Bersin & Associates

In the February Edition

Enterprise Learning: The New Face of Learning
Talent Acquisition: Your Employee Engagement Survey: Are the Results on the Web for All to See?
Talent Management: Ensuring Fair and Accurate Performance Assessments
In the News: The Leader Board – High Impact HR
New Research Highlights

The New Face of Learning

High-impact learning organizations recognize that the learner's needs and preferences should dictate choice of delivery modes, especially given today's highly disparate and mobile workforce. L&D professionals are working to enable the organization to learn faster, teach itself, and create its own knowledge – all the while, developing a continuous learning environment.

Our research shows several potentially disruptive trends in the evolution of learning.

Read the rest of The New Face of Learning.

topˆ

Your Employee Engagement Survey: Are the Results on the Web for All to See?

A 2010 survey of 300 learning and talent management decision makers for Stacey Harris' research report Employee Engagement: A Changing Marketplace shows that 75% of organizations conduct employee engagement assessments, with 55% conducting them annually. Sixty five percent of respondents note that employee engagement results are important or very important to senior executives and managers.

These assessment results and the communication around them are typically tightly managed. What if the results of your engagement survey were publicly available to anyone – employees, prospective employees, competitors, and investors?

Read on for more.

topˆ

Ensuring Fair and Accurate Performance Assessments

Performance calibration is an important part of creating fair and accurate performance appraisals. Inaccurate performance appraisals negatively impact employee engagement and effectiveness, open the organization up to legal actions, and result in compensation dollars being misallocated and/or poorly spent. According to our upcoming High-Impact Performance Management 2011 study, 70% of organizations have some sort of calibration mechanism in place.

The purpose of performance calibration is to assess and rank employees based on their past performance, typically for the prior year. There are different ways to rank employees. For example, some organizations rank their employees using a recommended distribution approach, while others use a stacked ranking.

Read on for more on performance calibration.

topˆ

In the News

Human Resource Executive Online
January 26, 2011
The Leader Board – High Impact HR
By Mike O'Brien

In this article Mike O'Brien talks about the recently released Bersin & Associates report, The High-Impact HR Organization: Top 10 Best Practices on the Road to Excellence.

Click here to read the article.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
January 21, 2011
U.S. Companies Up Training Outlays

This article talks about a recent Bersin & Associates study that says U.S firms spent more on training in 2010 than 2009.

Click here to read the article.

topˆ

New Research Highlights

Learning Leaders® 2011: Lessons from the Best
The Bersin & Associates Learning Leaders® program is designed to identify the very best in organizational learning and talent management. The 2011 Learning Leaders represent the very best of enterprise learning and talent management, and their accomplishments have raised the bar for all learning, talent, and HR organizations.
Members: Download today
Non-members: This report is available at no cost.

Learning and Talent Solutions for Financial Services
An overview of key talent and learning trends within the financial services industry.
Members: Download today

The Convergence of Formal and Informal Learning Technology: ExpertusONE and The Dawn of the Continuous Learning Management System
In this report, we discuss the issues and obstacles with finding a technology solution to support continuous learning, including a deep integration of both formal and informal learning activity; and we profile a recently released product that has the potential to meet this need: ExpertusONE.
Members: Download today

Relationship Management on a Global Scale: A Relationship Management Company Creates an Approach to High-Impact HR
This case study discusses how a leading relationship management organization transformed its HR function. Obtain insights on the company's global approach to HR structure, delivery strategy, culture and measurement.
Members: Download today

Talent Segmentation Helps Prioritize HR Efforts: Kelly Services^® Focuses on Pivotal Talent to Increase Engagement of Customers, Candidates and Suppliers
A case study on how Kelly Services implemented its talent segmentation (or "pivotal" talent) plans. It also includes how the company selected pivotal roles, created differentiated talent approaches and measured the impact of its efforts.
Members: Download today

The High-Impact HR Organization: Top 10 Best Practices on the Road to Excellence
This report is aimed at helping HR functions find the focus needed to organize and prioritize their continuous improvement efforts when looking at HR structure, services, infrastructure, HR development and approaches to measurement.
Members: Download today

The Corporate Learning Factbook 2011: Benchmarks, Trends and Analysis of the U.S. Training Market
The Corporate Learning Factbook is recognized as the industry's most trusted source of data on training spending, staffing and programs.
Members: Download today

The HR Framework: A Model for the High-Impact HR Function
As HRs role has changed, so has the HR function. Bersin & Associates HR Framework report describes the visualized framework for the HR function.
Members: Download today

Talent Management Systems Customer Satisfaction 2011: A Comprehensive Study of Customer Experience with Talent Management Systems
This second annual research report provides a comprehensive analysis of customer satisfaction with talent management software.
Members: Download today

Creating a High-Performance Culture: Rewarding Results and Contribution
This research bulletin will review the challenges of pay for performance and offer strategies for using it effectively.
Members: Download today

Building HR to Drive Business Results

Stacey Harris, Principal Analyst and Director of HR & TM Research

Do you know what keeps your CEO and senior business leaders up at night? What business challenges concern them the most? It may not be a surprise that a good portion of these key issues are about people. In our recently launched industry study, High-Impact HR: Top 10 Best Practices on the Road to Excellence, we asked business leaders what their greatest challenges were and among the top findings were:

Sustaining business growth
Driving new products and services
And shifting business models seamlessly to address competition

These challenges are fundamentally people issues and a strategic HR function is at the center of any organization capable of addressing these challenges effectively.

While most in our industry would agree that HR plays a strategic business role, our research shows that many HR professionals struggle to provide the leadership and guidance required. A lack of investment in internal HR skill development, as well gaps in both traditional business and analytical skills, has led to more than half surveyed HR organizations ranking themselves as ineffective in meeting the needs of their business leaders. One-third of HR leaders rank measuring programs in financial terms as their biggest challenge, while over a quarter tell us that delivering workforce metrics and analytics is their top challenge.

We evaluated a total of 140 HR practices to identify the 10 most impactful – those that most significantly increased the efficiency, effectiveness, and business alignment of HR functions. These top 10 best practices will allow HR organizations to prioritize and focus their continuous improvement efforts on areas that have greatest impact – all while operating under the constraints of today's diminished budgets, changing workforce demographics, and evolving solution provider landscape.

This research, along with feedback from our members and the industry, provided the impetus for our new HR practice. This comprehensive new offering is the only integrated approach to HR research, and starts with business outcomes. Our HR practice is designed to provide the research and strategies HR professionals need to prioritize their efforts, develop their own abilities, and drive alignment across the business. Visit our HR practice homepage for a video intro and a virtual tour of the practice.

Our new HR practice also includes exciting new frameworks and models, as well as global case studies to continue to help you benchmark your own HR organization. Throughout this year, I'll be working on new research, including upcoming reports on HR best practices in measurement, strategy, and planning, and case studies on building HR analytic capabilities and transformation efforts. Currently, we are gathering data for our HR Factbook, planned for release in mid-2011. Participate in our research and receive findings from this report including up-to-date information on HR budgets, staffing, and spending across industries. The survey is open to U.S.-headquartered companies with 100 or more employees and should be completed by someone who is involved in the HR budgeting and planning.

You can download a complimentary copy of the High-Impact HR: Top 10 Best Practices on the Road to Excellence executive summary.