Talent Management Archives - Page 2 of 4

November 9, 2016October 28, 2016

News You Can Use: 11/9/2016

Why CIOs should take mentor programs seriously

Wood takes a structured approach to mentoring. He and his senior team meet regularly to identify high potential people who, with the right coaching, could advance to the next stage in their careers. “Whether they are on a technical or a management track, we identify those people who are doing well in their current jobs, but could also do a job one or even two levels up,” says Wood. “We put those people into a formal mentoring program, but we also make it clear that if anyone else wants to be a part of the mentoring program, all they have to do is raise their hand.”

http://www.cio.com/article/3132019/careers-staffing/why-cios-should-take-mentor-programs-seriously.html
What is takes to be a great boss

The point is, you can be the nicest guy in the world who treats his employees like gold. But, if you and your team are not cutting it in the eyes of your company and its stakeholders, I don’t care how likable, friendly, giving, sharing, approachable, communicative or empathetic toward your employees you are, you’re still a lousy boss.

If, on the other hand, you challenge your employees to excel at their jobs and lead your team to exceed expectations on a consistent basis, you’re probably well on your way to becoming a great boss.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/284153
3 Steps to a Well-Structured Presentation

We ourselves have written thousands of presentations and business documents in our careers. And, in our experience, the most important step is what we call “hanging the document.” In simple terms, you need an outline. However, this can’t be just a list of random points. The document has to have a structure. It has to hang together in a way that makes your point as clearly as possible.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/282260
4 reasons why nobody is looking at your presentation

When you deliver a presentation in the form of a story, it becomes more relatable and helps your audience develop an emotional connection with the material. This in turn coaxes memory into action. What’s more, using images to metaphorically support the story you’re telling can reinforce that effect even further. When your listeners feel connected, they’re not only more likely to remember, they’re more likely to take action.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3064802/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/four-reasons-why-nobodys-paying-attention-to-your-presenta
Why Visionary CEOs Never Have Visionary Successors

After running Microsoft for 25 years, Bill Gates handed the reins of CEO to Steve Ballmer in January 2000. Ballmer went on to run Microsoft for the next 14 years. If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. He tripled Microsoft’s sales to $78 billion and profits more than doubled from $9 billion to $22 billion. The launch of the Xbox and Kinect, and the acquisitions of Skype and Yammer happened on his shift. If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter-to-quarter or even year-to year-revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. But if the purpose of the company is its long-term survival, then one could make the argument that he was a failure as CEO, as he optimized short-term gains by squandering long-term opportunities.

https://hbr.org/2016/10/why-visionary-ceos-never-have-visionary-successors

Photo: Vincent Guth

October 26, 2016October 15, 2016

News You Can Use: 10/26/2016

The Sobering Stats You Need to Know When Seeking Your Next Job

Don’t be discouraged by the “one-in-100” stat. According to Lever’s breakdown, your best bet is to be referred to a new company. Referred candidates have a one-in-16 chance of getting hired. Using a third-party agency can also better your odds — those submitted by an agency have a one-in-22 chance of being placed. Whatever you do though, forget about applying through a company’s careers site: only one in 152 candidates gets hired this way.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/283338
Applying Deep Machine Learning to Spend Analysis

Not only can its deep machine learning identify tail spend suppliers, company specific categories, and even individual items coded in obscure ways, but it can learn over time and adapt to different data models, especially since it can use evolving knowledge bases. Whereas the majority of first generation classifiers used naive statistical classification that could not learn and had to map to a fixed (UNSPSC) model, Spend360′s uses deep machine learning (based on LSTM and encoder/decoder technology) that maps to custom data models using extensible knowledge bases (which can be created and maintained by the organization) that can encode organization and industry specific knowledge (and negate the need for custom mappings or override rules).

http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2016/10/14/spend360-applying-deep-machine-learning-to-spend-analysis/
In buyers’ market, acquirers look to lock in management teams longer

Steve Fletcher, a managing director at the global investment bank GCA, notes that it’s “hard to say” whether it’s universally the case that management teams are getting locked into longer contracts with acquirers in this market. “I don’t think anyone has a large enough sample size to say that,” he notes. But he adds that of the deals he is seeing, there is a move to sign on incoming talent for a longer period, sometimes “three or four years as opposed to [the previous standard of] 18 to 24 months.”

