As we say goodbye to the first talent decade, let’s take a look forward. Every year during the holidays you get lists of predictions along with top ten gadgets, gift ideas, books, and more.

Next year in 2010, talent management professionals will be adjusting from recession to recovery. Themes to expect are increasing workforce productivity by recruiting top talent for open positions while reducing turnover of top performers. Leadership positions will be key to businesses doing more with less.

So in the spirit of 10, here’s our prediction for the 10 words we’ll be hearing a lot in 2010:

1. Leadership
2. Succession
3. Performance
4. Talent
5. Recovery
6. Productivity
7. Turnover
8. Compensation
9. Recruiting
10. Skills

Happy New Year from Taleo!

With news of Wall Street’s Bonus Culture: RIP and Goldman Sachs changing their compensation structure after investor pressure, “bonus” may become a four letter word. And indeed dropping the B puts the onus on real performance.

In this traditional end-of-year bonus season, we surveyed UK workers on bonuses. The Bonus Barometer revealed a number of important insights about how well the bonus component of compensation relates to actual performance:

39% of respondents are expecting to receive an end-of-year bonus.
21% are based on the general success of the business.
30% are based on individual success.

But yet:

Just 19% of respondents stated that their employer calculates bonuses using personal performance targets linked to business goals.

It’s not surprising when:

Only 38% of employees have access to tools that show how their role helps the business.

Clearly it’s time to make the compensation connection that aligns individual and corporate goals, performance, and compensation. Not just for Wall Street, but for everyone.

Right on the heels of the Top 5 Employment Considerations—which identified career development as the #1 factor when considering a new employer—comes more information that backs up how important skills development can be.

Taleo University received these feedback responses to follow-up training surveys on talent management skills training:

∙ 97% believe the training was relevant to their current job duties.
∙ 80% said their skills were increased by at least 30%.
∙ 75% think that their job performance will improve by 20% or more.
∙ 71% feel they will apply the majority of the training directly to their job.

Although these hundreds of responses reflect a specific audience of talent practitioners, it’s clear that the respondents made the connection between their skills enhancement and their job performance. High performance cultures are not born. They are made through structured training and development plans that increase engagement and retention.

There has been much deliberation about the number one employment consideration for jobseekers. Immediate manager? Salary? Benefits? Work-life balance? Corporate culture? Location? The list is long and no doubt all the characteristics carry some significance.

However, a recent survey of employment candidates in the Americas identifies career development as number one. Results show:

"What is most important when considering a new employer?"

1. Career development prospects (40%)
2. Work/life balance (21%)
3. Innovative company culture (15%)
4. Competitive compensation and benefits (12%)
5. Good rapport with manager (8%)

So, regardless of the broader economic conditions, job one for organizations looking to hire new talent is providing online tools that power career management and promotion opportunities for their workforce while communicating development as a premier message in the employer brand.

Research numbers back up the business performance value as validated in the Bersin & Associates study Building a High-Performance Culture: Seven Performance Management Practices That Work:

Companies in which most employees have high-quality development plans have 27 percent lower turnover than companies in which few or no employees have development plans. In addition, companies with high-quality development plans have twice the revenue per employee.

Three years ago, Gartner produced the first Magic Quadrant for E-Recruitment Software. That milestone for e-recruiting and talent management software was significant because an independent analyst firm validated the space and evaluated vendors. Last year, they published the 2008 Magic Quadrant for E-Recruitment.

The evaluation criteria is based on the company's vision and ability to execute, which includes market understanding, overall viability, innovation, business model, market responsiveness, and customer service experience.

The 2009 Magic Quadrant for E-Recruitment Software from Gartner has been released.

Note: The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2009 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The Magic Quadrant graphic was published by Gartner, Inc., as part of a larger research note and should be evaluated in the context of the entire report. The Gartner report is available upon request from Taleo.

The ending of one calendar year always elicits many predictions and forecasts for the year to come. An interesting paper from the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) called The Shape of Business - The Next 10 Years provides a view of the UK even farther ahead. Here is the premise:

The business environment of the next decade will be significantly different to what might have been expected just two years ago. The financial crisis and the recession that has followed have altered operating conditions by imposing new challenges and exacerbating existing ones. Businesses will respond across the organisation, moving to a more flexible, collaborative and leaner model.

More specifically, on the business response to the workforce:

One of the biggest challenges for business over the next ten years will be how to build, retain and make the most of knowledge and experience in the workforce while finances for training are restricted, there are major changes in the make-up of the population available for work and individuals’ expectations of work continue to evolve.

With the expectation that:

Businesses will become much more proactive in their approach to talent management, placing greater focus on skill development and increasing returns on investment in training.

In this scenario, comprehensive skills profiles of both current employees and candidates will further increase in importance. Visibility into talent data and analytics will make the difference between prospering and foundering in the future. And unified data with internal transparency will change how managers think about talent.

With the approach of the US Thanksgiving holiday, we’ve released Taleo’s American Job Thankfulness survey. The study found that a majority of Americans are thankful for their jobs. Yet many are not so grateful. Of the nearly 900 US workers polled in this tough economy:
• 70% of respondents claim they are very thankful for their job.
• 46% said they do not feel they are being paid for performance.
• 30% do not receive feedback at least twice a year.

But 30% said something completely different. And maybe they are part of the nearly half who see a disconnect in pay for performance as a major issue of dissatisfaction. Three out of 10 employees report they:
• May leave their job after their next salary review or bonus.
• Are failing to give their best effort at work.
• Are actively seeking a new position.

The fact that a majority of Americans are extremely thankful for their jobs and careers proves many businesses do understand the importance of managing people. But those businesses that are not doing their best to identify, engage, and develop their best and brightest will lose workers. If companies don’t make talent retention a high priority, employees that seem content now may be headed out the door when the economy turns.

Remember, half of the 40% churn in US jobs this year came voluntarily. And our survey found Millennials are only 62% thankful. The younger generation expects a higher level of engagement from employers than the rest of us, which is a social change employers need to accept. Businesses can choose to respond as their employee base changes or stay in the past and settle for the workers willing to accept less engagement, opportunity, and development.

These are many ways that employers can give their thanks to their employees. Among them, i4cp’s Turnover and Engagement Pulse Survey found companies that are actively trying to increase engagement and reduce turnover are using these strategies:
• Better communication (81%)
• Talent management (77%)
• Succession planning (59%)

Although a focus on the impending workforce demographic effects of Baby Boomer retirement is out of fashion during the current economic turmoil, a chart in PwC Saratoga’s 2009/2010 US Human Capital Effectiveness Report starkly illustrates the cause for concern.

Even if managerial and executive retirement is delayed in the short term, a critical group of corporate leaders will be exiting organizations soon. This undercurrent in the workforce requires renewed attention to talent management practices for succession planning and leadership development.

According to this data, you need to prepare today for one of every three managers and one of four executives to be gone tomorrow. A formal succession planning initiative will decrease your business risk while increasing engagement and retention of top talent waiting on the bench.

Having a safe workplace seems like an obvious top ten item for both employees and organizations. Towards that end—as well as to reduce organizational risk and liability— 92% of organizations perform background screening, according to the 2009 HireRight Background Screening Benchmarking Report. The findings demonstrate significant impact on the hiring process and business performance:

Up to 18 percent of background screening results and up to 19 percent of drug screening results adversely affect hiring decisions.

So background screening is valued and valuable, yet there are two noticeable aspects which need improvement:

1. Lack of Extended Workforce and Recurring Screening Undermines Protection

2. Screening Integration is Inconsistent within Screening Programs
Furthermore, 71% report their organization's screening is not integrated with other systems, applications, programs or processes.

Opportunities exist to improve background screening practices with ongoing screening and integrated technologies that streamline processes. Integrated background screening could drive the twin benefits of greater effectiveness and higher efficiency for your company.

Peter Drucker’s Paths to Creating an Engaged Worker outlines how the Father of Modern Management perceived engagement and how to make it happen. Drucker called out a four prong strategy for engagement that can now be supported by the latest in unified talent management technology:

1. Careful placement and promotion
Job and cultural fit assessment information captured in the recruiting process can now be combined with an enterprise performance management, internal mobility and succession planning system. That structured consistent approach helps ensure that promotions are determined by fair and collective decisions based on experience and performance.

2. Demanding high standards of performance
Performance management that measures goals with performance reviews combined with ongoing goals/reviews rather than annual performance cycles help foster a culture of performance. Challenges are then considered the collective norm rather than the individual exception.

3. Providing workers with information
Performance management that aligns goals from the top down and bottom up provides the continuity of business thought that all employees need to find relevance in their daily tasks. Systems that support cascading goal alignment, ongoing feedback, mobility, and dialogue create an information channel where all employees can measure themselves, their colleagues, and ideally own their part of the business.

