Environmental Scan 2013

EMPLOYEE FOCUS

• Return, Reenergize, and Reinvent. Here are a few steps you can take independently to reflect on what was learned during the past year, set exciting stretch goals for the new year, and start taking actions to achieve those goals.
• Number of Contingent Workers to Grow in the Next Decade. According to a recent poll by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a majority of senior executives plan to maintain leaner organizations by hiring contract workers or outsourcing work. In the next 10 years, 62 percent of respondents expect a substantial growth in the proportion of contract workers; only 12 percent expect an increase in permanent workers. This rise in the contingent workforce will require HR to handle additional cultural and legal issues associated with temporary workers.
• The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. This is an entertaining 11-minute video on the key factors that affect workforce engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.
• Vision is Critical to Leadership Success. A global survey of chief executives and senior HR professionals finds that the most critical characteristics for success in top leadership positions are creating a vision (92%), inspiring others (62%), and having an understanding of the business (57%). The most common causes of leadership failure are inability to build relationships in a team (40%), cultural mismatch (32%), and failing to deliver financial results (25%).
• Shift Development Strategies to Develop New Leaders. To overcome the leadership crises of the past decade, leaders need to steward the shared mission and values of the organization. This requires organizations to rethink their leadership development programs to include a greater focus on emotional intelligence and peer development.
• Addressing Team Disengagement. The reasons for disengagement are numerous, ranging from taking too much credit for the team's work to failing to involve team members in important decisions. It is important to identify the cause of the disengagement and take steps to address it. A Gallup-Healthways study has found that disengaged workers cost America $300 billion annually.
• Engagement Strategies to Combat Retention Risk. The increasing competition for key talent is leading to increased risk of turnover and employers need to focus on engaging and motivating employees to avoid churn of critical talent. Experts suggest that in addition to customizing engagement strategies and rewarding and recognizing employees, organizations should create a dynamic environment for employees. Evolving roles and responsibilities and offering job rotations based on individual and organizational needs foster employee development and growth, make employees feel connected to the organization, and provide opportunities for faster career advancement.
• Use Recognition Tactics to Engage Employees. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, nearly 70 percent of HR professionals indicate that engagement will be very important in the next few years. The survey also highlights that rewarding and recognizing employees is the key to engaging and retaining them. A recent study by Globoforce found that despite the current economic uncertainty, 38 percent of U.S. employees are looking for a new job. The study revealed a direct correlation between employees’ intent to look for a new job and the level of recognition they receive at work.
• Employees and Knowledge Management. Every worker in the organization can help in improving organizational performance. In order to boost performance of all employees, organizations should integrate the employees by bridging the knowledge sharing gap between the employees. It is imperative that organizational strategy focus on knowledge management irrespective of roles and designation.
• Even Senior Leaders Need a Development Plan. Even in this uncertain and hectic environment, paying attention to development is essential to leaders’ future success and contribution to the wider organization. A good development plan focuses on improving a few skills, balances the need to develop both strengths and development areas that are tied to performance objectives, has concrete action steps, and sets gradual, realistic, and achievable success measures.
• Developing Leaders in Higher Education. In a recent Academic Impressions survey of 176 higher education administrators, 48 percent of respondents graded their institution with a C, D, or F letter grade when assessing the level of commitment they felt their institution had toward their development as leaders. In this issue of MonthlyDiagnostic: (1) Rethinking Higher Education’s Leadership Crisis; (2) The New Leadership Skill Set; (3) Identifying Leadership Potential in Your Staff; (4) Building an In-House Leadership Development Program; (5) Horizontal Career Ladders.
• Hands-On Training Improves Employee Safety. Hands-on training helps improve the safety awareness and behavior of workers in hazardous jobs. According to the results of a survey of 24,694 workers in 16 countries, for jobs where the risk of injury or death was highest, more engaging training (such as hands-on instruction, behavioral modeling, and simulation) was more effective in helping workers learn about safety and perform safely on the job than less engaging training (such as lectures, films, reading materials, and videos).
• More than 75 Percent of Departing Employees Would Not Recommend Their Employer in 2011. More than three-quarters of departing employees say they would not recommend their employer to potential candidates. In 2008, only 42 percent of employees indicated they would not recommend their employer. This drop in employee satisfaction could negatively impact recruiting efforts.
• 80 Percent of Employees Feel Under-Utilized. More than 80 percent of workers globally believe their skills are not being used by their current employer, and nearly 50 percent consider performance reviews to be of little or no value. Organizations should focus on career development and job-skill alignment to improve retention and performance in the long run. A quick guide on how to be happy at work is available here.
• Real Leaders Do Not Fire People. Termination is not the appropriate solution to handle employees who are not able to perform or are non-fit for organization. It is critical for managers to identify factors contributing to employees' failure at work. Understanding employees' aspirations, weaknesses, and challenges not only help managers resolve such situations but develop their own leadership skills as well.
• Economic Uncertainty Boosts the Use of Virtual Teams. According to a Chronos Consulting survey, HR functions are leveraging virtual teams to reduce costs, enhance employee productivity, and attract wider talent pools globally. The current economic volatility is the major reason for increased utilization of virtual teams consisting of remote workers, mobile employees, independent or outsourced workers.
• Social Media Privacy Concerns on the Rise. Just as social media has gone viral, so too has concern over privacy breaches and potential employment-related litigation. Before using social media for recruiting, networking, and internal usage, organizations should ensure that they have an appropriate social media policy in place.
