"The single most important strategic pillar of any great enterprise is people,” best-selling author Jim Collins said in his Tuesday keynote session at the SHRM 2012 Annual Conference.
After spending nine years studying why some companies thrive in uncertainty or even chaos, while others do not, for his latest book Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All (HarperBusiness, 2011), Collins concluded that “it all begins with people.”
The notion of business as a combination of sport and war was attributed to Emile Herzog (1885-1967), a French author who used the pen name, Andre Maurois. I’m going to admit at the outset that I was a strong proponent of Herzog’s concept for most of my career. However, now that I look back from the CEO afterlife, I realize that this view need not be pervasive.
Companies involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) that are successful in retaining key talent begin the retention process early, according to a new global survey from Towers Watson.
Roughly two-thirds to three-fourths of both buyers and sellers surveyed use retention agreements, chiefly for senior leaders below the boardroom level, key contributors and technical experts, according to the findings.
"Workplace flexibility is not a benefit and it's not a right; it's a business strategy," explained Teresa Hopke, a principal at the consultancy Life Meets Work, during her May 1 presentation at the Society for Human Resource Management's 2012 Talent Management Conference, held near Washington, D.C.
“Workplace flex is not like pizza Fridays. It’s an incredibly powerful, strategic business tool,” she added, quoting flexibility advocate G. Brint Ryan, CEO of Ryan LLC.
At State Street Corp., a multinational financial services provider, we view flexible work arrangements as a strategic tool for achieving business objectives and employee engagement.
The writing’s been on the wall for a number of years, but only now are people starting to read it: Corporate America must reinvest in its workforce and come up with creative ways to retain that massive amount of knowledge that will walk out the door as millions of Baby Boomers retire.
Relax. You don’t have to have all the answers. You just need to know the right questions to ask. And, sometimes, that’s where the real challenge lies.
When it comes to working with senior business leaders on strategic workforce planning, what matters most is the conversation, not the HR professional’s ability to quote data, reports and metrics, said experts on a recent Conference Board webinar.
There was a lot of great conversation happening at TLNT Transform in its inaugural year. There was one conversation, however, which stood out to me as being of particular importance. In a breakout session moderated by John Hollon, Nick Araco--co-founder and CEO of The CFO Alliance--discussed a very interesting trend. In the post-recession C-suite, an increasing number of HR chiefs are now reporting directly to the CFO rather than the CEO.
Back in the fall, We Know Next published my blog, Why HR and the CEO should be joined at the Hip. According to SHRM, the blog struck a chord within the HR community. Conventional wisdom suggests the CEO’s most valued C-suite confidant should be the CFO. I’m not arguing that. During my CEO days, I was fortunate to work with two outstanding financial executives. I’m simply pointing out that a CEO has more than one hip, and with culture finally getting its credit as a key success factor, the time has come for HR to occupy a seat at the C-Suite table.
Quite often, including here at We Know Next, when the term “flexibility” is used with respect to the workplace, it’s often in the discussion of worklife balance initiatives that serve as benefits to the employer and employee. In this arena, we think about telework, co-working, ROWE, and other employer-supported program to give employees more control over how, when and where they work. Having a flexible workplace is now viewed as something that smart companies do in order to support their culture, increase employee engagement and loyalty, and ultimately drive business success.
Last week’s blog post bemoaned the lack of strategic discipline in today’s world of business. I posed three simple strategic questions that on the surface appear easy to answer.