4. Encouraging workers to acquire managerial vision
In addition to cascading goal alignment across the enterprise, unified talent management provides visibility into succession planning, career development, and internal mobility. This transparency helps workers understand where the company is going and how their current and futures roles align to the business.

Motivating people: Getting beyond money in McKinsey Quarterly points out that cash is not always king. For those with satisfactory monetary compensation, you can unlock hidden performance with three engagement keys:

“…praise from immediate managers, leadership attention (for example, one-on-one conversations), and a chance to lead projects or task forces…”

All three relate to Drucker’s points when formalized in ongoing performance processes, transparent succession planning, and aligning individual goals with business goals.

At Taleo World 2009 and at a seminar in Chicago, a Taleo customer presented their story of practice and Taleo technology implementation driving “Success with Succession.” Beyond the benefits of our next-generation user interface, focus on users and managers, tight integration, and self-service configuration, there was an underlying revelation.

The increased visibility that technology brought to their process meant managers could see each other’s people and a company-wide succession pool. That visibility created the need for—and in itself drove—change management. Because the walls of department silos were made transparent. Which in turn broke down each manager’s silo mindset. It made them start thinking of the company as a unified talent pool, not a collection of city states. One talent pool. One company.

This is an example of extended visibility enabling extended thinking. No department is an island. In terms of succession and internal mobility, that visibility creates free talent trade across department borders. You offer people opportunity or risk losing top people to another company. In return, people exhibit stronger engagement with transparent career paths and internal opportunities.

What’s the overall benefit? People work better in glass silos. You get a more holistic approach to talent because you have data, process, and visibility aligned in a unified manner—driven by technology. Got unified data? Get a united company.

Employee volunteer programs make employees feel good by contributing, help positively position the company in the community, and enable development of new employee skills. Volunteer programs can also connect employees to a more diverse social network that can offer referral recruiting opportunities.

A strategy for diversity recruiting will encourage your organization to draw from a wider candidate base, build teams that foster innovation, and more accurately reflect your local as well as global customers.

Likewise, the buzz phrase “employee engagement” is important to your company because your workforce will be happier, more involved, and productive.

Obviously, these are all nice to have. Now think about it this way:

The Impact of Corporate Volunteerism study, which analyzed responses from 450 survey participants, found that a significant correlation exists between high-performing companies and the presence and support of a formal employee volunteer program. Moreover, EVPs are more likely to be seen as an integral part of the internal culture of high-performing organizations, based on self-report data.

Highly engaged employee companies enjoy 26% higher employee productivity, lower turnover, higher talent attraction, and greater shareholder return; see findings in Watson Wyatt’s 2008/2009 WorkUSA Report.

The business performance these kinds of talent management initiatives can drive move them from nice to have to need to have. The ultimate proof is in the execution, which requires the processes and supporting technology platforms for effective talent management.

According to our research, a majority of UK employees have more respect for leaders who have worked their way up through an organization, and two-thirds consider them good or very good leaders. Despite this, the majority of UK companies hire externally for leadership positions. Only 38% have leaders in their companies who are promoted internally, with just 35% of future leaders identified and nurtured through leadership programs.

The new Taleo Research study Grow Your Own CEO examines the attitudes and preferences of UK workers in regard to internally developed and externally recruited leaders, their expectations about leadership and career development programs, and experience in their own organizations. Key findings include:

• Internal promotion is the most effective leadership development strategy. 66% of companies who recruit from inside have leaders regarded as good or very good compared with 51% who generally recruit from outside.

• Mobility and feedback drive engagement. 76% of employees say they will be more committed to their company if they have a clear view of promotion and job opportunities, while 74% say regular appraisals will drive up their level of commitment.

The study uncovers large gaps between leadership development best practices and organizational behavior. The findings show that companies investing in internal talent, mobility, and development programs can maximize their talent assets, improve retention, increase productivity and engagement, and put leadership succession plans in place. A robust talent and performance management strategy enables leaders to be identified, developed, and retained.

The US Federal Reserve announcement and many leading economists recently have provided hints of consensus that the worldwide recession is over. However, there are disturbing talent trends emerging that deserve detailed observation and action.

Two admonitions that fall squarely within the realm of talent management strategy and practices are included in The Corporate Executive Board’s Executive Guidance for 2010 “Confronting Six Enemies of Post-Recession Performance”:

• Productivity Losses Due to Top Talent Disengagement and Flight

• Productivity Losses Due to Misplaced Leaders

In an outstanding teleconference—available in replay—these and four other perils for future organizational performance are described. Among the research findings:

The average organization faces an imminent 7% productivity loss from the combination of departing top talent and undermanaged recruiting pipelines.

Surprisingly, 25% of high-potential employees are looking for a new employer, up dramatically over pre-recession levels.

• Only 21% of employees are fully productive; the rest are not fully mobilized against the right goals.

The analysis supports the caveat: Recoveries are not restorations. Pre-recession plans and assumptions may no longer be relevant in the “new normal”; failure to distinguish between cyclical and structural shifts may permanently derail growth.

At Taleo we concur and explain further in New Solutions for a New Economy.

Talent management in a volatile world economy requires immediate organizational visibility into talent information beyond name, address, and benefits. Without visible promotional slots, who might leave? And who is skilled and interested to fill that role? Which of your employees are looking for new opportunities? How many top performers were lost during kneejerk reductions in force and could be rehired? These are all questions you need to answer.

In A Reluctance to Retire Means Fewer Openings, The New York Times reports that lacking a safety net, many US workers are delaying retirement plans. That means there are fewer openings to fill from Baby Boomer attrition. But in Europe, more comprehensive retirement plans are not affecting the retirement rate in the same way.

An Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) study in the UK says that almost 70% of recently hired graduates will consider new opportunities when the economy rebounds. That bodes poorly for return on investment and shows a lack of engagement.

And a survey of North American employers says that 40% plan to rehire laid off former workers to boost their skill and talent pool.

To know about and impact the actions of your talent, you need a unified view of talent information. Talent analytics around career aspirations and mobility, performance and succession provides a view into which employees you want to stay, go, or return.

Booz & Company’s Autumn 2009 strategy+business issue featured a compelling article on business innovation titled The Talent Innovation Imperative. The ideas stress engagement and employment brand as dynamics that can create momentum in building an organic talent culture.

What’s the business benefit? The future of talent management offers competitive advantage through unified talent management with a holistic approach to recruiting, performance management, development, and compensation.

Companies are now valued by the talent that operates the business, drives innovation, and meets customer needs. But most companies know more about the physical assets they own than the people they manage. Our new economy requires outstanding talent management solutions to drive business performance.

“It doesn’t make any difference if you’re operating a business in Mumbai, Beijing or New York — the No. 1 challenge facing every organization is finding and growing skilled talent.”
- SHRM CEO and President Laurence O’Neil

New Solutions for a New Economy published by Taleo Research outlines the shift from the industrial age to the talent age. Companies must balance IT spend and resources to align with talent initiatives or risk losing ground in the new economy.

Topics covered include:
• People-centric Approach to Managing Talent
• Flexibility to Keep Pace with Change
• Ability to Influence Talent Across Complex Work Environments
• Talent Management and the Future of Work

After a stimulating week at Taleo World in Las Vegas with record attendance in the face of a tough economy, we were struck by just how much innovation and value our customers are generating for their business.

Hundreds of HR leaders representing nearly all industries, geographies, and philosophies met to network and discuss talent management. Dozens of companies presented real-world talent strategies that produced significant results. Our 2009 Customer Innovation Award winner North Shore – Long Island Jewish Health System drove $25 million in operating margin improvement!

These are the kinds of success stories that happen when HR sets the table by showing the money and quantifying the financial impact of talent management.

BusinessWeek’s Gap To Employees: Work Wherever, Whenever You Want describes how companies have increased engagement and performance by placing workplace before marketplace. And it’s especially interesting to read that these cutting edge people programs are not lumped under HR and human capital. People are called talent and the programs are called talent management:

“In our business, merchandisers spend years developing expertise and the gut instinct to predict fashion trends,” added Severson. “To see that knowledge and talent walk out the door is devastating.”

“There are very few talent management programs that don’t create a sense of entitlement,” he said. “This is an agreement between the employees and the company that in exchange for the most incredible freedom to do your job in a way that makes sense for you, you will perform highly.”

So now if it's administrative, it's called HR like HRMS. And if it's performance enhancing or business effective, it's talent management. This is a subtle but very powerful distinction. Advantage: talent management.

Are you curious about how much money other people make? Here’s a list of the 30 Highest-Paid HR Leaders Among Publicly Traded U.S. Companies. Although highly paid, average compensation for executives on the list has dropped 20 percent since 2007.

HR executives may be making less money and also leaving sooner. The results of the Executive Turnover Survey found:

While the average tenure of HR leaders appears to be slightly less than six and a half years for the companies surveyed, the pace of their turnover seems to be accelerating, particularly in companies with annual revenues above $100 million.

