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.

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.)

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.

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.