• Unhealthy Employees Cost U.S. Organizations $153 Billion. According to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, employees with chronic health conditions cost U.S. organizations more than $153 billion in lost productivity each year. These employees miss more than 450 million additional days of work per year compared with healthy employees.
• Interactive Training Key Priority in 2012. According to the Human Capital Media Advisory Group, 41 percent of organizations leverage classroom-based training, 17 percent focus primarily on e-learning, and 14 percent use formal on-the-job training. These training methods create a blended learning approach that provide face-to-face interactions, and increase employee collaboration in the organization.
• Job-Interest Alignment is the Top Employee Retention Driver. The top driver for employee retention is job-interest alignment, followed by manager and coworker quality. With most organizations undergoing major redesign initiatives, the likelihood of employees doing the jobs they were originally hired to do is lower than ever before. This makes job-interest alignment a major concern for organizations looking to improve employee engagement and retain talent.
• Creativity and Adaptability Are Must-Have Skills for Job-Seekers in 2012. Employers are more likely to value creativity and adaptability in prospective employees as organizations continue to respond and adapt to economic and industry trends. With business being done at an increasingly fast pace, organizations want employees who are agile, adaptable, and creative at solving problems in addition to having standard prerequisite skills like business acumen and technical proficiency.
• Work-Life Balance and Learning Opportunities Drive Maximum Job Satisfaction. Work-life balance and access to learning opportunities are top drivers of job satisfaction. Employees between the ages of 35 and 44 are most concerned with work-life balance, and those between the ages of 18 and 34 have the greatest interest in opportunities to learn and grow.
• Rapidly Growing Older Workforce Demands Employer Attention to Injuries. Workers aged 55 and older are projected to make up nearly 25 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2018. Employers should consider important factors such as health care costs and workers' compensation spending to mitigate the risks associated with an aging workforce.
• Are You a Transformative or Incremental Innovator? In an environment where many people think their firms lack breakthrough ideas, the need to generate transformative innovation has never been greater. This Corporate Executive Board’s latest installment of Executive Guidance provides the four keys to reinvigorating innovation.
• How Smart Leaders Translate Strategy into Execution. Too many CEOs and other leaders today are uncertain about their role in executing strategy. Too often they relegate this and miss an important opportunity to perform the role of Chief Execution Officer. Unlike a traditional CEO, the Chief Execution Officer gets involved in the details of strategy execution by: translating the strategy into measurable objectives, sharing the story of the strategy with internal and external audiences, establishing a feedback system, and aligning the reward and recognition system with strategy.
• HR Priorities at Mid-Size Companies. The HR Leadership Council’s most recent survey of HR leaders provides insight into three areas HR leaders have decided are the most important to get right for 2013: 1. Improving Manager Capabilities at Developing their Direct Reports. Managers continue to be viewed as critical to driving employee performance and engagement – however developing manager capabilities is still seen as one of the most difficult challenges faced by HR executives.
  2. Attracting and Developing Key Talent. The average number of applicants per open requisition has increased 128% since 2007, yet fewer than half of those candidates meet the basic qualifications of the role. Leveraging current employees’ networks to build pipelines for critical positions can improve new hire performance by up to 9%.
  3. Implementing/Upgrading HRIS Systems. Organizations are looking to enhance their data management and reporting capabilities in 2013 with an increased focus on HR IT systems. 
• Improving Customer Service in Higher Education. Customer service expectations from both students and parents continue to increase, and it is increasingly critical to meet that demand with a strong commitment to developing a culture of service. What matters most is responsiveness, efficiency, clear communication, and conflict management. In this Academic Impressions edition, experts speak about the major barriers to improving customer service - including the "silo" structure of support services, inefficient policies and procedures, and staff training needs - and how these barriers can best be addressed. The four articles in this issue include “Diagnosing the Barriers to Improving Customer Service,” “Improving Your Enrollment Services,” “Improving Your Academic Support Services,” and “Identifying Academic Policies and Procedures that Impede Student Success.” 
• --------------------------------------------------------------------
• Relax! You’ll Be More Productive. The best way to get more done is to spend more time doing less. A new and growing body of multidisciplinary research shows that strategic renewal — including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer, more frequent vacations — boosts productivity, job performance and, of course, health. 
• Being Yourself at Work. You know the drill. You put on your game face when you walk into work. "How are you?" a colleague asks. "Fine," you respond, automatically, regardless of how you are actually feeling. Community is the cure. It does indeed have the power to serve as a sanctuary — to protect, ground, and encourage us in the face of countless everyday challenges. Support in a community can also give us the strength to forego immediate gratification in favor of choices that uphold shared values, serve the collective good, and generate long-term value. It helps us squander almost no energy on internal politics because we are in this together, including when one or another of us is struggling and needs help. Through the strength of community, the safety and trust we feel with one another free us to focus our efforts on our mission. 
• Good Employees Make Mistakes. Great Leaders Allow Them To. The scariest thing to do was to give your employees the freedom to make mistakes. While mistakes allow individuals to learn and grow, they can also be very costly. Truly great leaders find ways to allow their people to take risks. Great leaders allow their people the freedom to make mistakes without placing the organization in jeopardy. But good employees are those who when mistakes are made 1. Learn from them, 2. Own them, 3. Fix them, and 4. Put safeguards in place to ensure the same mistake will never be repeated again.