More broadly, analysis of recent compensation studies shows:

89.9% of the companies who participated in the Watson Wyatt 2009/2010 U.S. Strategic Rewards survey expect to grant salary increases in 2010. Companies are projecting median merit increases of 3.0 percent for 2010.

U.K. Pay Increases Shrink to 1% according to the Industrial Relations Services (IRS) analysis.

And among the findings of fifth annual Employment Dynamics and Growth Expectations (EDGE) Report are:
• Despite an abundant labor pool, six in 10 employers are willing to negotiate with qualified candidates for higher compensation.
• Nearly half of workers polled (49 percent) said that after the economy improves, the most effective way to keep them on board will be pay increases. In fact, 28 percent plan to ask for a raise.
• Forty percent of hiring managers said that when the economy improves, giving pay raises will be their primary method for retaining top performers.

Although Wednesday may the best day for an employee to ask for and receive a pay raise, organizations need to take a rigorous approach to compensation management so that decisions aren’t made in haste, but are properly calibrated and linked to performance.

As exemplified in Taleo’s new compensation solutions for small and large businesses, compensation management can be a significant and integral aspect of talent management strategy.

Back in the 1990s, the sheer productivity power of computing and the reach of the Internet were often enough technology wow factors in themselves. Many applications, websites, and dotcom endeavors were interesting and flashy, but they were not actually useful and lacked sound business models.

Fast forward to today and take a good look at the Taleo Talent Grid. Here the power of new technology provides unprecedented value in three components:
1. Knowledge Exchange: Social Network for Talent Management
2. Solution Exchange: Applications Marketplace for Talent Solutions
3. Talent Exchange: Candidate Sourcing Marketplace

Build on an open, cloud-based technology platform, the Talent Grid provides the technical foundation and critical mass to power the world’s largest talent management community.

And it’s not only about the wisdom you can find in the cloud. This week at Taleo World, we are all benefiting from the wisdom of crowds as we meet and mingle with Taleo customers who represent a talent community with:

• 175 million candidates
• 500,000 new job postings per quarter
• 4,100 global customers
• 46 of the Fortune 100
• 2.9 million users
• 70 partners

We’ll bet this time what happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas as Taleo World attendees take back the ideas and talent management knowledge they need to make a difference in their organizations.

Talent acquisition is on the upswing according to the global study, Talent Acquisition Strategies 2009: Cutting through the Clutter and Proactively Managing Quality Candidates.

Between Aug. ’09 to Feb. ’10, 43% of executives anticipate that their talent acquisition efforts will increase somewhat or significantly, as compared with only 17% who anticipate that their talent acquisition efforts will decrease during that time frame.

Since hiring candidate quality from the quantity available in these economic times remains at the forefront, source of hire analysis is increasingly important. It also may have strong geographic and even regional variations.

The Source of Talent 2009 Report examines 92,136 hires reported by 409 organizations in Australia. It found the top three sources there are job boards, internal recruiters, and corporate websites. In contrast, CareerXroads’ Gerry Crispin provides a comparative view to their annual US source of hire study, recognizing both data and cultural differences.

The talent acquisition and sources of hire studies all center around the importance of rigorously examining and continuously improving the process and practices of hiring quality talent. Data-driven analysis is key to understanding—and utilizing—the most effective sources and strategies. The sources and strategies have to fit well with culture, industry, location, and more in order to hire the best talent.

Taleo’s free online recruiting process assessment can help by highlighting the strengths as well as opportunities for improvement in your company's talent acquisition processes.

In addition to barbeques and beaches, the US Labor Day holiday is a time to celebrate workers and contemplate the future employment landscape. A study by the Executive Office of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, titled Preparing the Workers of Today for the Jobs of Tomorrow, notes expected growth in health care, education, transportation, and construction jobs. And it sees demand by employers for workers with good analytic and interactive skills; those who can think critically and solve problems.

Projected Distribution of Workers Across Major Industries, 2008 and 2016

But what do workers want? Small businesses have strong appeal for many. The conclusion of one global survey is: People Don’t Want to Work in Large Companies:

When asked what size organization they would prefer to work for given today’s economy, the majority (71%) of business leaders chose a medium or small organization, according to a worldwide survey of senior executives and managers conducted by NFI Research.

Forty percent say they would rather work in a medium organization while 31 percent chose a small organization. Only 14 percent prefer a large company.

Another study found:
In addition to job growth potential, when asked what most appealed to them about working for small companies, workers pointed to:
• A family-like work environment - 56 percent
• More employee recognition - 49 percent
• A sense that you can make a difference - 48 percent
• An absence of corporate red tape - 46 percent

In light of these findings, larger organizations may need to revisit their employee value proposition to attract their future talent. Nonetheless, organizations of all sizes worldwide can benefit from implementing Four Simple Ways to Make Your Employees Happier.
1. Help create a meaningful role.
2. Give feedback.
3. Offer professional development.
and…
4. Say thank you.

There’s no reluctance it seems to try and measure the ultimate output of employee work: productivity. Take a look at America’s Most Productive Companies that provides a list of companies ranked by revenue produced by FTE, with industry cuts as well. Productivity measures are trending up, but short-term results may be delivered at a cost as Companies squeeze a lot more work out of smaller staffs.

The implementation of other important organizational metrics and measures, though, still has a ways to go. Process metrics and HR ROI calculations, for instance—the metrics that enable organizations to understand the status of underlying measures for productivity—need to focus on talent business drivers.

As noted in the CFO.com article, The Metric System:

The fact that CFOs suddenly want more out of HR is a complete reversal of how they've usually viewed it: as a locus for cost-cuts. Is now really the time to spend money on recruiting? Do programs that help employees develop additional skills matter when there are so few jobs for them to go to? Is there a CFO anywhere who wants to hear about the long-term value of staffing up a given area at a time when revenue-per-employee is under scrutiny?

Thus HR must confront a major change in expectations as it seeks to demonstrate exactly how it boosts productivity, fattens margins, or indisputably sharpens the company's competitive edge.

However, the data is compelling. A study on HR metrics by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) shows that higher-performing companies are more apt to measure talent-related metrics than lower performers. So, take the needed measures in your organization to insure high performance and strong productivity.

If you’re a Baby Boomer, you may remember that catch phrase from the Dragnet television show in the 1960s. Sticklers for accuracy will learn that even though it’s associated with the program, Detective Joe Friday never actually said those exact words.

That’s a lesson for all recruiters and hiring managers who forego formal professional background checks and rely on amateur sleuthing on the Internet. Are your top candidate’s personal Facebook postings fact or fiction? Are their favorite books or movies considered legitimate abilities, certifications, or skills? Could you be influenced in your hiring decision because they are a rabid Red Sox fan and you have season tickets to the Yankees? If asked to justify your hiring decision, will you be able to focus on real facts or Facebook fiction?

The results of a CareerBuilder/Harris Interactive study point out just how widespread the cult of the amateur has become with respect to online searches and background checks on job candidates:
• 45% of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates.
• 35% of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate.
• 18% of employers reported they have found content on social networking sites that caused them to hire the candidate.

Do you Google your candidates? Because if you do, you’d better know that social network profiles have sparked a debate. Using those tools for hiring decisions may be hazardous to your business. There could be serious legal exposure for your company these days as litigation increases in an economic downturn.

Check out the new book Reference Check 2.0: How Digital Social Networking is Transforming the Selection Process for more information on how search and social networks affect recruiting.

Winning in the marketplace does not occur by price alone. Nor does it happen only through innovation or marketing. All these business factors contribute to success. But they cannot happen unless you have engaged people.

Reducing costs, increasing margin, innovating design, streamlining production, and brilliant marketing are all driven by talent. BusinessWeek’s Is Optimism a Competitive Advantage article points out how Best Buy and other companies have focused on engagement as a differentiating business driver in a tough economy. They report:

2% increase in employee engagement at one of its electronics stores corresponds, on average, to a $100,000 annual rise in sales at that location.

With so much evidence that engagement and productivity are linked to business performance, consider how Alignment Drives Engagement and Productivity, the Definitions of Employee Engagement, and the need for Engaging Prime Talent.

Understand that unified talent management connects recruiting, performance management, development, and compensation and—for insights into how you can transform recruitment practices and reduce turnover with a unified view of your talent—read This is Not Your Father's HR.

The term employee engagement has become widely used. Exact descriptions of it include The Conference Board’s definition: "a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work"; MetLife Mature Market Institute’s definition: "engagement" as "a positive, enthusiastic, and affective connection with work that motivates an employee to invest in getting the job done, not just 'well' but 'with excellence'"; and BlessingWhite's 'formula' for recognizing engagement: high satisfaction (+) high contribution. Regardless of the exact definition, this YouTube video seems to capture much of the spirit (and is great fun to watch).

