you as fascinated as I am by the recent surge in attention to neuroscience as a source of insight into how our brains impact our productivity, creative problem-solving, and capacity to deal with change at work? NO?! Then one of us really needs to get out more…

…and when you do we should go to the NeuroLeadership Summit in New York, because I think we’d leave smarter people, even if it’s only via osmosis. Lucky for us, these neuroscientists are generous folk, and they were kind enough to stream this year’s event for free (and I have to say that it was of superb quality as well).

Nov 3

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What HR Can Learn from TEDxToronto

Last Friday I was fortunate enough to attend TEDxToronto – an independently organized TED event, which took as its theme: Alchemy, the seemingly magical process of taking ordinary elements, usually of little value, and combining them to make something extraordinary of great value.

TEDxToronto was thought-provoking. I’m definitely still contemplating some of the messages and speakers. But here are two key insights that I left with, which struck me as impactful for the future of HR:

1. The technology innovators of the future are not learning their skills at school

Oct 20

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Are you The One? Using Technology to Assess Candidates

I recently had the opportunity to evaluate a new candidate assessment tool that is about to go into Beta. I love doing stuff like this. Poor guy that was charged with collecting my feedback ended up answering two pages of my questions before he got to ask his J Now, using tests as part of the selection process is nothing new, but it certainly feels as though there has been a renewed and vigorous focus on candidate assessments within the HR Technology landscape of late. Maybe the sluggish economy has created a heightened sensitivity amongst employers to the costs and risks associated with making a bad hire. Or maybe the sweet promises that the proponents of Big Data keep whispering in our general direction has made us hungry to know how all that info can help rid us of doubt about whether our top candidate is really The One.