Strategic Human Capital Insights

Job descriptions are the unsung hero driving the Performance Management process. If the performance management process is fundamental to HAMS, then job descriptions are the mighty little, obscure engine driving the whole process.

How important are job descriptions in Human Asset Management Strategy (HAMS) and how can those often forgotten job descriptions be so important? Because if they are only used as HR tools for job branding and compensation, then they are misnamed. If that’s the case, they should be called job categories. Here’s what they should really be doing.

Where in the organization are job descriptions parked?

What is the real, dynamic driving force behind our friend, the job description? To analyze this, we start with where job descriptions are parked. Job descriptions can live in HR, but that should only be their part-time home. Job descriptions should live full time and be relevant to every functional group in any organization, without exception! Job descriptions are the foundation to determine what a job does, how an organization works, how it grows, if it can grow / compete, and / or if it will stagnate. Most importantly, job descriptions must not only live in the operating functions, they need to be relevant and referenced continuously. As a consultant, I have frequently heard these answers to the question, “Can I see your job descriptions?”:

The Statement: “That’s Just Bob Being Bob."

Have you ever heard this statement before, or worse yet, have you ever said those words yourself? I know I have certainly heard those words in every scenario from work to athletics to family, and my emotional response to those words have ranged from frustration, consternation, disgust to despair. 

What does this have to do with Performance Review? Since many of you are in performance review season, consider if you have an employee that you can associate with this statement, “That’s just Bob being Bob”. The situation that causes this statement doesn’t live in organizational isolation. Let’s take a serious look at the negative organizational impacts in the workplace of this statement and the underlying situation.

Here’s a recent and very real situation I witnessed in a store that provides a customer-related service.  I’m sure we have all experienced a situation like this in the workplace. As you read through this situation, think about all possible resulting organizational impacts. As a manager, if you have one of these employees / situations, the performance review process is the perfect time to identify this person and set up a development plan to correct the situation, one way or another!

Guest Blog: What It Takes to Find the RIGHT Candidate. 

How many times have your hired a candidate, and then found out that the candidate was missing the right skill set? Hiring the right person for the right role at the right time is a strategic organizational responsibility. It starts with developing a detailed role benchmark that includes role responsibilities and competencies / capabilities for the role. This benchmark become the springboard to take a deep dive into a candidate’s background, looking for evidence and examples that align with the role benchmark. 

Since inbound marketing has become so important to many organizations, I felt the below guest blog by Elyse Flynn Meyer would have a direct application to many organizations. 

So, You Want to Hire an Inbound Marketing Expert (excerpt)

4 Questions to Ask to Make Sure You’re Hiring the Right Inbound Marketer to Join Your Team by Elyse Flynn Meyer 

“Finding candidates to fit the niche marketing roles that require an expertise in inbound marketing can be very challenging. Traditional marketing and advertising techniques are taught around the globe in colleges and universities, but unfortunately, inbound marketing is still not a discipline that graduates know when they enter the professional workforce. After graduation, individuals are typically not ready and able to directly jump into inbound marketing roles that require extra training to get fully on-board and learn how it integrates into an overall marketing strategy. The scarcity of digital marketing training, and more specifically, inbound marketing training, can make it all the more difficult to find that perfect inbound marketer for your team. We see this issue over and over again while working with organizations that want to practice inbound marketing, but either don’t have the talent on their team to support the initiative, and / or don’t have the budget or desire to work with an external inbound marketing agency.

This is part 3 of our blog series on Human Asset & Performance Management. Click here to read the previous blogs in the series.

For as long as we have had the modern organization, employees and managers have said, “We are too busy – we need more help’!  In my 30+ years of working in and advising organizations, that statement is a common thread.

As we enter that ‘special’ time of year on the corporate calendar known as ‘performance review time’, I ask you to incorporate the ‘Busyness Challenge’ into your review process.

What is the ‘Busyness Challenge’?  It’s all about human capital (employees), human capital resource capacity, human capital resource planning and human capital resource forecasting.  Otherwise known as Human Asset Management Strategy© (HAMS).

This is part 2 of our blog series on Human Asset & Performance Management. Click here to read Part 1 of the series.

As organizations look to evaluate performance management processes and shift to a continuous performance review process / system, the questions often asked are, “What is a continuous performance review and what has changed to require a fresh approach?”

Are we getting what we need from our current review process? If not, is it time to finally reconcile performance reviews with today’s business and work reality? If business is forward looking, why are our performance review processes backward focused? Continuous performance review is a forward-focused management process, and not an HR process. We must shift our paradigm. Yes, HR is involved, but managers are responsible and accountable for the process.  Gone are the days of saying, “HR is making us do these performance reviews.” You are doing reviews because it’s right for your business and for your employees. 

Yesterday’s Performance Management Process: Assessment

Performance management was done out of HR as a year-end review process focused on pay and promotion. It was a way to rate /assess people and their past performance.

