In this week’s Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Alsen Hsein, Senior China Advisor with Jeitosa Group based in Shanghai. Alsen has been working in China for the last 40 years, and seen the the legal and regulatory environment change significantly. The biggest challenge that China will be facing for the coming four to five years is in acquiring and retaining talented and experienced managers. Current projections are that China needs 75,000 manager level individuals just to fill their current open positions. Alsen talks about some of the strategies that Chinese companies are implementing to help meet their talent challenges.

 

 What's changing in the HR landscape in China? [19:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this week’s Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews John Macy, Senior Global Advisor for Jeitosa Group in Asia Pacific and founder of Competitive Edge Technology, on the subject of SOA and services / component architectures. John is also the founder of Human Resource Component Software Application Standard (HR-CSAS) which defines the component structure for Human Resource Management Systems.

As we know, no one system can ever meet all of a customer’s needs, so the issue becomes integration. SOA or Service Oriented Architecture allows what the technologists call a “loose coupling” between components or services. That means it doesn’t really matter what programming language a component is built with and what platform it uses. “In theory, a client can go to the market and find the right mix of products that suits their needs and assemble them into one consolidated system using SOA features.” John talks about how SOA is changing to the way we do business by enabling a modular, Lego-like approach to building systems. The real value of web services and component architectures for HR systems is the ability to easily integrate a diverse mix of products into one consolidated system.

It’s important to stress, however, that care must be taken in the evaluation and selection of SOA products. There are some products on the market, like Dave Duffield’s new Workday product, that are built from the ground-up using native SOA and web technologies. There are many others “posing” as SOA products that are really just SOA “wrappers” around 20- or 30-year old technology. So be sure to look under the covers before making your decision.

Web services and SOA technology is becoming mainstream. Some predictions about SOA indicate that by 2008 80% of new business applications built will use SOA. For those considering the move to an SOA platform, John provides six basic steps to help companies get started on their SOA journey.

 

 What is a component based architecture? [19:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this week’s Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Dr. Jac Fitz-Enz, President and Founder of Human Capital Source on the subject of using human resource metrics to determine business value. Dr. Jac is working on the next generation of workforce analytics by investigating what effects investing in people have on the business because, as Jac says, “it’s people who make the difference.”

His Workforce Intelligence Report (published twice a year) surveyed 750 companies, supported with data from 70 research institutions, to discuss how, when, where, and in which way investments in people are making a difference. The report provides many examples of business value being created through investments in human capital.

Dr. Jac’s latest project is the Predictive Initiative, which is developing a Predictive Model, along with applications, implementation tools, and a measurement system that focuses on future. The goal of this initiative is to understand how to predict what is most likely to happen if we try one thing or another… because “the only thing you can manage is the future. You certainly can’t manage the past.”

To get started with HR metrics, Dr. Jac describes three levels in demonstrating business value:

1- Internal Efficiency looks at the efficiency of the human resource operation — what does it cost to do the things we do, e.g., cost of hire, cost of training programs, total compensation as a percent of revenue, time various processes take, quality in terms of errors, customer reaction.

There are five ways to look at HR services: cost, time, quantity, quality, and human reaction. If you build a matrix with these categories across the top as columns and with the various HR services we provide (staffing, compensation, benefits, employee relations, learning and development) as the rows along the side, you end up with set of cells which can be evaluated in terms of internal efficiency.

2- External Effectiveness assesses the overall effectiveness of the internal metrics, e.g., handling calls quicker, answering calls more effectively, reduced number of call-backs.

3- Business Outcomes determines the effect of HR activities on the business financials through margin improvement, revenue growth, customer retention, etc.

Dr. Jac explains that the biggest obstacle to success with metrics is the HR department themselves: “we have found the enemy and he is us.” HR has to get over their own prohibitions in order to be successful with metrics. HR needs to learn that it’s not a great mystery, it’s very doable, it needs to be done, and it’s all learnable. (Dr. Jac himself was a political science major.)

 

 How do I use my human resource metrics to determine business value? [20:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this week’s Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Michael Novak, CEO of Tertia Corporation, U.S. representative for China’s International Software Services Fair — the Comdex of China — and past president of Clark Consulting Group, the largest intercultural communications company in the U.S. with a focus on U.S.-Asia business communications. The jeito Karen and Michael discuss is:

What do companies need to know about doing business in China?

