insights

human capital

Supplement to MediaTec Publishing Inc. FEBRUARY 2009

Performance
Management
High Performance in a Down Economy

2
With budgets tightened and workforces reduced, finding the
right people to meet business goals is more important than ever.
Now is the time to create a talent management mindset for your
organization. Think of it as Performance 2.0 — using innovative
technologies to empower a business-centric approach.

Improving Business Effectiveness—

4
It’s All About Human Performance
By integrating the best practices of effective training
methods and proven continuous improvement techniques,
every enterprise can ensure that its learning function is
effective in enhancing the performance of people.

Managing Performance in the

6
Knowledge and Innovation Worker Age
Clinging to dated work models that anchor employees to desks
and ignore more flexible work options can alienate workers.
Exploring flexible work options, on the other hand, can offer
talent managers significant productivity gains.

sponsors:
 High Performance
in a Down Economy
D
oing more with less. That’s
the theme you’ll hear
from business executives
in a down economy. With
budgets tightened and
workforces reduced, find-
ing the right people to
meet tougher business goals is more important
than ever. Talent is the only sustainable com-
petitive advantage in any economic season and
your executive team knows it.
The CFO Research Service Report, “Human Cap-
ital Management: The CFO’s Perspective,” had
this to say about the impact of human capital:
• 92 percent think it has a significant effect
on customer satisfaction.
• 82 percent believe it has an impact on
profitability.
• 72 percent believe it affects innovation
and new product development.
“Making the Board More Strategic: A McKinsey
Global Survey” outlines responses from nearly 600
corporate directors. What are they thinking? They
are concerned about developing more forward-
thinking strategies for value creation and share-
holder return. What’s at the bottom in terms of
time spent (11 percent) yet primarily top of mind
(53 percent)? Talent management.
Performance 2.0
This recognition provides an opportunity for
HR to move beyond policy creation, cost reduc-
tion, process efficiency and risk management.
Now is the time to create a talent management
mindset for your organization. Think of it as Per-
formance 2.0 — using innovative technologies
to empower a business-centric approach to tal-
ent management.
Some of the key characteristics of Performance
2.0 are found in the new tools that can trans-
2
form the nature of work by providing sharper
focus on real problems and collaborative meth-
ods for solving them.
The Taleo Research white paper, “The Future of
Talent Management: Four Stages of Evolution,”
describes how applications and processes can
meet the goal of driving business performance
through a unified talent view. The aim is to
achieve business goals, with an eye on finding
and filling talent gaps. This requires a different
type of approach with these core attributes:
• Unified database and architecture. All
aspects of talent from recruiting to per-
formance management are unified into
one talent database with one application
architecture.
• Social networking. Social networking
orientation in design and delivery of the
applications extends reach and enhances
collaboration and innovation.
• Personalization. Configurability and
ease of use allows user personalization of
the system while maintaining consistency
and compliance.
• Predictive measurements. The user in-
terface is even more intuitive and person-
alized with extensive use of Web 2.0 func-
tionality, enabling users to drive content
by participating in the process and gener-
ating top performer profiles.
• Business goals alignment. The predic-
tive nature of employee performance
measurement and alignment of goals
drives increased business performance.
Success in Tough Times
Talent management has risen to the forefront
as a central issue for today’s organizations
worldwide, and established itself as a key busi-
ness strategy in any economic season. Regard-
less of market conditions, companies need to
hire talent to fill positions and manage the per-
formance of their talent. In recessionary times,
history has shown that gross job creation does
not significantly decrease, so talent acquisition
processes are ongoing and performance man-
agement is perennial.
 FEBRUARY 2009

By Alice Snell
Alice Snell is Vice President of Taleo Research at Taleo Corporation. Leading organizations of all sizes worldwide use Taleo on
demand talent management solutions to assess, acquire, develop, and align their workforce for improved business performance.
Ms. Snell has been tracking and analyzing the intersection between technology and talent management for well more than a
decade. She also produces the award-winning Taleo Talent Management Solutions Blog that covers talent management definition,
practices, and the latest research in the field. Ms. Snell holds a Master of Science degree from Boston University and a Bachelor of
Arts cum laude from Brandeis University. She can be reached at asnell@taleo.com.