There are strong links between high employee engagement and productivity and revenue. Find out more about The Real Deal on Employee Engagement in this webcast on August 18, 2009.

In the PricewaterhouseCoopers 12th Annual Global CEO Survey 2009, 97 percent of CEO’s answered "access to, and retention of, key talent” is their number one source of competitive advantage in sustaining growth over the long term. Aptly, many talent management strategies aim squarely at retention of top talent. The corresponding talent management practices can include internal mobility and career management, goals alignment, succession planning, and more.

Many studies, though, find a gap between acknowledgement of the importance of retention of top performers and the talent management practices and processes in place. For instance, one study of IT workers found:
Over half of employees surveyed did not feel there was sufficient scope for progression in their careers (54%) although the potential for career development when evaluating new roles was deemed important by over two thirds of respondents (67%).

The Taleo Research paper, Talent Retention: Six Technology-Enabled Best Practices, focuses on key practices that organizations can implement with technology support to retain their top talent:
1. Recruit the right people in the first place.
2. Improve the line manager’s ability to manage.
3. Give employee’s constant feedback about clear, meaningful goals.
4. Empower employees to manage their own careers.
5. Proactively drive talent mobility.
6. Continuously measure and improve retention strategies.

From recruiting to performance, talent management applications can support specific retention strategies aimed at first identifying top candidates and then nurturing and valuing top performers during their employment tenure.

There is correlation and causation. Causation implies a direct effect. But because the contributing factors in a lot of situations include many possible variables, definitive causations are rare when analyzing complex business processes.

Correlation is defined as: A general term used to describe the fact that two (or more) variables are related. Although every variable may not be accounted for, correlations provide insightful conclusions by isolating factors and analyzing their relationship and impact.

In talent management, two new studies present important correlations that validate the importance of—and the results attainable from—implementing effective talent management strategies and practices.

The 2009 Talent Management Factbook report from Bersin & Associates—conducted in partnership with Human Resources Executive magazine—found that:

Companies with highly effective talent management strategies see benefits that translate into significant dollars and business impact. These companies:
• Reported 26% higher revenue per employee
• Were 28% less likely to have experienced a major layoff in 2008-2009
• Had 40% lower turnover among high performers and 17% lower overall voluntary turnover
• Were 92% more likely to effectively respond to changing economic conditions

And according to GreatPlaceJobs Q2 Employment Study: Great Workplaces Continue to Outperform and Weather the Recession Better:

The study shows that the nation’s largest companies conducted layoffs at a rate of almost twice that of a group of companies recognized as great workplaces. Only 44% of excellent employers laid off workers from the beginning of 2008, while a shocking 86% of the Fortune 100 companies have laid off employees in the past year and a half.

These research studies provide more evidence to spur action on implementing and optimizing talent management practices in any organization looking to gain competitive advantage today.

All the chatter around social networking seems apropos considering it is—at its core—a communications media. However, examinations of the demographics, trends, and impact send some mixed messages. For example:

Facebook users get lower grades in college features an Ohio State University study where the 85% of students who are Facebook users get lower grades. Yet Facebook, YouTube at work make better employees: study highlights an Australian study where workers who use the Internet at work are 9% more productive. And opportunities abound as Social Networking jobs are steadily rising.

Meanwhile, the intersection of social networking and recruiting continues to be controversial. Jobseekers are counseled on How to Turn Social Networking Into a Job Offer while Bosses and Workers Disagree on Social Network Privacy.

The Consumer Internet Barometer found 43% of the online community now use social networking sites, up from 27% a year ago. But College Students’ Facebook Use Easing Up Over the Summer, While Parents Logging On in Record Numbers.

The social networking demographic has surely broadened beyond Gen Y along with the applications of the technologies.

Successful organizations are using social technologies to complement their talent strategies. Find out more about Leveraging the 4 C’s of Social Software to Drive Talent Management Adoption on July 28, 2009 at 11:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. ET.

In an interesting interview about Better Management through Better HR, University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business Professor Dave Ulrich discusses some of his past and future research. Prof. Ulrich says:

“As business leaders recognize the importance of talent and organizations, they are raising the bar on HR departments, practices, and professionals.”

For business leaders and HR professionals alike, understanding where that bar is today is essential. The Human Capital Institute is conducting research—sponsored by Taleo—that will provide insights into how organizations worldwide are utilizing talent management practices in today’s economic environment.

We want your input. Make your voice heard by participating in this important global survey concerning the state of talent management/HR in your organization.

We’ve outlined how unified talent management with closely coupled recruiting and performance management processes delivers higher quality of hire. The formula is simple: figure out the attributes of the best and get more of them. You define the abilities, behaviors, and experience profiles of your top performers and align them with your structured recruiting profiles.

FastCompany’s article Why It May Be Wiser To Hire People Without Meeting Them includes a baseball metaphor to illustrate why you should rely on objective data rather than subjective impressions:

Imagine if baseball GMs, in recruiting potential players, ignored past batting statistics and instead had a beer with players at Applebee's to test their culture fit.

Assessments, targeted sourcing, and referrals take the guesswork out of the interview and increase your odds of objectively hiring the best candidate. Read the report, Assessments in Talent Management to learn the how, and Recessionary Assessments for the why now.

In a time where Web 2.0 has spawned the methods of social network profile voyeurs, video resumes, and Google searches, the best use of technology is sticking to your processes and structured data.

It’s Fourth of July time again and America is 233 years old—a prime number. Many of the Baby Boomers in the prime of their careers looking towards retirement are singing a different tune about when they’re 64. A number of factors including deflated 401(k)s, healthcare costs, non-traditional work schedules, and the economy are stalling their departures amidst changing workforce demographics.

It seems Baby Boomers are not retiring like lemmings and creating talent shortages. Here’s some important research around workforce age issues:

Watson Wyatt says that older workers are delaying retirement by at least three years.

The Center for State & Local Government Excellence reports similar findings for the millions of public sector workers they represent with 85% saying that employees are delaying retirement.

The Difference a Downturn can Make: Assessing the Early Effects of the Economic Crisis on the Employment Experiences of Workers from Boston College's Sloan Center on Aging & Work offers insights into engagement and the economic crisis across age groups.

Change in Employee Engagement by Age Group after Onset of Economic Crisis

The report Age & Generations: Understanding Experiences at the Work Place explores the question Think Age is Enough to Predict Worker Needs? And Engaging The 21st Century Multi-Generational Workforce features a definition of engagement and identifies key drivers across age groups.

Engaging talent is shown to be different things to different people. However, the business benefits are well worth the effort, as demonstrated by increased productivity and organizational performance.

There’s clearly a talent and brand connection that drives business performance. Strong employment brands are essential in any economic environment if you want to attract top talent.

Employer Brand Institute's Employer Branding Global Research study with 2000+ respondents found that 46% of companies will increase investment in their employment branding this year. Nearly two-thirds of those will focus on career websites and recruitment marketing.

In Europe, Potentialpark Communications issued their list of top career websites with study findings that illustrate why career sites drive employment brand success: 96% of students do their job shopping online.

How do you get there? Start with a clear employment brand strategy that also reduces costs and reaps business results. From our research, the investment could pay for itself many times over.

Responding to cost control measures and smaller budgets, Watson Wyatt’s 2009 HR Technology Trends Survey found 61% of companies are looking to optimize their current HR processes and technologies.

For those who practice the principles and execute the initiatives, strategic talent management is the key to business management. Internet connectivity and Web 2.0 technologies now support software as a service deployment of these processes.

Additional findings from Seeking Cost Advantages in HR Technology and Service Delivery - 2009 HR Technology Trends Survey concur:

Talent management has become a higher priority for one-third of companies due to the economic crisis.

Social networking, while extremely new, is already being used more than most other Web 2.0 tools.

Further evolution of social networking habits and technology has created a great new opportunity: the ability to participate in and benefit from a talent community. Here is the definition as outlined in the Taleo Research white paper The Talent Community:

The talent community is defined as a distributed group of talent management practitioners who interact virtually rather than face-to-face, for the purpose of sharing talent management knowledge, talent management solutions, and talent profiles. Members are linked not by their place of employment, but by their common use—across organizations—of talent management technology applications.

Powered by user contributions on a common platform or Talent Grid, members benefit from conversation enabled by online discussion in an ecosystem of knowledge, solutions, and subject matter experts. This enhancement to talent practice adds new value to our customers and the growing talent community.

According to the Washington Post’s story Federal Antitrust Probe Targets Tech Giants, Sources Say, several large technology companies—Google, Apple, Genentech, Yahoo—are being investigated for antitrust behavior. The focus of the investigation doesn’t have to do with their products, intellectual property, or marketing practices—it’s their recruiting.

It’s alleged that they have agreements to not hire away top talent from each other, which could be perceived as a restraint of trade. Could this have big implications on non-compete agreements? If it’s not legal for companies to have agreements that other companies won’t try to take their best talent away, is it a huge leap to say that it shouldn’t be legal for companies to prevent their employees from actively pursuing employment on the other side of the street?

