From the discussions at our event and subsequent meetings with HR and business leaders, successful branding of the resourcing function appears to boil down to four critical success factors.

1)      You need to be clear about the value proposition internal resourcing offers, beyond just filling jobs. This typically entails a more lofty ambition such as improving the capability of the business through the hiring of better people or enabling the organisation to recruit and retain world class talent. Of course to avoid such aspirational statements becoming rhetoric, evidence of delivery (through metrics, case studies and leadership endorsement) is essential.

2)      Build a talent pipeline and make the organisation aware of the super stars in the market. This, argued a number of business leaders, was the single most important action talent acquisition professionals could take. To be taken seriously, finding ‘game changing’ people who were engaged and wanting to have a conversation with your organisation earned high kudos.

3)      Align with the business rather than the HR function. A little contentious maybe but we all know effective resourcing requires very different skills sets from HR, so aligning to the business rather than HR (whilst maintaining the critical integrations for internal mobility, succession planning and high potential mapping) appeared to earn respect. Those organisations whose Talent Acquisition functions were more aligned to the business also noted that workforce planning was generally easier. Getting the ‘inside track’ enabled a better insight on forthcoming demand.

4)      Behave like a sales and marketing team. When we remove the jargon, recruiting is essentially a sales and marketing process. Organisations need to segment, target and position their offering amongst candidates. Identifying and approaching candidates (prospects in  sales speak) is what recruiters spend all day doing. In many ways, it’s no wonder that, generally, the most successful internal Talent Acquisition teams have a good smattering of ex-agency recruiters amongst them; those who see recruiting as nothing more than a sales and marketing activity.

So there it is; four critical success factors. Agree disagree or others you’d like to add? Please share below.

The logic of the market suggests that certain skills will always be scarce and the ‘war for talent’ is self perpetuating. So, rather than focus on the people and the market that may or may not supply those skills, why don’t we look at how efficient our internal processes really are rather than just add more resource. Continuous Improvement (CI)(lean, Six Sigma) has been embraced in manufacturing for some years, however, with a few notable examples such as GE, the service sector, seems reluctant or scared to employ these principles. Is this because somehow the service sector just needs more talented people to run broken processes? Is the service sector immune from improvement?

Six months ago I investigated how CI could help the recruitment process. I thought we understood time and cost per hire – quite an easy measurement to make in theory… I was comfortable to take the challenge. What a journey of discovery. Not only did I learn where some key challenges lay, I also realised that even a seemingly simple process such as recruitment can contain duplication, misunderstanding, and waste.  Why then do people wonder why it can take such a long time to achieve a result!

As a result many of our processes have been standardised, measured and this has led to a greater ability to challenge managers about what works – we know because we can measure it. So why shouldn’t we apply this to other disciplines, sales, marketing, and finance? Perhaps a CI approach might obviate the need to recruit?

The number one lesson learnt is that throwing more resource at bad processes only means the process gets worse. Just imagine more kids climbing on a broken tree branch – only one thing is likely to happen; there will be a broken tree, but more importantly some rather sad, possibly injured children. Does this happen in the working world…?

Was it the Head of Toyota who said, “ I employ average people running excellent processes”?

Business has become global and skills are desperately scarce.  One of the results of this is that businesses are investing in Talent Management programmes that are global and very much future-focussed. Leading organisations are recruiting more and more on values and behaviours, investing large amounts of money in programmes that maximise internal mobility both sideways and upwards, and dreaming up more and more innovative ways of creating working environments that keep people in the business, whilst attracting the best of new talent.  If you are good, then you can almost map your own career path within one single organisation.

The result is that the best talent is really NOT on the move.  Jobs have become “partnerships” between employer and employee with clear mutual benefit, and with transformation ever-present the internal landscape for many employees is looking more and more exciting.

So if a candidate is looking to leave a growing or stable organisation after 2-3 years, then why?  Over the next few years it might not seem so crazy to view 10 years service as a sign of real quality.

Since the global recession began and with globalisation picking up speed we have seen unprecedented levels of business transformation in the past couple of years. Indeed, 84% of CEOs stated that they had changed business strategy over the past 2 years and one third of CEOs said the strategic change had been “fundamental”. With levels of change like this, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that a well-structured workforce could be largely obsolete 2 years later. And so with this in mind, what are organisations doing to ensure a chasm doesn’t open up between its strategy and its people?

83% of the CEOs surveyed said they planned to change their strategies for Talent Management and Ochre House has seen plenty of first-hand evidence that this is due to such change in business strategies, simply exacerbated by the declining European population and worsening skill shortage. 66% of CEOs said that the biggest of the major challenges facing them was the limited availability of candidates with the right skills – not a surprising statistic when you consider that demand for new skills is so high.

What all this has resulted in is that businesses know they need to compete hard to attract and keep the best talent, but they don’t know necessarily what that talent may be asked to do for the organisation in the mid to long term. And therefore in leading organisations, how they define “best talent” has shifted dramatically towards values and behaviours, where the organisation themselves will be investing in giving them the skills as they progress and move through the organisation to meet the flexing business needs. The result is fantastic for the employee community as the relationship with their employer becomes one of genuine mutual benefit with shared cultural values.