Successful talent management strategies 4. Drive Performance

deliver the benefits of lowered costs and in-
creased productivity — which are especially
welcome in a constrained business climate.
Here are four practices to achieve success even
in tough times:
1. Mitigate Turnover
A strategic hiring process that quickly captures
best-fit talent is essential to mitigate the pos-
sible financial drain from open positions and
poor productivity due to reductions in force.
Redeploy resources to expand into new mar-
kets, focus performance on key goals, bring
skills in-house and implement development
and retention programs.
In the face of cost reductions, talent manage-
ment insights can reveal top performers, iden-
tify who to reward, pinpoint skill sets and more
intelligently guide redeployments and reduc-
tions in force. A sharp talent focus combined

Tough times are no

time to cut back
and sit out the game.
Instead, a clear talent
strategy presents a wealth
of opportunities to succeed.
2. Manage Applications
with essential technology elements can help
In a tough economy, organizations receive
higher volumes of resumes. You need an auto- drive your organization to achieve Performance
mated recruiting platform to pinpoint quality 2.0 levels of success even in a down economy.
talent among the quantity or you will get bur- Tough times are no time to cut back and sit out
ied under the avalanche of applications. the game. Instead, a clear talent strategy pres-
ents a wealth of opportunities to succeed.
3. Recruit and Review
Recruiting works with performance by identify- A talent management strategy and system that
ing succession candidates and matching skills aligns your workforce with shifting corporate ob-

3
to business goals. Performance boosts recruit- jectives can mean the difference between merely
ing with top performer profiles, competencies, surviving downturns and using economic slow-
sourcing and visibility.
 Improving Business
Effectiveness— It’s All
About Human Performance
M
any factors, includ-
ing the current
downturn in the
global economy,
shortages of talent,
budget, and the
shift to a knowledge
economy are forcing learning and training
functions within an enterprise to move beyond
their traditional roles to focus more on perfor-
mance. There is an increasing desire among
senior leaders to ensure that workforce per-
formance is in direct support of business per-
formance. The challenge is how to transform a
training function into a strategic function that
creates and demonstrates real business value.
The answer is different for every enterprise,
but by integrating the best practices of effec-
tive training methods and proven continuous
improvement techniques, every enterprise
can ensure that its learning function is effec-
tive in enhancing the performance of people
through a performance–based approach.
A successful human performance program
that is tied to the achievement of business
goals has these outcomes:
1. Shortened time to competency (fewer er-
rors, decreased supervisor and other per-
sonnel-dependent help, increased com-
pliance with rules, policies and laws)
2. Reduced cost of continuous learning (re-
duced class time - less time off the job,
less travel, fewer facilities and reduced
instructor costs)
3. Synchronized communities of practice
(common business practices, shared ex-
perience)
4. Facilitated change management (organi-
4
zational readiness and adoption)
A successful approach is based on the pre-
cept that for people to most effectively work
in today’s integrated, real-time environ-
ment using technology as designed, work
must be defined, understood, completed
as designed, measured and modified due to
changing conditions.
These considerations call for a performance-
based approach with the real-time integra-
tion of critical elements in helping employees
accomplish their tasks successfully including:
• Processes: The first place to start in consider-
ing an integrated approach to helping peo-
ple accomplish their jobs is in understanding
the work itself. For a program to be on target,
it must be relevant to the desired outcomes
of the business goals and objectives.
• Change Management: A large percentage
of initiatives have either failed outright or
fallen considerably short of expectations.
The root cause is not typically a technical
or strategic flaw of the initiative itself, but
rather a problem of the organization’s ex-
ecution of the change through its people.
People will always embrace change if it’s a
change they have chosen.
• BlendedLearning: Blended learning is not
solely the integration of traditional class-
room activity with Web-based self-paced
courses. It is much more. We must maxi-
mize learning in an initial and continuous
learning environment and take an interdis-
ciplinary approach that the toolsets avail-
able in traditional training do not provide.
• Communities of Practice: The importance
of taking a disciplined approach to build-
ing communities results in community
membership that is focused and support-
ed, and that employs mechanisms to main-
tain robust activity targeted at achieving
business objectives. These communities
impact not only business objectives, but
 FEBRUARY 2009