Interestingly, on the flipside, there’s the theory that you don’t want to hire talent away from your competitors. An MIT Sloan Management Review article, How to Minimize the Risks of Hiring Outside Stars, cautions: The more star workers’ performance depends on the people around them and on their familiarity with their company’s processes and culture, the less likely they are to perform at the same level on a new stage, at least at first.

Hiring salespeople from the competition always seems like a no-brainer, but there are many pitfalls with this hiring strategy, is outlined in Beware of Hiring Your Competitor’s Salespeople.

Corporate culture issues can also negate the benefits of poaching top performers, according to Are You Hiring a Rock Star or a Turnover Statistic? and Knowledge @ Wharton's article Hiring from Outside the Company: How New People Can Bring Unexpected Problems.

Perhaps, instead of holding your employees under litigious lock and key, allow your employees to thrive at what they do best, and provide career expansion opportunities to retain the top talent you have.

Whether your organization is hiring and retaining many or few, the importance of quality of hire and the difference in output from top performers is real. Although this is not news, new research and reiteration of the best methodologies is always welcome – especially when articulated in top-tier business media.

Harvard Business Review provides an outstanding set of information resources in its article, The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad, the accompanying podcast interview with author Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, and a Recruiting Practices Self-Assessment Quiz.

Although focused on the senior level (the lead author is a partner with executive search firm Egon Zehnder International), the emphasis on the significance of hiring and the issues around selection of the best candidate resonate across all levels. And, equally significant—instead of virtually preaching to the HR choir—the audience for this publication is executive leadership themselves.

Large global corporations have complex challenges when it comes to managing their workforce. Their goal is to be consistently global—yet flexibly local. What works in one region or country may not happen in another.

But cultural differences aside, those that use a global foundation of unified talent management processes based at headquarters set the stage for international success.

In that spirit, we’d like to congratulate The DiversityInc Top 10 Global Diversity Companies winners for 2009:
1: PricewaterhouseCoopers
2: IBM
3: Procter & Gamble
4: Cisco Systems
5: PepsiCo
6: Deloitte
7: Colgate-Palmolive
8: Novartis Pharmaceuticals
9: Bayer
10: Accenture

Attributes of the winners include commitment to inclusiveness, global employee resource groups, mentoring programs for skills and knowledge transfer, strong diversity training, and a commitment to values that emphasize diversity.

The business benefits are backed by research. In the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, work from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, found:

“…members of a social majority are more likely to voice unique perspectives and critically review task-relevant information when there is more social diversity present than when there is not.”

Diversity on a global scale is one of the major goals that can be achieved with a strong commitment to talent management. We know this to be true because seven of these ten winners are Taleo customers.

Managing costs is a primary business focus for all organizations in any economic climate. The general goal is to optimize business processes and cut operational expenses without diminishing desired outcomes. The ideal result is to reduce costs while also improving business results.

For recruiting—which continues even in the down economy—there are cost reductions and process improvements available especially in the areas of sourcing, assessment, and green recruiting, specifically for expenses for:
• Agencies
• Advertising
• Sourcing
• Turnover
• Paper
• Processing

Real-world examples of results and ROI generated by Taleo customers who have used these strategies include:
• 24% reduction in cost per hire.
• 23% reduction in time to hire.
• Annualized cost savings of $4 million to $10 million.
• Return on investment of 8x to 10x.

The new Taleo Research paper, Recruiting: Reducing Direct Costs and Reaping Results, provides detailed insights into reviewing recruiting practices for acquiring and retaining a high quality workforce. In addition, use our online Recruiting Process Assessment to identify areas of improvement in your recruiting process.

You may uncover new sourcing, assessment, and green opportunities to generate bottom line results by quantifying direct costs and reaping the benefits.

How are CEOs and executives thinking about talent in this economic environment? Deloitte reports findings in a series of global studies. Part One of Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Playing both offense and defense explains how executives are focused on cutting costs and reducing headcount while taking a strategic talent perspective. Findings include:
• More than 50% will restructure jobs to cut costs.
• 40% want to attract specialized talent.
• 30% are looking for leaders.

Part Two of Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy: Navigating a course through rough waters focuses on cost cutting: layoffs, headcount reductions, and retention methods. There’s also a podcast on talent in tough times called The pink slip dilemma: Talent management in a downturn.

Threading the talent needle: What global executives are saying about people and work features findings from 28 one-on-one interviews conducted by Deloitte and Forbes Insights with CEOs and other business leaders in a dozen countries.

They agree that talent management is essential to business success and remains top of mind for boards and executives. But current economic factors are making them juggle the priorities of cost reductions, engagement, and aligning talent to business goals for future growth. The report summarizes the findings in this call to action:

In the end, a company’s ability to attract, develop, and retain critical talent is the key to sustained performance and competitiveness.

Read these studies and interviews for more insights about the business power of succession, diversity, and employment branding—even in tough economic times.

A decade ago, people were worried about Y2K while partying like it was 1999. Human Resources had already replaced the Personnel Department. The War for Talent published by McKinsey had caused reverberations throughout the C-level. HR was transforming itself from an administrative function to a strategic player with a seat at the executive table.

The new millennium ushered in a new Age of Talent in which people are now perceived as assets for innovation rather than liabilities on the balance sheet. Talent management rose to the forefront of HR thought leadership. The Talent Decade was born.

In 1999, Taleo started as Recruitsoft by applying supply chain concepts to recruiting and talent management processes of global corporations. With the growth of the Internet, strategic talent management has delivered best practices, process automation, and value to businesses of all sizes using the innovative online technologies of software as a service (SaaS). We are celebrating our 10 year anniversary and proud to be a leader in the field.

At Taleo Research, we’ve had the good fortune to share in the experiences of half the Fortune 100, global corporations, and thousands of businesses who are using talent management to align people with business performance.

What does the future of talent in the workplace look like? Read about that and more in 10 of our most popular blog postings of the past year:

Future of Talent Management
Performance + Recruiting: Design Your Talent Pipeline
You Only Get One Chance to Make a First Impression
Talent Economics: Supply & Demand
Tune Your Sourcing Strategy
Social Networking Job Connections
Sourcing from the Inside Out
The Talent Grid: The Platform is the Service
Generation Y: Faster Impressions
Advantage: Talent Management

Cheers!

Are companies done cost-cutting and preparing for the economic upturn? According to two major US studies, the answers are yes…and no.

Watson Wyatt’s April 2009 Update: Effect of the Economic Crisis on HR Programs offers these key takeaways:
• Cost-cutting plans for the next 12 months have decreased across the board.
• Organizations are shifting to alternative cost-cutting methods such as reducing hours through mandatory shutdowns or reduced workweeks.
• Pay increases are down in 2009, but employers expect a rebound in merit increase budgets in 2010.

The Hewitt Associates April 2009 Cost Reduction & Engagement Survey concluded:

Most companies believe that the nation’s economic upturn will begin by the end of this year or the first quarter of next year and that their own organization’s financial improvement will coincide with that upturn. In the meantime, although significant cost reduction efforts have been undertaken, many are still contemplating additional cuts. Many companies feel that the manner in which they have undertaken cuts may be too short-term focused. They are also seeing declines in employee trust, and worry that they will not have the talent they need when the economy recovers.

Top 5 Risks Mentioned:
• Employee engagement/morale
• Responsiveness–ability to ramp up fast enough when the economy turns around
• Turnover/retention
• Negative impact on current work outcomes (productivity/customer satisfaction)
• Loss of key talent

It’s a dicey time which requires careful consideration of the effects of corporate actions on both the immediate need to curtail expenses and the longer view of corporate sustainability and competitiveness. Now more than ever the direct alignment of talent to business goals becomes critical.

Communications and utilizing talent management practices that promote employee engagement and productivity are key.

Our recent study on Recessionary Management revealed that by a two to one margin, companies report the largest risk to their bottom line and brand is low employee engagement and productivity. How do you boost engagement for higher productivity—even in a down economy? Try tighter talent alignment.

Many drivers affect the direct connection between engagement and productivity. Automated goals management—tied to performance reviews with advanced technology and reporting tools—can boost an organization’s retention and productivity.

Steps to Success
• Get Management Commitment
• Cascade Business Goals
• Automate Goals Management
• Deliver Meaningful Performance Reviews

Our bottom line takeaway is this: Align business and individual goals if you want to define a clear line of sight to business performance. Read more in the new Taleo Research paper Alignment Drives Employee Engagement and Productivity.

You're hired—next year in The Economist offers insights on hire-and-hold strategies and preparations for ramped up hiring.

Bright Spot in Downturn: New Hiring Is Robust in The New York Times does a good job of defining net job creation and loss. People are still being hired even when the economy experiences gross job losses. Some industries even show net job gains. Bottom line: companies are hiring.

