Short term sense, long term problems – in global joblessness…in your decisions too?

The Economist has a good article this week about the ways different parts of the world are dealing with joblessness – both are using fiscal stimulus, but Europe are directing much more of their spending towards labor market policy.  So in the short term, Europe’s joblessness rate is looking better than that of the US (which is a fairly unusual situation).

BUT…then we get to the “short term sense, long term problems” aspect…the lesson for workforce planners.  Think about this:

Consider the subsidising of shorter work weeks, continental Europe’s most dramatic innovation…in a vicious temporary slump, driven by a credit crunch and the collapse of global spending, such subsidies make short-term sense. But they prop up demand by fossilising a country’s job structure and preventing the shift of workers from industries with excess capacity (like carmaking) to more promising ones. That ossification will surely come to haunt continental Europe.

It may be difficult to draw a comparison here, but a lot of organizations are putting in short term strategies which may well lead to fossilized job structures or ossified workforces – whether it is voluntary reductions which lose our most employable people, random cuts that lose as much workforce “muscle” as “fat”, shorter work weeks, furloughs, or blanket policies about hiring or promoting – maybe they are going to be beneficial in the long term…but maybe not.  The reality is, like Europe’s approach, if we don’t segment the workforce, do workforce planning and think of the long term…we might end up with a workforce that’s ossified.  (I’m liking that word)

Are you making short term sense but creating long term problems?

With workforce planning, don’t do a pilot, build a lighthouse!

Here are four examples of the ways I’ve seen customers “pilot” workforce planning in their organizations:

1. “Let’s do Supply Chain – that’s a small group of people"!”
2. “Four business units in Asia”
3. “The group that volunteered”
4. “The critical group with the biggest shortages”

So one of them chose a group that (while small for them) is incredibly complex; one chose a group that’s complex and also huge; one a group they don’t know the advantages or challenges of; and the fourth chose to start with a group where the cost of failure is as high as possible!  Such courage, but…hey, it’s possible to make life a lot easier for yourself than THAT.

At Aruspex, we recommend that you don’t look for a pilot, you look for LIGHTHOUSE, it will make an enormous difference to the success of your project.  A lighthouse is designed not just to be a successful project, but to have the internal marketing qualities to ensure that other parts of the organization will be drawn to it, and will want to follow.  We’ve got a pretty serious method of finding one…give me a yell if you need the details

And be really careful not to do any of the four above!

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,project management

Google workforce prediction algorithm?

The San Francisco Chronicle (and several other places) have featured an article on Google using an algorithm to predict the people likely to leave.  I have been avoiding this post ever since the Chronicle article…because I have such mixed feelings.

Some things I like:

• Google cares this much about the workforce – as we all should!
• REAL predictive analytics finally gets a showing!  So many people are using the term predictive analytics about things which are really just metrics and reporting…it’s a wonderful thing to see real PA at least being thought about.
• This will add value…but maybe not in the obvious way

Some things I worry about:

• The algorithm can only use historical data, and given layoffs, Google’s slide from the #1 Best Place to Work spot, the economy and a whole lot of other current and recent change, that might miss some key items
• Google searches are great, but they don’t get everything…and if management at Google starts to think that they do, there is a serious risk of complacency and so further loss of focus on the value of human management (“oh, Jane didn’t show up on the output of the algorithm this month, so she mustn’t be about to leave”)
• HR data is much more limited than internet data, so there is a serious risk that the model won’t have enough data points to be relevant. Yes, great mathematicians can overcome many shortcomings…but maybe not that one
• If we predict individual human behavior, what risks do we open up?  Lawsuits, even?  What if we get it wrong about Sally and don’t promote her because the algorithm said she’s likely to leave?  Sure, we already do that in management heads, but what’s the legal situation once it comes from an algorithm?
• Then there are the people worrying about Big Brother:  http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/20/internet-behavior-englebart-intelligent-technology-google.html?feed=rss_news

Some lessons for us all:

• It’s a good idea to focus at least a part of our organization’s innovative power on our workforce…after all, they ARE our innovative power!
• We need to be more rigorous about workforce decisions
• Maybe we need to keep our “predictions” to groups, not individuals
• Really smart companies are focusing serious energy on doing workforce planning

There is a lot of potential in PA (Aruspex is loving it right now), but it can’t replace human decision making…or can it?  What do you think?

Will falling fertility impact your global plans?