By David Miller
David Miller designs and supports blended learning initiatives. He is the originator and author of RWD’s “Prepare Me, Tell Me, Show Me, Let Me,
Help Me and Evaluate Me” adult learning paradigm. He is a thought leader in development and execution of learning and knowledge manage-
ment-focused development and delivery methodologies. He has completed numerous analyses, strategic plans and follow-on projects dealing
with enterprise software system implementations and other complex learning situations. Miller completed a career as a naval surface warfare
officer. He served at the U.S. Naval Academy as a department head and master instructor responsible for all professional training activities
involving midshipmen. Miller is an RWD Technologies Certified Project Manager. He has an M.S. in systems technology from the U.S. Naval
Postgraduate School, is a graduate of the Command and Staff Course, U.S. Naval War College, and has a B.S. from the U.S. Naval Academy.

the health and success of individual parts must be established to monitor the orga-
of the organization and communities, as nization’s effectiveness and performance
well as the career growth and job satisfac- interventions — in particular, in achieving
tion of the individuals in the community. their operating objectives.

As the world recovers from the

widespread economic crisis,
continues to become more complex
and investment comes under
intense scrutiny, it is vital to
consider a program that closes
the gap between technological
capability and human capacity.
• Content Management: Content manage-
ment work continues the paradigm of
capture, storage, distribution and easy ac-
cess to the complete set of structured and
unstructured content such as paper docu-
ments, multimedia files, photographs,
faxes, spread sheets, reports, email and in-
stant messages. It facilitates streamlining
business processes, ensuring that people
who need information will have access to
the most current version delivered in the
format that’s most useful to them.
• Evaluation: Development and mainte-
nance of a human performance improve-
As the world recovers from the widespread
economic crisis, continues to become
more complex and investment comes un-
der intense scrutiny, it is vital to consider
a program that closes the gap between
technological capability and human capac-
ity. While processes and technologies are
keeping pace, it is becoming more difficult
to align people and organizations to meet
performance goals.
An integrative approach to the best prac-
tices of establishing a strong human capital
improvement program grounded in process
engineering, blended learning, content man-

5
ment program takes time and resources. agement, communities of practice, change
It is an investment. That investment needs management and evaluation is required to
to show a return to the business. Metrics achieve an organization’s goals. v
 Managing Performance in the
Knowledge and Innovation Worker Age
C
ompanies cling to old work-
house practices because man-
aging people is easier when
one can see and touch them
every day. Unfortunately, this
illusory management practice encourages
the wrong performance measurements
4. Help achieve family-friendly goals,
such as attendance and visibility rather
than productivity and creativity. Today’s
Knowledge and Innovation (KI) workers tend
to rebel against command-and-control
structures and thrive on autonomy, flexibil-
ity and self-determination. In this environ-
ment, they can become more creative, re-
sponsible and productive team members,
offering companies that embrace alterna-
tive work arrangements an advantage over
those that insist on antiquated schedules
and practices.
Statistical data and research on the use and
effectiveness of flexible work arrangements
demonstrate many benefits to employers,
employees and the community at large. For
example, they:
5. R
1. Increase individual autonomy and em-
ployee engagement. A 2006 study pub-
lished in the Journal of Managerial Psychol-
ogy surveyed multiple organizations and
found perceived organizational support
for flexible arrangements predicts both
6. Increase savings and increase HR ca-
job and organizational engagement.
2. Increase retention and productivity. A
2007 study in the Journal of Employee Rela-
tions investigated part-time work, time off
in lieu of other benefits, staggered work-
ing hours and shift swapping in Scotland.
It found these practices have the positive
impact of increasing retention, enhancing
employee relations and decreasing em-
ployee complaints about fairness.
7. A llow employees to work more hours.
3. A
 ttract highly motivated staff and help
meet labor demand during skills short-
6
ages. A 2003 study in the International
Journal of Manpower researched small,
private Spanish firms to test the adoption
of certain family-friendly HR practices.
Driven by a tight labor market and a high
percentage of female employees, partic-
ularly women with children, these small
companies benefited from family-friendly
or alternative working arrangements.
meet the equality agenda and provide
solutions for special needs popula-
tions. Today’s employees are more at-
tuned to what companies offer them
beyond salary, such as professional de-
velopment and working conditions that
let them meet family obligations, achieve
work-life balance and live a lifestyle of
choice. However, while flexible arrange-
ments can help meet the equality agenda
and provide solutions for special needs
populations, companies must beware of
inconsistencies. Informal arrangements
that differ from department to depart-
ment may lead to claims of unfairness
and discrimination.
 educe absenteeism. For example, if a
parent can work from home while car-
ing for a sick child, less productivity will
be lost if the individual can work from
home rather than having to take the
whole day off.
pacity. A 2002 study in the journal Work
Study showed telecommuting can in-
crease HR capacity and savings in direct
expenses. For instance, two individuals
may share an office and one set of office
equipment, and the company can reduce
its real estate footprint. In addition, job
sharing may allow individuals to develop
extra skill sets.
According to a 2008 study in Library
Management, flexible working arrange-
ments may counter long working hours
at the office and heighten morale. For
example, a single parent equipped with