BusinessWeek’s Why Jobs Go Begging Amid Layoffs uses payroll statistics and reports to come to the conclusion that the employability gap is due to mismatched skills and a buyer’s market in hiring. Their Help Wanted article cites US statistics and compares 13 million unemployed workers with 3 million jobs unfilled. Of course we see how this dilemma points to talent management and our research on a couple of levels.

Talent Management in a Down Economy makes the point that talent processes are important in any economy because even in recessionary times with a backdrop of layoffs and unemployment, there are millions of jobs that still need to be filled.

Aligning talent to business goals and people to jobs is a big part of the solution. The underlying mismatch problem shows how assessments combined with structured data delivers a powerful solution for getting people into jobs where they can demonstrate their passion for the game.

Not only do people need to adapt their skill sets faster, business needs to be more agile in how it evaluates and places candidates.

Gauging job satisfaction and fueling engagement are tough enough in good times. But when times are tough, it’s actually a great time to restart engagement by focusing on performance management and goals alignment.

Taleo Research recently studied responses of nearly 1,000 US workers that focused on job performance and found 80% want to change their performance reviews. Employees clearly want engaging change where the performance process directly reflects and rewards their efforts.

According to our Engaging Times research in the UK, workers need more than a job. Even in a recession, they require a higher level of engagement that employers are not currently providing. Findings include these glass half empty / half full observations. Only:
• 45% have visibility of internal job opportunities.
• 42% can see their next step up the career ladder.
• 57% have career communications with their employer.
• 40% have access to online career tools.

One important bottom line takeaway is this: an employee’s role understanding rises to 82% when talent management tools are used.

We all know that engagement is tied to productivity and retention. A major road to success in recessionary talent management is balancing talent retention with cost reduction. One good path is to define and align individual and business goals, provide a clear career path with internal mobility options, and tie results to a pay for performance environment.

Smart organizations should leap at this opportunity to stimulate engagement. As stated in The Economist’s Disengagement Party article:

Those organisations that can strike a better balance between the loot and the other stuff that makes employees love their firms will be the ones that emerge victorious from the economic malaise.

Industry reports reveal cutbacks by organizations in diversity programs as cost cutting moves in response to a down economy, according to Meagan Polakowski’s blog posting, Taking Sides. This tactic flies in the face of research:

What Strong Teams Have in Common speaks to Gallup research on the strong link between employee engagement and diversity and the key elements of strong organizational teams.

Research Links Diversity With Increased Sales Revenues, Profits and Customers notes that companies with the highest racial diversity had 15 times greater sales revenue, according to a University of Illinois study.

The American Sociological Review in Does Diversity Pay? reports diversity is as an important predictor of higher revenue, customers, and profits.

Clearly the numbers bear out what many already know: diversity is good for business and part of a winning talent strategy.

Executive perspectives on the economy are varied. But in the PricewaterhouseCoopers 12th Annual Global CEO Survey 2009, more than 1,000 CEOs were asked:

“How important are the following sources of competitive advantage in sustaining your growth over the long term?”

Here are the top three responses; all relate to talent management:
1. Access to, and retention of, key talent
2. Ability to adapt to change
3. Strength of your brand and reputation

Rather than believe the economy has deteriorated the importance of HR and talent, the PwC survey validates similar previous findings including:

• Taking It From the Top: Boards Concerned About Talent Management
• Talent Management: Top Business Priority
• Advantage: Talent Management

CEO turnover rose 39% in March 2009, as 114 CEO departures were announced during the month, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

ExecuNet's 17th Annual Executive Job Market Report reiterates that the down economy is taking a toll on all executive employment. Here is one significant highlight:

The average executive tenure continues to decline from 3.2 years in 2007 to 2.8 years in 2008; a result of corporate belt tightening and increasing demand for different skill sets in key leadership functions.

Contrast this finding with the Mellon Learning Curve Research Study which found Median Time to Full Productivity for external executives at 26 weeks and internal executives at 16 weeks.

The gap between ramping up and leaving the organization is closing. These high executive churn rates are a costly productivity drain on the organization. Investing in succession planning, talent alignment, and onboarding can hasten that time to productivity and increase results.

Boosting productivity has always been an ongoing business goal. In a tough economy, the variation on that theme is doing more with less. So we are seeing a myriad of approaches and management strategies to improve productivity.

One example is productivity gained from specific workforce programs such as telework. Can Telework Cut Costs and Raise Productivity in Today's Economy? reports that productivity went up 31% for the 9,000 telecommuters at British Telecom.

Companies' Secret Weapon: Underutilized Executives says there may be more productivity available just for the asking, according to an Accenture survey called Untapped Potential: Stretching Toward the Future. Aligning talent to new roles and challenges equates to increased productivity with 58% interested in doing more.

However there is a more fundamental holistic talent management approach that produces systemic success rather than simply treating the symptoms. It’s succinctly stated in this memorable quote by the noted management guru Peter Drucker:

“Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.”

Aligning talent to business is a fundamental benefit of unified talent management where performance management is linked to recruiting and goals are tied to performance and compensation. Cascading goals increase communication and boost focused productivity.

Talent management strategies powered by technology are making a business difference. Companies who use them are being recognized with awards for innovative recruiting and diversity programs.

The 2009 ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards featured these achievements in campus hiring, careers site, referrals, recruiting, and branding:

• Best Employer Brand - Ernst & Young
• Best College Recruiting Program - Ernst & Young
• Best Corporate Careers Website - Yahoo
• Best Employee Referral Program - Accenture
• Recruiting Department/Function of the Year - DaVita

Diversity.com has published the DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® online. This year the top fifty includes seven Taleo customers in the top ten.

The DiversityInc Top Ten Companies for Recruitment & Retention includes these companies that are making diversity happen in a talent management framework:

• Accenture built an inclusive culture with deep resource groups.
• AT&T stresses exemplary benefits and inclusive corporate culture.
• Bank of America offers excellent benefits and resource groups.
• Johnson & Johnson focuses on retention, development, and benefits.
• JPMorgan Chase employs benefits, work/life programs, and counseling.
• Target demonstrates great results in recruitment and management.

We’re all in agreement that the research bears out: hiring diversity is good for business, and talent management practices drive profits.

Congratulations to all the winners! Many are powered by Taleo!

It’s mainstream news now that you can post messages and links for your followers in up to 140 characters on Twitter. Most people who tweet post current status, observations, and interesting ideas. All these messages are searchable.

Recently, a message by a candidate in the hiring process that they assumed was private was picked up by their hiring company. Not only that, but this individual has also become a public scapegoat for this public faux pas. The lesson here is that social media has increased personal transparency.

Twitter gets you fired in 140 characters or less goes further in reminding us that the Internet in general and social networking tools specifically offer public visibility. Curiously, in terms of social network profile use by recruiters, German recruiters are twice as likely to view candidate social sites as their UK colleagues. And candidates do not consider what they write on their social networking sites as less than a third think this will affect their chances of securing a position.

On the recruiting side, businesses are turning to Twitter to cut recruitment costs and pushing job postings out via tweetmyjobs and job search engine twitterjobsearch.com.

Taleo has joined the conversation on Twitter and has a presence on Facebook.

We’re also pleased this blog is now included in the new blog aggregation site called HR Tech Central. Check it out.

The value of learning from the past in McKinsey’s Mapping decline and recovery across sectors is stated as: Decisions about acquisitions, divestitures, and even recruiting or retaining talent often hang in the balance.

As a timely example, they have provided an interesting graphic view of past recessions that may hold clues to looking ahead.

Talent management strategies must respond to individual organizational circumstances as well as broader industry—even geographic—conditions. For some, it is an ideal time for Upgrading Talent.

For all talent management and HR professionals, now is a perfect point in time to partner with executive leadership. Learn from the past and use Effective Strategies for HR Managers Working With the C-Suite to navigate the present and prepare for the future.

Optimizing the onboarding process neatly fits the current hyperfocus on reaping immediate gains from reducing expenses and increasing employee output. In fact, 50% of all executives surveyed for Aberdeen Group’s research paper, Fully On-Board: Getting the Most from Your Talent in the First Year, indicate that the current state of the economy will increase the importance their organization places on onboarding in 2009.

Taleo customer Rockwell Collins has saved approximately $200,000 in shipping fees alone and considers their formal onboarding program a key component of a successful employee retention strategy. El Paso Corporation has reported savings ranging from $15 to $100 per employee by using onboarding technology.

Productivity gains are also significant, as the study notes:

The ability for new employees to accurately and quickly complete all required forms is key to help them concentrate on the job at-hand, get up to speed quickly, and be productive.

Follow-up conversations with several organizations that achieved Best-in-Class results and have automated onboarding forms and/or tasks management uncovered cost savings and productivity gains that ranged from a couple of hundred to more than one thousand dollars per new employee onboarded.