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/06/in-buyers-market-acquirers-look-to-lock-in-management-teams-longer/?ncid=rss
A Reminder From Mark Zuckerberg: ‘Put People First’

Zuckerberg explained that the way in which tech tools are structured today — as suites of apps — will not last long into the future. When a group of people is communicating or working together, they often toggle between a chat app, a video call and a shared document interface, for instance. The need to switch from one app to another doesn’t produce a seamless experience, and it makes each interface the focus, as opposed to the people working within it.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/283433
IT moves to open workspaces, but not everyone is happy

What’s needed, both sides agree, is a range of workspace options that address organizational goals while still meeting employees’ needs — meaning physical space that allows for private meetings and quiet concentration in addition to community seating. Even more important: Corporate culture likewise has to value collaboration and innovation if IT organizations are to truly reap the benefits of open space.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3127789/it-management/it-moves-to-open-workspaces-but-not-everyone-is-happy.html

Photo: Paul Gilmore

September 7, 2016September 8, 2016

News You Can Use: 9/8/2016

3 Examples of When Being Cheap Is Costly for Your Business

Your employees are critical to the success of your business. Their skills affect the quality of your products or services. And since they interact with customers, clients and vendors, they are the ambassadors of your company. You get what you pay for. Investing more money in your employees can help avoid damage to your business reputation.

If you need additional help in the future, you can bring in some entry-level workers, knowing you invested in a core staff with knowledge and skills to train them. In fact, fewer well-paid employees can often do the jobs of many lesser-paid ones.

Moreover, it is very costly, both in real dollars and opportunity costs, to retrain employees. Be willing to pay a bit more to hire and retain people with core shared values and great work ethics.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/281195
How to give a great research talk

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/give-great-research-talk/
How To Build A High-Performance Sourcing Department

There are times when sourcing staff can feel overwhelmed with work. If a sourcing leader sees their staff drowning in a high req load; it would be a good idea for that leader to roll up their sleeves and help their employees out. Not only will the employee respect their manager’s success at filling reqs; this approach can help reduce the turnover of over-worked sourcers. To quote Vince Lombardi, “Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.”

http://www.eremedia.com/sourcecon/how-to-build-a-high-performance-sourcing-department-part-5-leading-by-example/
Why Middle Managers Are Secretly the Superheroes of the Workplace

Managers already have considerable control over employee engagement efforts. We don’t see any reason for this trend not to continue, especially with the number of middle managers working in the U.S. and around the world (The Economist reported in 2011 that Lloyd’s Banking Group would layoff 15,000 middle managers — which begs the question how many they had in total).

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/280573
7 Steps to a Perfectly Written Business Plan

Whether you’re sharing your plan with an investor, customer, or team member, your plan needs to show that you’re passionate, dedicated, and actually care about your business and the plan. You could discuss the mistakes that you’ve learned, the problems that you’re hoping to solve, listing your values, and what makes you stand out from the competition.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/281416

Photo: Rikki Chan

August 10, 2016July 28, 2016

News You Can Use: 8/10/2016

The Scientific Reason Why Coworking May Be The Future Of Work

It turns out that coworking spaces’ hallmarks—like funky design features—are far less important than their social structures, where workers feel a sense of individual autonomy that’s still linked to a sense of collaboration, the Michigan team told me in interviews. Most coworking spaces, for all their variation, tend to strike that careful balance between those crucial needs—in ways that neither solo freelancing nor the traditional office experience usually provide.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3061515/the-scientific-reason-why-coworking-may-be-the-future-of-work
When You Fix Problems With Mid-Level Managers You Fix Everything

But when executive leaders take the time to communicate with mid-level managers regularly, performance and satisfaction improve, a 2016 survey of millennials conducted by Gallup suggests. Among those who said their manager holds regular meetings with them, 44 percent said they are engaged, compared with just 20 percent of those who don’t meet with managers regularly.

