LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: New Leaders: Developing the Next Generation

The labor market may fluctuate, but the number-one asset in any business will always be human talent. Organizations that are great at managing human capital will be able to get more work and better work out of every employee. Improve productivity and quality, while responding quickly and effectively to ever-changing business conditions. The worldwide business environment has become one of high risk, erratic markets, and unpredictable resource-needs. In order to adjust, organizations of all sizes must continue to become more lean and flexible.

Competition is fierce. Margins are slim. Windows of opportunity are narrow. The only thing that matters is return on investment. In this environment, it matters a whole lot less where you’ve been and what you’ve done. And it matters a whole lot more what you can do very well very fast today, tomorrow and next week.

Traditional sources of authority are being supplanted by new sources. Seniority, age, rank, and rules are diminishing. Organization charts are flatter; layers of management have been removed. Reporting relationships are more temporary; more employees are being managed by short-term project-leaders, instead of “organization-chart” managers. On the rise as sources of authority, are more transactional forms such as control of resources, control of rewards and control of work conditions.

Organizations nowadays simply must be able to respond quickly to ongoing changes in the marketplace. One of the basic strategies for achieving this flexibility has been a fundamental change in employment practices, away from long-term stable employment relationships and toward a more efficient supply-chain management approach---known as human capital management. The goal is to optimize human resources: That means having the right people in the right places at the right times, employing them exactly as long as you need them and no longer, and paying them the market value of their contribution and no more.

Employers today are more likely to undertake major business changes that eliminate jobs regardless of employees’ length of service; such changes include mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs, restructuring and liquidations. As well, employers are more likely to implement new technologies that eliminate jobs due to reengineering. Meanwhile, there is a strong trend among employers of hiring fewer “employees” (full-time, exclusive workers), while hiring more contingent workers; and employers’ staffing strategies for the future reflect this change. As a result, “employees” are diminishing as a percentage of the overall workforce, while the percentage of contingent workers is increasing.

Employers are less likely to award status, prestige, authority, flexibility, and rewards on the basis of seniority; and employers are more likely to award status, prestige, authority, flexibility, and rewards on the basis of short-term measurable goals. As well, employers are reducing long-term fixed pay as a percentage of overall employee compensation, while increasing the percentage of variable performance-based pay; and employers’ compensation strategies for the future reflect this change. Part of this new compensation strategy includes a reduction in the percentage of employee “benefits” (paid for by the company for full-time, exclusive workers) in relation to overall compensation. Further, employers are increasing the percentage of “employee services” (paid for by the worker on a pre-tax basis); such services include health insurance and retirement savings. Because of these new realities, employers are now less likely to make formal or informal guarantees about continued employment and job security.

The revolution in workplace values and norms will continue. Business leaders and managers are going to be scrambling for the foreseeable future to get more work and better work out of fewer people, consistently. The pressure will be on to hire the best person for every role at every level and then manage every person aggressively to reach higher levels of productivity.

In this program, based on first-hand stories from his experiences inside hundreds of world-class organizations, Bruce teaches dozens of immediately actionable best practices in a step-by-step guide to human capital management:

(1) Strengthen your core group.
(2) Build your own reserve army of great former employees, contractors, temps, consultants, small niche firms to which you can outsource work, part-timers, flex-timers, and some-timers.
(3) Continue recruiting, in bad times and good alike, and keep the supply line of talent full.
(4) Teach hiring managers to be very selective when it comes to hiring.
(5) Turn orientation into an intensive on-boarding process.
(6) Train every person for every mission… but develop the best talent only.
(7) Commit to intensive performance management.
(8) Reward the high performers, not the low performers.
(9) Keep the best people longer with personal retention-planning.
(10) Implement knowledge transfer programs.

HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: Winning the Talent Wars®: Staffing Strategy, Recruiting, Rewarding, and Retaining

Dozens of best practices to help your leaders, managers, and supervisors get much better at the strategies and tactics of maximizing human capital. After this program, participants will be better prepared to:

(-) Develop strategies and tactics to meet staffing challenges.
(-) Plan an effective employee recruiting campaign.
(-) Improve employee selection practices.
(-) Build a cutting-edge employee orientation program.
(-) Set priorities for training and development of employees.
(-) Strengthen performance management systems.
(-) Tie rewards and incentives more closely to performance.
(-) Increase the retention of high-performers and turnover of low-performers.
(-) Implement a knowledge-transfer process.