A well-designed and automated onboarding process reduces costs, hastens time to productivity, and improves retention. As an element of an organization’s talent management strategy, streamlined onboarding also increases efficiency, reduces process variances, provides better service levels for hiring managers, improves compliance, and creates more staffing process consistency.

When it comes to talent management, the following three things are true:

1. Research is essential.
2. Strategies are important.
3. Innovative technology solutions power execution.

But there is nothing more compelling than customer stories of talent management in action. How always illustrates the why, when, and what of any business initiative.

Josh Bersin writes in his blog Aramark: Talent Management at its Finest how talent management has made a significant impact using a sharp business focus at Aramark.

Talent Management magazine’s Whirlpool’s Tech Focus Attracts Top Talent explains how Whirlpool uses talent management to recruit, retain, and power innovation.

Teach for America: A Lesson in College Recruiting highlights Teach for America’s successful recruiting and career site branding.

As all these stories prove, it’s not just the ideas – it’s ideas + execution.

Every couple of years, someone writes a scathing article about HR. You probably remember Why We Hate HR in Fast Company magazine. And each time there are measured responses in the blogosphere about HR’s role in the age of talent.

These press events get exposure for the author and provoke the business to start a dialogue with HR. Talent management makes headlines.

Now Rutgers professor Richard Beatty from publish or perish academia (with coincidentally a new book The Differentiated Workforce: Transforming Talent into Strategic Impact to promote) has made a presentation leading to this headline: Memo to CFOs: Don't Trust HR. Responses from Gartner's Jim Holincheck, The HR Capitalist, and ZDNet blogger Dennis Howlett are notable in their attention to detail, call for HR differentiation, and what business needs to do.

Now it’s our turn. Unfortunately for Beatty’s position, the world of research and hard data totally refutes his assertions on engagement:

• Engaged companies have a stronger bottom line and 2.6X growth in earnings per share according to Building Engagement in This Economic Crisis from the Gallup Management Journal.

• Highly engaged employee companies enjoy 26% higher employee productivity, lower turnover, higher talent attraction, and greater shareholder return; see findings in Watson Wyatt’s 2008/2009 WorkUSA Report.

• Talent management practices power engaged companies to achieve higher profit per employee by nearly 40%, as explained in Why multinationals struggle to manage talent from McKinsey.

• Increasing engagement in a 10,000 person organization can boost the bottom line by more than $40 million, as estimated in Employee Engagement: The Key To Realizing Competitive Advantage from DDI.

And be sure to read our forthcoming paper, Alignment Drives Employee Engagement and Productivity, which further articulates how engagement powers higher revenue per employee, higher performance, and greater shareholder return.

Although most recent attention has been on firing, not hiring, there is still significant hiring activity. In fact, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there’s about 20 percent voluntary turnover in the workforce. Many of those open positions will be filled with new hires.

That said, it’s always instructive to read the findings from current surveys and studies and use the data to continuously improve and shape your recruiting strategy – even if it’s focused on relatively few replacement hires due to churn. Two interesting studies provide worthwhile insights into supply and demand:

1. CareerXroads released its annual Source of Hire Study: What Happened in 2008 and What It Means for 2009 on how corporate staffing functions measure and report sources of hires for the openings they fill. Findings include:
• Internal Transfers and Promotions were 38.8% of all the full-time positions a company fills.
• Referrals make up 27.3% of all external hires and arguably remain the number one external source.

Sources of Hire Comparison 2005-2008

2. Staffing.org published a study about candidates, Job Seeker Attitudes and Behaviors: Mastering Internet Recruiting. Among the findings is clear validation that corporate career websites have great reach among those elusive “passive” jobseekers.

Each hire you make is critical to your organization’s success. Understanding candidate behavior and knowing what sources are working best are an important part of an overall recruiting strategy.

With more than one billion users now, the Internet has become a preferred choice for recruiters, candidates, and networkers to connect. Imagine all these people around the world connected via a Talent Grid.

From employers to jobseekers and solution providers, everyone in the process can connect to careers, knowledge, solutions, and talent using the Internet. In fact, for jobseekers the question isn’t whether they’re looking online for jobs – it’s when are they looking. Here are some interesting results for Europe according to Experteer.co.uk:

At Taleo, we are making The Talent Community a reality for our customers who already are using online job search and social networking tools to recruit and retain talent. Taleo customer’s Recruiting at HCA West Florida blog encourages jobseekers to use social networking as a primary method of networking for jobs.

Employers can also set up Facebook employment brand fan pages. The upcoming webcast, Harnessing the Groundswell to Boost Talent Management, further explores the advantages of enterprise social networking for attracting and retaining talent.

Advanced career sites and social networking are no longer optional. They’re required.

McKinsey coined the term War for Talent. But in these times of layoffs, furloughs, and reductions in force, are we seeing a War on Talent? Attitudes towards human capital are radically shifting as the economic ground tremors persist. Here’s one example:

The top business challenges identified in a new Pulse on Leaders global study by Personnel Decisions International (PDI) are:
1. Financial pressures to cut costs (83%)
2. Rapid market decline (54%)
3. Competitive threats (23%)
4. Access to capital (23%)
5. Realizing the full potential of a recent merger or acquisition (16%)
6. Taking advantage of pockets of rapid market growth (16%)
7. Leveraging global expansion investments (13%)
8. Loss of leaders in key areas or insufficient talent to quickly adapt to change (5%)

A similar study in the Fall of 2008 identified these top challenges:
1. Achieving top-line growth (46%)
2. Talent management (33%)
3. Meeting financial objectives (23%)
4. Implementing business strategy (13%)
5. Developing business strategy (13%)
6. Infrastructure/operations issues (12%)
7. Mergers and acquisitions (11%)
8. Current customers (11%)
9. Capitalization/cash flow (11%)
10. Organizational culture/change (9%)

The perceived war for talent is no longer motivating an executive focus on talent management. The people agenda is now hanging precariously at the bottom of the priority list even though the value drivers are clear.

Business executives may be under the impression that there is top talent readily available on the market. They may think that the business can easily replace anyone. In that mindset, talent management loses its focus and employees are commoditized. Without a leadership focus on talent management, the war for talent could morph into a war on talent.

The research bears out the facts against commoditization of people: talent is complex and not a simple function of supply and demand. Turnover replacement costs are real and time to hire creates a void where business performance is stressed or stalls while waiting to fill the role.

Talent management isn’t only about recruiting quality talent in a time of growth. Successful talent management practices impact the bottom line in any economic season.

We’ve written before about not losing your head when you tighten your belt. Now there are more numbers that back up what we intuitively know about happy employees and the hidden costs of layoffs. How you handle recessionary talent management reflects directly on your employment brand which affects business performance.

The Economist’s Profiting from happiness article shows how good companies to work for are also good investments because of superior performance. This relates in principle to studies which found a connection between companies that use talent management and achieve higher performance.

Portfolio’s The Hidden Cost of Layoffs provides insights into the unexpected results of layoffs on your workforce and the detriments to performance.

How to avoid death by a thousand cuts cites findings by the Center for Creative Leadership that indicate higher motivation in companies that foster trust in challenging times.

Listen to the Brand from the Inside: Proven Strategies for Engaging Employees webcast presented by Libby Sartain and Mark Schumann, co-authors of Brand From the Inside: Eight Essentials to Emotionally Connect Your Employees to Your Business, to find out how building an employment brand from the inside out emotionally engages employees and candidates.

Many businesses are feeling the economic pinch. But according to SurePayroll's January 2009 Small Business Scorecard, small businesses are showing better performance than larger organizations. Even in a tough economy, businesses are hiring.

Small and medium-sized businesses that focus on talent management—including recruiting and retention strategies—can maximize performance, especially in these recessionary times.

Consider attending one of our special seminars for quantitative analysis and actionable insights on how to cut costs, improve efficiency, align people to business goals, and power organizational change. Taleo will be joined by Knowledge Infusion and Intelius for a lively discussion about Making Every Head Count.

HR and talent management leaders need to take a holistic view of talent management if they want to aid their organizations in surviving this recession and position correctly for the inevitable recovery.

Recessionary Management: The Top DOs and DON’Ts for Managing Talent in the Current Downturn outlines how HR leaders can make the right talent decisions today, whether their organization is retrenching, maintaining, or expanding.

Key findings of the study by Taleo Research and the Human Capital Institute show that while some organizations intend to take advantage of the bounty of talent now on the market, most will struggle with the challenges of selective hiring while letting others go. Many also need to upgrade technology to make progress on the initiatives they value.

Just look at the difference between the practices respondents need to preserve their bottom line and brand compared to their use of technology.

Technology Application to Most Valued Recessionary Practices

Except in performance management where technology nearly matches value perception, there is sub-optimal use of technology support for essential talent management processes.