The Economist reports that astonishing falls in the fertility rate are bringing with them big benefits…particularly for the economic situation in developing countries:

And falling fertility is a boon for what it makes possible, which is economic growth. Demography used to be thought of as neutral for growth. But that was because, until the 1990s, there were few developing countries with records of declining fertility and rising incomes. Now there are dozens and they show that as countries move from large families and poverty into wealth and ageing they pass through a Goldilocks period: a generation or two in which fertility is neither too high nor too low and in which there are few dependent children, few dependent grandparents—and a bulge of adults in the middle who, if conditions are right, make the factories hum. For countries in demographic transition, the fall to replacement fertility is a unique and precious opportunity.

It’s fascinating that the reduction in  birthrates from 5 per woman to 2 took 150 years in Great Britain…but took only 20 years in South Korea…and has fallen even faster in Iran.  What this does is increases the earning power and security of people in these countries – and quickly makes them richer, which tends to make them more educated as well as more productive.  This changes the amount and kind of work which can happen in that country…which might have serious impacts on where global organizations choose to have work done, and on the global competitive scene in many industries.  These things, of course, affect our workforce, and so for many organizations also impact our workforce planning.

Have you thought about how it might impact yours?

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,aging workforce,demographics

Management skills as a driver of lower turnover and higher productivity

Last week I was attending a round-table consultation on the development of Australia’s National Workforce Development Strategy when the topic of conversation turned to the value of good management. A number of people expressed the view that good management held the key to unlocking productive capacity for organizations, industries, and economies.

Then today I was interested to see that the people responding to this web-poll, “Why Do You Stick With Your Employer?” ranked “Good coaching from and interaction with my boss” as the leading factor in retention, rating it more than twice as important as any other factor.

It’s clear that effective and engaging managers can positively impact the productivity and turnover of their departments – but less clear how you enable best practise management.

The Peter Principle, the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence", is a humorous idea, but still has resonance 40 years after it was originally described. I wonder if this is because there is often no guidance or mentoring for new managers to acquire the types of skills that good managers need, particularly those skills that can’t be taught in a classroom.

I’d be really interested to hear back from anyone who has experience with mentoring or other programs supporting people in the transition into management roles... and any evidence or anecdotes about the resulting long-term turnover and productivity impacts for their organizations.

Research tools for workforce planners

I’ve been rabbiting on about them for a while, but in case you haven’t tried them yet, two very useful research websites were quietly delivered in 2009:

1. Wolfram Alpha, which computes actual answers to questions instead of simply providing a list of sites that may (or may not!) have the answer – we played with unemployment in San Francisco compared to New York City and were instantly provided this:
   
   
   Then we asked the meaning of life, and were instantly provided this:
   
   
   Excellent!
   
2. Google Public Data gives users the ability to search and compared public data such as statistics provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau's Population Division. Asked the same NYC vs SF question, we got this:
   http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&idim=county:PS060900:CN360610
   
   Google was quite a lot harder to get, and has a lot fewer data sources (so far), but it’s still worth a look

For workforce planners, this is a big deal as they make the data needed for environment scanning much more easily accessible in a standardized manner. Instead of navigating your way through complex websites, employment rates, population statistics and other information is available at the click of a button...and in the case of our workforce planning software, automatically integrated!

So, how will you be using these new tools? And what IS the meaning of life?

Scenarios: NOT “best, worst, most likely”!

I presented to a group last week who were a bit sceptical at my assertion that “best, worst, most likely” (BWML) is a really poor substitute for real scenarios. I accept that BWML can be interesting forecasts, but they aren’t effective scenarios Futurist Joseph Coates puts it best:

An odd number with a best case, a worst case, and a most likely case draws the user to prefer or emphasize the middle case. This best, worst, most likely model of the use of scenarios is deficient not only in regard to the tendency to drive toward accepting the middle, but it misses the point that alternative futures are real possibilities

Real scenario planning has very powerful benefits which in strategic workforce planning allow the organization to craft really effective, targeted talent strategies for competitive advantage…usually by enabling managers to suspend disbelief and explore totally different approaches in a non-threatening way. Forecasting from history does not do this. Also, forecasting from history is a lot less fun than scenario planning, and the business value it less. What’s not to love about scenario planning?

Are you developing real scenarios, or only BWML-ing?

del.icio.us Tags: workforce planning,scenario planning,best worst most likely