Furthermore, in April, IBM predict that their current employee based would be reduced to 1/3 of its current size by 2017 through contingent labour and the concept of crowd sourcing.

Why the growth in contingent labour? Business leaders usually cite three reasons:

1. It allows access to expertise quickly, especially that which is difficult to recruit. This is especially true with professional level contingent labour which may be substitutes for consulting organisations.
2. It enables flexibility in the labour cost base; by being able to turn resource ‘on’ and ‘off’ as required. However, this is more a theoretical benefit as the loss of knowledge can be a challenge in many organisations. Furthermore, the replacement of a relational commitment between employee and employer with a transactional one between a supplier and customer can actually reduce organisational agility; ‘suppliers’ are less likely to buy the vision and go the extra mile.
3. Overall costs can be reduced – especially true in labour arbitrage plays where the contingent solution may actually be achieved through business process outsourcing.

What’s the implication for talent?

So what does the rise in a contingent workforce mean for the individuals? In my view, there are three key factors:

• Individuals will increasingly need to understand and communicate their value to prospective customers. As mini enterprises, every individual will need to have a clear value proposition and be effective at communicating this to their target market.
• Depth of expertise will be increasingly valued. In order to differentiate from the crowd, individuals will need to demonstrate a unique selling point and this will increasingly be realised through their expertise. This can only be a good thing for individuals (who will have to constantly reflect on and build their strengths) and organisations (who will benefit from this higher level of expertise).
• Career development becomes an individual’s problem. Building on the theme above, individuals not organisations will take responsibility for development. Whilst this may take a cultural shift (especially in organisations that have struggled to modernise their HR practices) it does ensure individuals maximise value from the development (wouldn’t you if it was your own money?).

Good or bad?
So as an employer or employee, how do you think the rise of the contingent workforce will affect you?

Accountability for recruitment and retention

The thread of my argument centred on the view that organisations should take a longer term view with their RPO partners, making them accountable not only for recruiting but also retaining that talent. Whilst first generation RPO firms may get excited about clients with high attrition (as it means more business) most would agree it’s a short term view. Where the objectives of the RPO firm (high revenue) are completely misaligned with that of the client (high performing employees that want to stay) the relationship is likely to be curtailed.

It therefore appears reasonable that organisations should consider developing commercial models that reward RPO partners not on filling roles but on achieving retention. Before any RPO providers gasp about the prospect of being held accountable for retention they can’t control (such as poor management practices and a staid culture driving employees out of the business), just think about the value to an organisation.

Put yourself in the shoes of a Manager:

1. How much would you pay to recruit an employee? The typical answer is “as little as possible” – is it any wonder that fees continue to suffer margin erosion?

2. How much would you pay for an employee who will deliver on their objectives and stick around? The answer, as you’d expect is “a significant amount”

To me, this clearly articulates where the value lies for RPO firms. After all, the Hiring Manager doesn’t want any employee but a high performer that wants to stay with the organisation; for which they will pay handsomely. Furthermore, those RPO firms willing to work with a client in a joint risk environment instantly propel their relationship from that of a people supply chain provider to a strategic partner that will grow in partnership with the success of their client organisation.

In this report Deloitte have made no excuses for recommending that organisations “follow the market leaders” and it is for that reason that we have assembled global HR heads from organisations that are leading with their talent management programmes.  On May 13^th Ochre House are running an event that will focus on action, tapping into experts and hearing what needs to be done and how to go about it. 

This is a time for action, so lets hear from those that have already taken a lead.

Turning the terms of trade against some of the most talented (and mobile) people in the UK workforce can only in the long run make the country and companies doing business in it poorer. Our job has therefore become suddenly much bigger, not only do we need to seek creative solutions for our clients, but we must work hard to educate the lawmakers.

The declining use of the search term over the past few years is no surprise. Through the recession, organisations have been quite happy to let a few employees slip off the payroll. Some have actively had to manage it through workforce management and redundancy programmes.

However, look at what has happened since November 2009. To me, that increase looks like more than a blip.

This you may say is no surprise. Companies have become more bullish on their prospects in the past six months. What is however surprising is where this term is being searched on. Look further down the page and you’ll see many developing nations in the top ranks. On the day I searched (7th February 2010) the ‘Western nations’ weren’t even in the top 5.

So what’s this telling us? I have four hypothesis:

1. Developing countries are hitting the same challenges as the ‘developed’ – limited supply of talent, although not a limited supply of people (look out for further inflation!)

2. The term is becoming fashionable again, so HR professionals and consultancies are reacquainting themselves with the idea

3. The online populations in these countries are very large and therefore account for an unfair share of search traffic

4. Finally, the search traffic on the term always rises in the new year – this could be nothing more than noise

I’ll keep an eye on this in the next few months. In the meantime, I’d be interested in your views; is the talent retention challenge coming?