Human Asset Management Strategy (HAMS)© demands a robust and continuous performance review process focused on employee development. You can’t have one without the other.

According to the Harvard Business Review, one third of U.S. companies are revising traditional appraisal processes. Since change is revolutionizing the way we work, it’s time to focus on a continuous performance review process, where robust, two-way feedback is frequent.

Forces Disrupting Traditional Performance Review Processes

Today’s work reality is challenged by multiple and constant disruptors that are putting pressure on organizations and their foundational structures, processes and people. For the near term, one thing is certain, these disruptors are not going away. They are our new normal. We must account for these disruptors as we look at our human assets and how we manage them and their responses / reactions to these disruptors.

I’m often asked, “What’s the difference between the concept of human capital and human asset management strategy?"  When we discuss human capital, it is often described as:

• the collective skills, knowledge, or other intangible assets of individuals that can be used to create economic value for the individuals, their employers, or their community.

• a measure of the economic value of an employee's skill set. This measure builds on the basic production input of labor measure where all labor is thought to be equal.

Most definitions of human capital still focus on skills / people as they exist in an organization today.  Human asset management strategy (HAMS) focuses on the following:

• Conducts a current assessment of people and their skills today
• Attaches a trending component to the assessment for today and tomorrow to determine appreciation or depreciation
• Develops a human capital gap analysis between today and future human capital needs
• Evaluates productivity and associated costs
• Creates an organizational impact analysis for near-term, mid-term and long-term effects and risks

If a Human Capital approach is your goal, then delegation must be in your leadership toolkit

In an earlier blog, we asked the question, “Is your current leadership team up to the Human Asset Management Task?"

Quality leadership is a critical element for a robust human asset management strategy. If we agree that a critical function of the leadership role is to continually develop employees (the asset in human asset management), then employees must be a critical competencyof the leadership role.  Employees are your implementation squad. They make things happen, or not!  It’s easy to talk about developing employees, but actually doing it and doing it well is another story. The barrier to developing great employees is the key leadership skill of delegation.

Delegation is the most underrated skill, which is ironic because it is not only one of the MOST IMPORTANT skills, but also one of the MOST DIFFICULT and MULTIFUNCTIONAL skills that a manager must perfect. Leadership, you can’t think that employees will create themselves into their own self-appreciating assets. Some will, but most will not. Why? Employees are not typically privy to the macro-organizational issues of human asset management, nor do they systematically know exactly what they need to do. Leadership and delegation is your job, not theirs.

Every human asset action has an equal and opposite human asset reaction.

At a recent Information Management forum, I presented this topic to senior IT leaders and here is a summary of the presentation topics.

Today’s IT Operating Context

According to Fortune’s Global Forum, we are now all technology companies. Companies with the best IT strategy can emerge as corporate winners. We know that the best corporate strategy can fail at implementation without a robust IT strategy supporting it. At the core of a robust IT strategy are the operating challenges of today’s human capital.

If people really are our most important asset, what does this truly mean around how we think and act? Let’s elevate the organizational narrative from Human Capital Management to the complex dynamics of Human Asset Management. It’s time to take a new approach to human asset management strategy including:

• Organizational Risk Management Assessment
  • Value Creation and Continual Transformation
  • Growth Acceleration and Competitive Advantage
• Challenges of Technology: IT – Business Alignment Model©
• Role and Competency Job Benchmarking Against the Business Strategy
• Asset-based Approach© to IT Human Capital Assessment and Gap Analysis
• Organizational Impact Assessment
• Future-focused IT Workforce / Human Asset Planning

Managing risk is a fact of business in the 21st century. Managing risk in the Information Technology world is something that is factored into every decision we make. The question for the IT professional: Are you managing all your risk? "Sure" you answer, "I have high availability systems, I do incremental and full backups, I keep my security measures current, and I have a disaster recovery plan that I exercise annually". There is another dimension to the risk equation - the human assets that keep the IT world running. Let’s look at some of these...

Are Your Systems Supported?

When we look at the various software applications used in business today, one of the key factors we assess is the version of the software we’re using. Are we on the current release? One, two or more versions behind? Cloud-based applications have mitigated this issue to some extent and made the process of going to and staying on the current release somewhat less painful.  Have you taken a step back and looked at the people supporting those systems? Are they “current”? It’s just as critical to keep you staff, your human assets, as current in the technology as your software assets. We tend to hire people for today - with a skill set that satisfies a need at this moment in time. We are not always focused on developing those skills to keep pace with the changing needs of the organization. Many leaders have the expectation that the employee will work to become knowledgeable and current on their own. While some may, others won't. Either way, self-governed development does not ensure that the skills the organization needs will be available on demand. Just as we make sure our applications and systems are on the current version, we need to make sure the people supporting them maintain the current competencies needed for optimal performance and growth.