Posts Tagged ‘Corporate Policies’

When was it a bad decision to invest in your best talent?

Friday, June 4th, 2010

The savage markets’ appetite for corporate indicators is insatiable. Corporate leadership, fully loaded with stock-performance-based plans, is in need of continuous positive news that have an immediate impact on the bottom line. More often than executives would like, though, short term materialization hinders larger net value opportunities and long term growth.

In discussing the Holistic approach to Talent Management with an HC leader of a global corporation with local HQ in Spain, we would agree on the classical benefits of a strategic HC retention line of work, based on employee engagement and enthusiasm, and its substantial impact on the bottom line in the midterm. “But today -she was saying- publicly traded corporations cannot wait for the midterm returns and demand immediate impact, and that has an erosion effect on our human resources”.

HC leaders are worried because corporate leadership decisions are affecting the real most valuable asset of any corporation, the people. The decisions that are being taken in line with leadership directives are resulting in unkept promises, unmet expectations (to clients, providers, employees) and sometimes- unethical behaviours too. An Immediate consequence is the erosion of your core asset (people); it puts them at the verge of ethical dilemmas that may result in the loss of the enthusiasm, engagement in the project … just letting go of the company load. “Is this the company I want to work for?”- is on their heads.

When a professional decides to lets go … there is a difficult and expensive way back. The professional will still be at the right level of attitude and work dedication, “but something is broken inside … and the engagement is gone” would agree the senior HC leader.

It’s not easy to navigate short-term results pressure and mid-term investments, value, growth… but Survival of the corporation is what is at stake here. When was it a bad decision to invest in your best talent and keep them engaged?

Comments, thoughts?

Jordi Gili

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Googler2Employee: Integrating Social Recruiting into a Holistic Social Media Strategy

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Social Media has to stop being seen as an exclusive Marketing/Branding Channel. The synergies with the rest of Corporate Core Processes are too major to be disregarded.

The following diagram describes our view on the role that Social Media will play in corporations in the future and HR in particular. Each corporate process will have a social media extension in order to add a channel of communication with the corporate community of stakeholders.

Holistic social media strategy

Holistic social media strategy

Social Recruiting has to be (and will definitely be) embedded in a holistic Social Media plan and strategy. There are significant synergies between your target social media customer audience and prospects/candidates to incorporate into your organization.

HR leaders should not ask themselves if they should use Social Media. Today they should be asking: What channels should I use: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, other social networks? Should I be involved and ask to be included and contribute to the corporate Social Media strategy? Benefits of being part of the leadership social media team are obvious if corporations can capitalize on the investment on branding.

In companies were they just realized that Linkedin is a great way to hire, and in a different department the management has just bought on the idea of using Social Media for marketing there is a major step forward in order to understand that combined social media efforts can be much more powerful.

Today we are frequently hearing expressions of system-implemented processes such as C2C (Customer to Cash), P2P (procurement to pay) and many others in worlds that are much more sophisticated than HR. Even though it will take some time for HR leaders to buy the idea, we will soon start hearing about processes such as: Googler2Employee, Employee2Alumni and Employee2Candidate.

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How are corporations looking for new hires? – Trends

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Every now and then every-one needs to have reality check. I guess it’s healthy. You may have a dream or already started to build a castle … on air.

According to a recent report led by Customer Insights, here are the top 6 ways that Corporations over 200 employees manage to find new hires:

sources

Reality shows that there is still a long way to go to get to a full 2.0 social job marketplace. Only 22% of the corporations are using Linkedin TODAY. Only 4% Facebook and 2% are using Twitter to attract hires.

Another interesting data is that 37% are using staffing/headhunters/jobboards to fill their needs.

And what are the trends?

trends

OK, some comforting results here. 1/3 of corporations are going to reduce spend on Staffing Firms and 2/3s are planning on boosting Social & Professional Networks. Yes! we’re getting it! Get rid of the commissioner!

We are on the right track! Comments?!?!

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What about Interim Management? – The Cerberus Model

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Freelancers, Contractors, “Autonomos” as we call them in Spain, “Sole Traders” as they call them in the UK, other models such as W2 hourly-paid workers in the US … have all been around for quite some time. As Tammy Erickson (at Harvard Business Publishing) puts it, the 1991-1992 massive lay-offs caused by a recession involuntarily helped widespread the freelance or contractor figure. It’s just recently that corporations are starting to use them massively to help them keep fixed costs down.