Michael begins by discussing some of the cultural differences that organizations need to be aware of when doing business in China:

1- Group Decision-Making: Decision-making and information sharing are considerably more consensus based and group-oriented, which can be a source of conflict when coming in contact with more individualistic cultures, such as the U.S.
2- Saving Face: The importance of saving face in a group and not putting someone in the position where they have to make a decision in front of others is important. There is a Chinese saying, “A person needs face like a tree needs bark.”
3- Demonstrating Humility: Humility is highly valued in China, particularly when talking about yourself or your family. Conflict can arise with the U.S. culture where much value is placed on self-promotion: this is seen as boastful in China.
4- Universal Knowledge: The Daoist tradition says that knowledge is universal: everyone is entitled to knowledge and wisdom. The cultural conflict shows up in issues around intellectual property, where in China ideas are seen as belonging to everyone.
5- Minimizing Idle Chatter: The Buddhist tradition values putting thought into everything you say; thus, typical Western activities like brainstorming can be more difficult in China as they are seen as wasting people’s energy.

Michael says there are four main reasons that companies are expanding their business into China:

1- Selling into consumer market, bringing growth opportunities outside of the first tier countries.
2- Lower costs, starting as a distributor and moving to set up offshore outsourcing operations.
3- Privatization of state-owned enterprises, offering significant new business opportunities.
4- Proximity to Korea and Japan, bringing access to other countries through regional operations.

 

 What do I need to know about doing business in China? [19:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Kelvin Gray from Workday, to discuss the question: What is the best technology for HR? Kelvin talks about three key characteristics that are key to building and deploying effective HR applications today:

Flexible – applications need to be easily modifiable to meet ever changing business demands… Object technology allows organizations to define “loosely coupled” business processes and that are easy to change and move around as business needs dictate.

Accessible – systems should not be islands of information, rather data needs to be accessible and easily shared across applications… Web services is a group of technologies that facilitate application integration because they are built on de facto standards.

Secure – we live in an era of heightened security concerns, hence the privacy and the protection of personal information is paramount — Data Encryption must be in the underlying architecture of the data base to ensure the greatest possible security for the HR system.

As I’ve talked about elsewhere¹, this new technology paradigm is bringing about a change in our business environment. Applications are now moving out of the back-office to the front-office. Rather than transactional efficiency and historical reporting, applications today are focusing on effectiveness and aiding the line-manager’s decision-making process. Likewise, as never before in history, we now see up to four different generations working together simultaneously in the workplace: Retirees/Veterans, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and the New Millennials. This technology paradigm shift, in concert with the changing workforce, is placing greater demands than ever on our HR applications to meet the needs of multiple types of users in the workforce, with widely differing sets of expectations for the applications they use in their day-to-day work.

These are certainly challenging and dynamic times for HR technology professionals.

¹ “The Promise of Web Services: Why SOA means Better HR Service.” By Karen Beaman and John Macy. IHRIM Journal. July/August 2006.

 

 What is the best technology for HR? [16:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Christian Adlung on the subject of what’s changing in the HR landscape in Europe. The top three trends that Christian sees occurring across Europe are: (1) harmonization of talent management practices and policies both on an European regional level and on a global level; (2) movement towards shared services, particularly placing shared service centers in Eastern Europe in countries such as Hungary and the Czech Republic; and (3) development of more strategic talent management capabilities, such as performance management, recruiting, and staffing. Christian also talks about the challenges multinational companies face when expanding their business in Europe: (1) the highly regulated and diverse legislative situation making it difficult to standardize practices across countries; (2) the strong cultural differences throughout the 27 different countries of the European Union, confounding the difficulties in harmonization; and (3) the uneven population size of companies in the different countries making it difficult to provide the same high levels of service to everyone.

 

 What's changing in the HR landscape in Europe? [17:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Lynne Morton on the subject of building an integrated competency-based approach in an organization. Lynne talks about the key competencies needed for working in a global environment by citing Morgan McCall, Developing Global Executives, who articulates the competencies of the global executive as falling into six buckets: (1) open-minded and flexible in thought and tactics, (2) having cultural interests and sensitivity, (3) being able to deal with complexity, (4) resilience, resourceful, optimistic, and energetic, (5) honesty and integrity (building on Jim Collins work on humility), and (6) value-added technical/business skills. Along with these competencies, it is also important for the successful global executive to have a stable family life.

 

 How do I build a competency-based approach in my organization? [15:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this Jeitocast, Karen Beaman interviews Al Walker on the subject of developing a global HRIT strategy. As Al says, a Global HRIT strategy “is a means to the end, not the end in itself.” Al talks about the four major aspects of every good HRIT strategy: (1) alignment with the business strategy, (2) alignment the people strategy (HR), (3) alignment with organization’s overall IT strategy, and (4) consideration of compliance and governance issues.

 

 How do I develop a global HR IT strategy? [15:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download