Our second annual employee study of how much employees love their jobs found that most workers enjoy, feel important, or like what they do…yet only 15% love their job enough to marry it. More troubling are these survey findings:

• Two out of five workers are open to looking for a new position.
• 13% are actively pursuing new opportunities.

And that’s in today’s anxious recessionary environment.

So on Valentine’s Day, love may be in the air, but the survey findings call for action on the ground. Just as any successful long-term relationship requires, employees need to be constantly courted to remain engaged and highly productive.

Talent management practices which help drive employee engagement are not singular events, but need to be components of an ongoing process that fosters interaction about performance, and visibility into career opportunities in the organization.

Clear communication around corporate goals and each employee’s role can go a long way towards driving corporate results through employee performance.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's tracking survey, the number of adult Internet users who have a social networking profile has risen from 8% to 35% in four years. Social networking is no longer only a recruiting tactic or a quirky habit of Generation Y. It’s gone mainstream.

Social Networks Grow: Friending Mom and Dad explains how even though the largest percentage of users (75%) is still in the 18-24 year old range, the overall growth has extended throughout the demographics.

More than half of UK employers surveyed say Graduates Don't Just Want to Use Social Networking in the Work Place They Expect It.

Web-based networking is just one use of technology that is increasing its value among jobseekers and employees. More broadly, a national survey found that four in five workers said access to technology is important to their capacity to be creative (78%) and productive (80%) at work.

• 80% said that such technology gives their employer an edge in the marketplace.

• 39% surveyed said they would consider changing jobs if it meant having access to more up-to-date technology.

The survey respondents are not exclusively IT workers, just as all the social networkers are not Millennials. Today, technology tools can help you connect with and retain talent. That talent also use the tools for greater productivity. Talent management professionals can use up-to-date technology tools to achieve both benefits.

In lock step with layoffs is news of less robust recruiting functions and recruiter layoffs.

Google laying off recruiters describes how the former top employment brand has made changes to recruiting.

Headhunters get the ax explains that less hiring demand means less need for recruiting supply.

Out-of-Work Sourcers describes how some HR staffing functions are being cut.

Are there alternatives? How about repurposing recruiters into other initiatives such as succession planning, performance management, and retention of top talent to mitigate the costs of turnover? After all, recruiters are people specialists.

The Human Capitalist makes the point well in: Should Recruiters Be Planning Succession?

And Josh Bersin outlines Five Reasons to Focus on Recruiting in 2009.

Wholesale purges of the recruiting function are bad for the employment brand and bad business. Because when the economy recovers and your company needs people, who will be there to recruit them? Your renewed growth will be hamstrung by a significant delay in hiring the recruiters who will hire the rest of your innovative talent.

Instead of incurring that cost, apply recruiters’ skills to today’s organizational talent needs and stand ready for tomorrow.

Today’s harsh economic environment prompts the chicken and egg business question. Is it Cash or People: Are people really your most important asset?

Though presented as a point counterpoint debate, most of the advice in this interesting publication promotes the importance of the workforce. Although some views are focused on the vertical industries of retail, insurance, and life sciences, there is familiar—and broad-based—prescriptive advice that lines up with Taleo’s views and offerings, such as:

Goals Alignment
Make sure talent is laser focused on what really matters.

Strategic Recruiting
Forward-thinking organizations are opportunistically acquiring top talent.

And Career Management
Emphasize career development.

Of course, successful organizations need cash but without their people, there’d be no business to be done.

As the economy takes a step back, compliance issues move forward. Top of mind are defensible hiring and firing practices with the associated reporting and analytics to mitigate litigation risks. A number of articles have been covering different aspects.

Layoffs spark rise in wrongful termination lawsuits reports that with the wave of downsizing and giving notice, we are seeing the associated complaints. The article outlines expert opinion and a series of actions to minimize business impact.

Workplace litigation risk heats up as economy cools recommends maintaining benefits to boost retention, using nondiscriminatory criteria and decision documentation for reductions in force, and written waiver and release agreements in exchange for separation benefits.

Add ‘Review Background Screening’ To Your List of Resolutions notes that EEOC field offices have been aggressively pursuing cases where one or more forms of discrimination permeate a company’s hiring practices. Focusing on the direct relationship between each position’s background screening criteria and the job description can help avoid issues.

And Noticing the differences provides insight into how those making global job cuts need to focus locally and tailor programs to specific geographies.

The bottom line here is that a unified talent management system provides a structure of consistent and defensible processes. Nonetheless, how you execute comes down to the individual skills of your HR specialists and line managers.

These are givens: workforce expenditures comprise the majority of expenses for many, even most, companies. And the Board of Directors is the most senior-level executive group addressing corporate operations and strategy.

Consider this troubling news: A survey conducted by Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc. and the Center for Effective Organizations (CEO) at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business found:

Human Resources Executives Lack Representation on Boards
Although human resources are an increasingly important corporate asset, 78 percent of the respondents said that they have no HR experts on the board. Only 16 percent said their boards have a committee on human capital, while 75 percent said their boards have never considered having one.

In the context of current economic conditions, The Wall Street Journal article, Boards Are MIA for Workforce Decisions, further explains:

When asked whether the board receives information regarding human capital, the results at best are mixed. They get succession planning data for top management positions, but not about critical technical positions, or metrics on turnover, recruiting success and employee attitudes. Without these data, it is hard to imagine that directors can make informed decisions about how their organizations should deal with an economic downturn.

Most boards have no members with a background in HR management. Thus, when it comes to answering key questions about the impact of a layoff, how to deal with survivors and whether the company is laying off the right people, most boards lack individuals who have expertise in talent management and workforce motivation.

Perhaps today’s talent-intensive organizations should revisit who’s on board?

When you realize people make a competitive difference, talent becomes the strategy. Read why and how from thought leaders from a wide variety of positions and industries: CIO of Toyota Motor Sales, EVP of retail banking at PNC Financial Services, HR director of Barclays, and chief personnel officer of ThyssenKrupp.

These Taleo users have used talent innovation and strategy execution to make a difference. And all of the leading executives and academics featured in Capturing the People Advantage: Thought Leaders on Human Capital recognize the value of human capital as a critical enabler of business results.

Among many insights around strategy, business, and talent management is this affirmative one in USC business professor Edward Lawler III’s chapter, Walking the Talk with Talent:

In any organization that believes human capital is its most important asset, it follows logically that the HR department should be its most important staff group. This means that HR should contain some of the top talent in the company, along with the best information technology resources, and HR should be a valued expert resource when it comes to strategy development, change management, organization design, and talent management.

Booz & Company is now offering this book in PDF format as a free download. It’s a good read.

The Taleo Research study, HR Challenges in 2009 has found—for the third consecutive year—that employee retention is the biggest concern for UK HR managers.

Although budgets may tighten as the UK economy slows—more HR managers expect their budget to decrease (25%) rather than increase (22%); about half (54%) expect no change—the focus will be on identifying and retaining top talent. Internal mobility and employee engagement are viewed as essential components to retain a competitive edge and ensure company survival.

To respond to that challenge, almost half (48%) of those surveyed want “a system to improve performance management, succession and career planning” in 2009.

The need for better tools and the emphasis on retention practices by HR managers is further validated by a CareerBuilder.co.uk employee survey. It found 40 percent do not feel loyal to their current employer and 23 percent said they are likely to leave their current position to change jobs in a year or less. A number of the reasons cited for the lack of loyalty map directly to the need for improved talent management programs.

Performance management can address the criticisms:
Don’t feel my employer values me (61%)
My efforts are not recognized or appreciated (46%)

Internal mobility, succession and career planning initiatives can counter the complaints:
Not enough career advancement opportunities (42%)
Work is not challenging enough (24%)

With a focus on retention at the top of the list in this 2009 recessionary economy, HR managers in the UK and worldwide can realize positive outcomes from talent management solutions that directly impact the performance of their workforces.

Which came first? A: companies looking globally for talent? Or B: talent looking globally for work? It seems that the talent age that we’re in is now clearly a global—and mobile—talent age. Substantial numbers of workers would move significant distances for work.

The counterpart: a dramatic increase in the percentage of companies by headquarters location reporting that they have or will establish a global pool of talent within the company, according to The Boston Consulting Group/World Federation of Personnel Management Associations report "Creating People Advantage: How to Address HR Challenges Worldwide Through 2015”.

In North America, for example, it’s up from 19% in 2007 to 41% in 2010-2015; in Europe, 28% in 2007 to 49% in 2010-2015; and in Emerging Asia: 40% in 2007 to 69% in 2010-2015.

Obviously global talent pools provide access to a large candidate pool. However, they don’t need to be exclusively for new hires. Organizations that have platforms supporting and providing visibility into global talent pools can include their current workforce alongside external candidates.

Ultimate mobility can mean having the best talent in the right location, regardless of geography. So maybe it’s time to think global and act global and get on the road to global talent implementation.