Today’s recession is arguably coming to an end, and we’ll start seeing some positive returns soon (sooner than expected according to some sources). After very painful adjustments made in the past few months, businesses may be starting to get ready for the new challenges and seizing market opportunities. Some lessons learned may include one on the flexibility of the workforce. The more flexible we are, the better positioned we are to face both growth and recession.

Cost is always a major item to factor in the decision. While interim qualified professionals may be more expensive than a permanent solution in the short term, the flexibility in terminating the relationship (no lay-off charges or legal labour situations)  or incorporating/changing skills to the role (lay-off, relocation, restructuring headaches versus simply exchange the professional) way outweigh the costs.

One of the best admired and most successful businesses that the US has seen recently is Cerberus. Mr. Feinberg started a small financial services shop in 1992 with money pretty much out of his pocket. As of close of 2007, the balance sheet of Cerberus Capital Management showed assets of $23.5  billion. – As impressive as the history of the firm has been, almost more impressive was the investment decison that led to the financial disaster and closure of mostly of its operations: The take-over of the distressed automobile manufacturer Chrysler, where  they allegedly lost 6 billion dollars. -

What is more relevant of this story to me (and to today’s topic) is the Cerberus business model: by mid-1990s, Cerberus model evolved into buying low PER or distressed companies, hiring dozens of seasoned corporate executives to run them, building value by turning them around and finally selling the healthy company for a large profit.

That’s an interim professional approach brought to an extreme, but it’s a prove that it works. (Bad investment decisions apart). Why can’t we work with Interim Managers? The decision is of course the corporations’ to make. Are you ready for it?

On a side note – apart from admiring the Cerberus business model, I’m professionally proud of having been in the past a member of the proposal team that presented Senior Interim Professionals to Cerberus to help them run their companies. They stuck to high ethical standards in the way they managed their operations.

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Adapting corporate HR policies to include micro-deals

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

This past week I was having lunch with the CFO of the local Spanish subsidiary of a global multinational. He was telling me that one of his more talented controllers had been affected by a headcount reduction initiative and had accepted a severance pay of $200k to leave the company in 5 months. That was 4 months ago. 1 month to his last day with the company, the market situation has changed and now the company has decided to start recruiting for the controller position. “Obviously – he mentioned – I would want my talented controller to continue with us, since she has the experience, she does a fantastic work and she is the perfect fit for us”. When he turned back to his HR team to suggest that they kept the controller, it has all been roadblocks. “We don’t know how to handle this from our internal policy point of view” – they tell him. In the end it has been a very long and unproductive effort to try and make the company understand the situation, adapt internal policies and set a win-win situation, for both the company (they won’t have to go through an expensive recruiting effort) and for the employee (from what the CFO tells me, she would love to continue with the firm).

In a different conversation over coffee with an HR director of another firm, she was telling me that she has spent almost a week reviewing company car benefits for each and every business development manager, and trying to accommodate disparate settings. “Everyone had a different company car agreement, none of them really following the corporate policy. I have finally made them agree to a common policy, but all of them are upset, even those who have been substantially benefitted from the standardization of the rule”.

A Managing Director of a Business Unit was also telling me that one of his best professionals had wanted a raise for 6 months now. He was very keen in give him a raise since his contribution to the business had been well above the mean. Now, corporate policy was that there would be no raises this year and he could do nothing for his team member even though he had budgeted for his raise and the money was still there.

All three stories boil down to how large corporations are able to manage one by one case against the norm. Companies get their mouth full with the well known “The professionals in our organisation are our main asset” and in the end most of them are incapable of really listening and adjusting their offerings and meet their employees demands. It’s not always about spending more money. Innovation and thinking out of the box can really save a lot of money, creating a win-win solution for the company and the employee.

In the first example, for instance, a proposal were the company would reduce the severance pay to $100k for the controller, instantly extending  her a job offer would save $100k to the company and have the professional excited about having a job in the current economic environment in Spain. If the corporate policy does not support such an agreement, for $100K it just has to be changed.

Reformulating corporate HR policies to be able to embrace micro-deals with the employees is a must for companies that will want to attract and retain top talent.

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