By Ron Lawrence
(Adapted from Talent Management magazine, September 2008)
the proper technology may be able to
work from home from 10 p.m. to mid-
night, giving the company an additional
two hours without being at the office. It’s
an employer of choice practice because
the company is viewed as being more
responsive and accommodating to those
with special needs.
One reason companies have not totally
embraced flexible working arrangements
is that managing the complexities of job
rotation, job sharing and telecommut-
ing creates new burdens for HR and line
managers. According to a survey of 90 U.S.
employers by Hewitt Associates, a global
human resources service company, “very
few employers have formal and consistent
policies and procedures in place to man-
age these programs.”
There is no one-size-fits-all model for cre-
ative work solutions. Here are a few general
guidelines.
1. Set clear expectations. Flexible arrange-
ments call for extra clarity in setting deliv-
erables, objectives and expectations and
in giving performance feedback. Commu-
nication frequency and quality are criti-
cal. When managers make their messages
explicit, associates will know what is ex-
pected and can deliver accordingly.
2. Communicate honestly. Only 48 per-
cent of the employers in the Hewitt study
provided education and communication
about their workplace flexibility pro-
grams to all employees. If flexible work
arrangements are not managed and
communicated well, resentment may
arise when some workers are perceived
as contributing less, whether that is a
reality or not. If some business units or
employees enjoy flexible arrangements
while others do not, be very clear in com-
municating the needs of the business
and its customers to explain why differ-
ences in treatment are necessary.
FEBRUARY 2009
3. Invest in technology. Companies that
choose to embrace a telecommuter
model need to provide wireless laptops
and PDAs. Individual employees cannot
be expected to purchase these items.
Remember, investments in technologies
may be small compared to the savings
realized from a reduced real-estate foot-
print or less office equipment.
4. Consider generational differences. Dif-
ferent generations have different com-
fort levels using e-work technologies.
Older workers may need extra encour-
agement to use instant messaging and
text messaging, which can be second na-
ture among younger workers. If 50-year-
old managers are not comfortable com-
municating with direct reports who are
in their 20s using the latest technologies,
they may believe flexible arrangements
are not working.
5. Measure success. According to the
Hewitt study, 71 percent of the employ-
ers surveyed did not measure the effec-
tiveness of flexible work programs, and
only 14 percent measured results formal-
ly. It’s important to keep asking which
flexible practices contribute to retention
and satisfaction and which do not. Fur-
ther, where a substantial investment in
technology has been made, continued
measurement of the ROI and benefits of
flexible arrangements will ensure these
programs can be improved over time.
Giving people the flexibility to work when
and where they want is a compelling value
proposition. Leading companies already
are taking advantage of the vast benefits
of flexible arrangements as modern soci-
ety and the rise of the knowledge worker
demand that talent managers change how
people work and how performance is mea-
7
sured and rewarded. v
Ron Lawrence is vice president of organization develop-
ment at VF Corp.
 hcm
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