Deloitte's Talent Development Framework

Here's an interesting article from Kim Lamoureux at Bersin & Associates, a research firm focused on talent management systems. She shares how Deloitte helps its employees describe their ideal career through four factors. I think this is a smart idea, especially for a firm like Deloitte with highly specialized employees in a physically decentralized environment. The key to this is (1) accurately profiling your jobs in a standardized way so people can compare and contrast opportunities; (2) rewarding managers for strong talent development results (3) allowing employees to revisit these preferences throughout their lives as things change and (4) having online tools that allow easy access to essential information, preferences, and availability. These tools are worthless, however, if the organizational culture offers disincentives for managers around talent mobility and development, so look honestly at rewards, symbols, practices and managers' experiences to see what will need to change before they will participate willingly. Here's the article:

If you haven’t noticed, the workforce and the workplace have changed. We are now living in an age of a multi-generational workforce with an enhanced need for interconnectivity, an aversion to long-term commitment, and an expectation of unlimited career opportunities. At the same time, the workplace is faced with new leadership, significant restructuring and increased expectations of high performance.

Companies are transforming in many ways to meet these demands including a focus on globalization, mobility, flexibility, and collaboration. In this same spirit, organizations are beginning take a much broader view and build dynamic internal processes for moving talent from role to role at the leadership, professional and operational levels. We refer to this as “talent mobility.”

As a matter of fact, one of the biggest success-drivers in enduring organizations is their ability to rapidly and transparently move people from role to role and function to function as business needs change. To do this requires a new way of thinking about and managing talent. It requires managers to become more fluent and transparent when speaking about talent and it requires employees to become more actively engaged and candid about their career aspirations and development goals.

Talent mobility can only be achieved through a well integrated talent management strategy. How a company recruits talent, manages its employees’ careers and develops the right capabilities to fulfill business needs is essential for enabling a mobile, high performing workforce. Below are two examples of companies that have demonstrated best practices in this area.

Deloitte
Deloitte, a $27 billion company with more than 165,000 people, is one of the best talent management organizations we have studied. The company spends more than $300 million a year on development, and has built an innovative career model called the “career lattice.” Deloitte’s model enables employees to build their own customized career – by looking at the tradeoffs between four dimensions:

• Pace – rate of career progression
• Workload – quantity of work output
• Location / schedule - when and where work is performed
• Role – type of position and responsibilities

By transparently discussing these four dimensions, employees of all ages and experience can plan their careers as high powered consultants, leaders, experts, or support. Even in today’s tough times, Deloitte expects an 18% growth this year and their ability to quickly move into new industries and new businesses is one of their greatest strengths.

PEMEX
Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) is an $86 billion company which discovered one of the world’s largest oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006. But its exploration and production organization is rapidly retiring – they expect 32% of these professionals to leave in 5 years and 20% within 3 years.

To fill this gap, the company has implemented an end-to-end succession and career mobility programs for all 9,500 technical professionals – this program takes into account skills, work experience, demographic background, language, educational history, performance ratings, psychometric analysis, certifications and learning results, and the employee’s personal career interests. Every employee in PEMEX has a transparent, published career plan and these career plans are actively managed.

Talent mobility is the movement of talent to where it is needed most – and understanding the opportunities for leveraging key skills and knowledge across the company. For years, companies have talked about the right talent in the right roles at the right time. That is the essence of talent mobility. And now is the opportunity for companies to really rethink how they make that happen more seamlessly and intentionally.

H1N1 Guide From The Society For Human Resource Management

Here's a PDF from the Society For Human Resource Management with comprehensive employer tips on how to prepare for, and deal with, the H1N1 issue.

The key is helping people stay home when they're sick because it really does prevent the spread of the disease. Unfortunately, employees might feel pressure to come into work because:

• They feel deadline or sales pressure.
  
• There are inadequate sick time allowances or programs.
  
• There are unintentional incentives to come into work sick. For example, some employers lump sick and vacation into a simple paid time off category. Less use of this category for sick time means more vacation time or cash-out potential upon termination.
  
• There is a culture of working at any cost and sickness is considered a sign of low motivation towards the team.
• There are limited or no tools for tele-commuting.
• There is poor communication from senior managers (not just HR) about the need to stay home when battling the flu or other contagious diseases.
• Parents have little or no support for sick kids at home. Sick kids generally mean sick parents which can easily mean sick co-workers. Sick time policies should be flexible and include caring for loved ones.
  

In the end, it's always better to have a few people stay home longer than have more people get sick. People will pay attention more to your actions than words, so work with your employees and managers to do a thorough analysis of your organization's approach and ensure that people can do the right thing when ill. There is very clear research that although people may read policies or emails, they will only change behavior when they see peers and managers doing it first. This means that any kind of credible change will require employee and manager involvement and education, and behavioral change from managers and influential employees. Good luck!