The solution is simple — facilitate consistent communication between mid-level and senior managers to keep middle leadership in the loop, consider their ideas, and listen to any problems or concerns they have.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279058
Most CEOs are planning to kill their companies

Two thirds of CEOs don’t think their companies can keep up. The actual question focused on the fact that CEOs are focused on innovating through acquisition rather than organically. But the translation is they have no confidence in their organization’s ability to innovate. This is a significant problem for every employee because it implies the CEOs feel a large portion of their firms are unwilling or unable to perform. Acquisitions should be the exception not the rule, yet the opposite appears to be true. Now it is unlikely that 75 percent of firms can’t execute so this is likely a blend of CEOs not understanding what is being done and organizations that are being restricted by policy, culture, or practices (like Forced Ranking, which kills innovation). But it certainly doesn’t bode well for job security.

http://www.cio.com/article/3096091/leadership-management/most-ceos-are-planning-to-kill-their-companies.html
On that note: Top-paid CEOs aren’t very good at their jobs

The authors, who studied 429 large U.S. companies over a 10-year period, summarized their findings this way: “Has CEO pay reflected long-term stock performance? In a word, no.”

The report found that average shareholder returns over the decade were 39% higher when a company’s CEO was in the bottom 20% of earners compared to a CEO in the top 20% of earners.

The trend even holds across sectors.

Companies where CEOs were paid above the average in their sector “significantly underperformed” companies where chief executives were paid below average, according to the researchers.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/27/investing/ceo-pay-performance-msci/index.html?section=money_topstories
Fitbit data has been utilized for various clinical trials

Fitabase has collected over 2 billion minutes of data from users who actively wear their Fitbit activity trackers to measure sleep, activity and more. Such data has been pulled for studies on spine surgeries like that of the Northwestern Medicine and the University of California San Francisco’s work.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/28/fitbit-data-has-been-utilized-for-various-clinical-trials/

Photo: Charlotte Coneybeer

April 6, 2016April 1, 2016

News You Can Use: 4/6/2016

What to Do When Good Talent Has Suspicious Social Media

Know where your company stands on disqualification standards and how to identify whether or not a resume is accurate. In an October 2015 study from Adecco, 54 percent of the more than 4,168 recruiters surveyed said they excluded candidates based on online information that contradicted their CVs. Address these contradictions directly in the interview, with specific questions. If the-job seeker provides vague, rambling answers, chances are he or she is lying or trying to avoid the confrontation.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272441
Where (and how) to find top supply SCM talent

Spend Matters recently revealed that one way to bridge this gap is, instead of focusing on hiring workers who are skilled in a specific category, restructuring roles to attract talented leaders who can exercise a dynamic range of capabilities, such as “increased business and leadership skills, technological prowess, knowledge of foreign policy and regulations and the ability to handle cross-functional complexity.”

http://www.strategicsourceror.com/2016/03/where-and-how-to-find-top-supply-scm.html
Additionally:
Solutions to Bridging the Supply-Chain Talent Gap

Those with awareness of the profession might be turned off by pay disparities. Women tend to start out with compensation that’s equivalent to, if not higher than, that of men. But after 10 years in the workforce, the pay gap widens by around 34 percent, Eshkenazi said. What’s more, employers are paying insufficient attention to the work-life balance that’s required by many young employees, both male and female, today.

http://www.supplychainbrain.com/content/blogs/think-tank/blog/article/solutions-to-bridging-the-supply-chain-talent-gap/
Economic Sustentation 06: Preparing for the Corporate Takeover

3. Become a customer of choice.
Supplier sales teams fight for their customers of choice. When push comes to shove and there is not enough supply to go around, you will get it. When the parent company wants to push prices up to cover the costs of the acquisition, the sales team will look elsewhere. When you need access to innovation, they will fight to give it. But, despite many contractual claims to the contrary, very few clients are actually customers of choice.

http://sourcinginnovation.com/wordpress/2016/03/24/economic-sustentation-06-preparing-for-the-corporate-takeover/
New report calls for Nestle to take lead on cleaning up Thai supply chain

“These findings of severe labor and human rights abuses present an urgent challenge to any company sourcing seafood,” said Verite. “[We] recognize the complex and entrenched nature of these issues, the challenges of finding leverage points to effect change, and the practical difficulty of cascading accountability into a non-vertical supply chain with limited visibility.”

https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2016/03/24/new-report-calls-for-nestle-to-take-lead-on-cleaning-up-thai-supply-chain/
How creative thinkers can thrive in a regulated industry

At the end, we circle back to the beginning. To build a great company, you need great people. But there are many different kinds of great people out there, and, as a healthcare company, no matter how ground-breaking and innovative, you need to make sure you’re hiring the right kind of great people. The ones who are in it for the long term, who have the patience and maturity to understand that despite the technological edge they live on, they operate in an industry with different rules.

http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/31/how-creative-thinkers-can-thrive-in-a-regulated-industry/