1486 Posts Found

What happens when Big Data meets human resources? The emerging practice of “people analytics” is already transforming how employers hire, fire, and promote.

Content: Article | Author: Don Peck | Source: The Atlantic Monthly | Subject: Human Resources

Numerous processes in business are both an art and a science. Assessing executive talent is one such process. This author surveyed senior human resource professionals, and while he found that firms used different tools to assess executive performance, their practices and ability to predict performance could be distilled into five principles. Readers will learn what they are and how to apply them in this article. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Ron Robertson | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Human Resources

According to Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations, Laszlo Bock, the five traits most predictive of success in the workplace are:

1. General cognitive ability (not I.Q. but learning ability; the ability to process on the fly, to pull together disparate bits of information)
2. Leadership – in particular emergent leadership as opposed to traditional leadership. Traditional leadership is, were you president of the chess club?…We don’t care.

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Laszlo Bock | Source: The New York Times | Subject: Human Resources

For years, the human resources function has shouldered much of the responsibility for managing people, but it has often had to do so with too little real information and too segregated from the business. Talent analytics can change all this—revolutionizing not only the practice of HR but also how insights about workforce performance can be derived and applied to achieve real improvements in business performance. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Catherine Farley, David Gartside, Himanshu Tambe, Jill K. Goldstein, Maureen L. Brosnan, Omesh Saraf, Samir Raza | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subject: Human Resources

Most companies offer some type of variable compensation to their sales team for the purpose of driving corporate revenue. However, many still use spreadsheets and disorganized processes to manage this key motivator of the sales force. There is a better way.

Content: Article | Author: Mark Smith | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Finance, Human Resources, Management, Marketing / Sales

Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught that 90-95 percent of performance problems were the results of the processes people work within, not individual performance. Unfortunately, focusing on individual performance increases fear as employees know they will be held accountable for things they cannot control. Fear drives unproductive behaviors such as blaming, withholding information and self-protection. Rather than driving problems out into the open and encouraging collaborative, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John Bernard | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

How can a company raise its skill level—and in particular, how can it increase its proportion of top talent? Our research and experience at Bain suggests three keys.

Content: Article | Author: Michael C. Mankins | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Human Resources

How’s your performance evaluation system working for you? There’s very good evidence to suggest it is ineffective. If performance evaluations were a drug, they would not get FDA approval—at least as they’re done in most organizations. About 20 percent of the time they make things better, 20 percent of the time they make things worse, and 60 percent of the time, meh. Yet we keep … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

I learned from Peter J. Gomes that people burn out less from a lack of energy than from a lack of a sense of purpose.

Content: Quotation | Author: Taylor Bodman | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Free lunches, foosball tables, and other perks don’t matter as much as your employees’ engagement levels.

Content: Article | Author: Susan Sorenson | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Many companies throw financial incentives at senior executives and star performers during times of change. There is a better and less costly solution.

Content: Article | Authors: Emily Lawson, Matthew Guthridge, Sabine Cosack | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Human Resources

It is the ego that spoils work and the ego is the centerpiece of most theories of motivation. We need not merely a theory of motivation but a theory of inspiration.

Content: Quotation | Author: M.P. Bhattathiri | Source: ManagementLearning.com | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Record unemployment figures are, paradoxically, matched by record numbers of companies who cannot find the skills they need. Accenture analyzes its recent US Skills Gap Survey to understand the nature and extent of the skills gap—and proposes seven strategies that companies in pursuit of high performance can follow.

Content: Article | Authors: Breck Marshall, David Smith, Diego S. De León, Susan M. Cantrell | Source: Accenture | Subject: Human Resources

If you look at the psychology of loyalty—which I did—you see that it’s instinctive. It’s a survival technique that dates back to our pre-human ancestors. It’s a profound psychological need. You can’t dispense with it. At one point, we projected loyalty onto organizations. Now, we’re projecting it onto other people.

There can be other loyalties, too. Software developers are loyal to their product. They are willing … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John J. Clancy | Source: Context Magazine | Subjects: Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

Rating people on a list of competencies is a flawed method for improving their performance. Obviously we need a new system. And what can we say about the new system that would serve us better? Well, the specifics of the system will depend on the company, but we do know that it must have six characteristics, each of which follows logically from the one preceding. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Marcus Buckingham | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

The practice of rating individuals’ performance on a numerical scale doesn’t accomplish the task managers expect from it, which is to accelerate the performance of their people. At best, it serves other goals: allocating compensation fairly, and aligning each individual’s goals with the values and strategies of the company. However, even if these were sufficient goals, managers would still be frustrated by how poorly … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Marcus Buckingham | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

This site offers some good articles and resources for those dealing with HR issues. Perhaps most useful is the HR Toolkit, which offers downloadable (PDF or Word) documents and policy language that are most in demand by experienced HR professionals and departments. Includes: business forms, sample job descriptions, legal guides, and policies and procedures. Also find an HR FAQ and a collection of HR articles. … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Subject: Human Resources

Why would you need forced rankings to get rid of bad apples if you were doing your job right as a company or leader? The best don’t wait for yearly evaluations—they deal with it now. It always amazes me that—as much as I admire GE in other ways—that they embraced six sigma (based on Deming-like logic that a system in control will have few if … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert I. Sutton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Almost all decisions, big and small, are choices between exploring new possibilities and exploiting old ones.

Content: Quotation | Author: Art Markman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Motivation, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Just as the Net Promoter approach has strong descriptive and predictive power with customers, it works just as well in the realm of employee engagement. Loyalty leaders measure engagement by asking a handful of simple but predictive questions: Would you ask your friends and family to work in this company? Why? And would you recommend our product or service to your friends and family? What … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Domenico Azzarello, Frédéric Debruyne, Ludovica Mottura | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior