My reaction to this $4.9 billion deal is fairly optimistic but I do see a major challenge.  On the good side, when you consider Hewitt’s dominance in the large-market HR outsourcing space and combine that expertise with Aon’s mid-market client base and brokerage business, you have to assume this will give the newly merged organization a leg up on mid-market HR outsourcing.  In fact, figures released in the merger announcement indicate that outsourcing will contribute 51% of the combined entity’s revenues of around US$ 4.3 billion.  What remains a question for me is the human capital consulting side of the business.  I believe it will be a challenge to simultaneously build the mid-market outsourcing and brokerage business and expand the firm’s human capital consulting services at the same time. The distractions that come with a merger of this size will limit how much energy can be channelled into these two distinctly different markets. 

In any event, I wish them luck and look forward to working with Aon Hewitt in the future.

Workscape serves a broad client base, including a number of Fortune 250 companies (and quite a few Findley Davies clients), and provides solutions to more than 3.5 million users with services deployed in over 180 countries, 48 currencies and 70 languages. Clearly, this acquisition will significantly expand ADP’s presence within the benefits marketplace for large, complex organizations in the short term.  The key to this news will be how well ADP actually integrates Workscape’s services into their solution mix over the long term.  Time will tell…

From the looks of things, the process of screening candidates is now more complicated and convoluted than before technology offered its solutions.  In many cases, once my friend is able to leverage a personal relationship to get to a recruiter to find out what happened to the resume she submitted for an opening, she is finding out her electronic application and resume never made it into the recruiter’s hands.  Worse, after the recruiter tells her she is a perfect candidate for the position, she receives a “rejection” email notifying her that she is not qualified for the position.  “Don’t worry about it”, says the recruiter, “just another system glitch.” Scary?  Absolutely!  What kind of talent are you going to attract with this kind of process? In some cases, she has simply turned down offers to be interviewed because she is concerned that the recruiting experience is a pretty good indicator of what a job experience would be like at that employer.  I’m sure my friend will evenentually find a good job but I hope some of the employers she has applied to find a better way to manage their application process.

Simply put, don’t let fire fighting stop you from assessing where you are today against where you want to be tomorrow.  We know that many of our clients are struggling with the day-to-day challenges of HR and they don’t have the time or the resources to get back on the transformation track.  That’s fine.  As Scarlet said, “Afterall…tomorrow is another day”.  But I will argue that now is not the time to let the energy of HR transformation wane.   Don’t give up.  At the least, take a step back and look at what you are measuring.  Are your measures meaningful, practical, credible, simple?  Your measurements should drive change and encourage the right behaivior…that’s what transformation is all about. 

I know its tough but hang in there and remember the words of Karen Ravn (I hope this doesn’t sound too corny): “Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be.”

Our clients continue to lead exciting HR initiatives, and we are thankful for the opportunity to serve them now and in the future.   As many of our clients are setting strategies, budgets and projects for 2010, we find a common struggle is identifying opportunities for optimizing existing HR processes and structures.  We often field questions about how to start the process.  Where to find the best benchmarks?  Is there a faster, cheaper way to identify improvement opportunities?  As a results of these queries and as a sign of the times, we’ve been working to design a new streamlined approach to HR optimization and we are looking forward to deploying this new strategy in 2010.

Happy New Year!

Regardless if your organization has 100 or 100,000 employees, aligning talent with the goals of the organization is no easy task. First, you need to know what skill sets you have (and what skills need to be sharpened), second you need to know what the target is, then you need to have a well laid out plan to get there, and last but not least, a way to measure success. We all know this, but why is it that some organizations do this better than others? It boils down to time, resources, and technology.

In most organizations, HR notoriously allocates the majority of their time (about 60%) on administrative functions. This leaves about 10% for strategy and 30% of time dedicated to talent management related functions. Research has shown that top performing organizations are spending only 20% of their time on administrative functions allowing them to spend 20% on strategy and 60% on talent management. This time allocation shift allows these top performing organizations to develop, to implement, and to support a strong performance management culture and process.

In addition, top performing organizations recognize that developing a process and more importantly getting their organizations to collaborate and to adopt a performance management culture and process is as much of an art as it is a science. These organizations invest in resources to do this – either internal or external to their organization.

Lastly, I don’t think any of us would disagree in this day and age that technology can lessen the administrative burdon of managing and tracking performance and objectives. This makes us all more efficient. It also helps to instill a culture and a standardized process within an organization.

In sum, if you are struggling to find the time, internal resources, and technology to develop or streamline your performance management process, rest assured it’s not too late. There are solutions out there that can be developed and implemented in a rather short time frame. You may simply need to look external and be ready to invest in the short term for a long term solution.

Every year, the Business Journal sends out surveys (50,000 this year) to employees in the area to rate their employers on leadership, culture, and rewards, among other things. The top-rated employers are invited to bring employees to the luncheon, receive recognition in front of their peers, and, obviously, promote their “Best Employer” status to customers, clients, recruits, and existing employees.

Immediately preceding each employer award presentation, the announcer provides a little blurb about the company. Given that there were 25 small companies, 25 medium companies, and 15 large companies recognized, it is not surprising that you start to hear a lot of the same things:

• “Employees are our most important asset.”
• “Happy employees make happy customers.”
• “Community service is a cornerstone of our company.”
• “We are a family oriented company.”
• “We hire the best and set them free.”
• “We reward our employees for their success.”

I think you get the picture, but one thing that we hear a lot nowadays is “fun”. As in:

• “We believe in having fun.”
• “We have office parties every Friday.”
• “We play games at work.”
• “We celebrate together.”

It really gets me to thinking, “Can you really make fun part of your organizational strategy?” I get it if the company is in a more “creative” industry: architecture, advertising, PR and the like, but some of the companies that won awards, and talked about fun are in pretty staid, and/or serious industries and professions: accounting, law, medicine, etc.

I once worked for a large consulting firm that decided to plan for fun by adding colored fonts to emails and adding fun as a line-item on practice-wide conference calls. I didn’t really find that too much fun, but it did allow HR to say, “Our business groups know that fun is important, and our managers are focused on making sure that it’s a part of every day operation.”

I don’t think that’s how it works.

When I’ve seen fun happen, it’s more informal and more likely focused on people who are comfortable with each other – colleagues. The guy who’s always running around telling inappropriate jokes sure doesn’t add to a lot of peoples “fun”, but neither does the blue font with the fireworks symbol at the top of your managers’ email signature.

What do you think? Can you plan for fun at work? Should you? Or should you just keep your eyes and ears open, and if you can tell that everybody is miserable, you KNOW that you have a problem.

Pandemic defined: A disease prevalent throughout an entire country, or the whole world; epidemic over a large area.

Why is this important?

The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports the H1N1 Virus cost Delta Airlines $250 million in second quarter revenue this year as the demand for travel slumped. Royal Caribbean claims the H1N1 Virus was a major factor in the company’s $35.1 million second quarter loss.

Travel industry or not, it’s easy to list the effects the pandemic may have on your company:

• Increased health care claims, including hospitalization.
• Loss of productivity and sales because of absenteeism, and disengagement of the workforce due to fears and anxiety about outbreaks of the illness.
• Loss of sales because of your company’s inability to fill orders due to absenteeism.
• Expenses for outsourcing and temporary staffing services.

There are no clear estimates of what the H1N1 Virus will cost U.S. businesses. But spending time attempting to tally potential costs of the pandemic is probably not in your organization’s best interest.

So what should you do?

It may be more beneficial to your organization to concentrate on preventing panic and the spread of this illness. It is essential to reduce the risks to the health of your workforce and the financial impact to your company.

Reducing risks means decreasing the number of employees affected. To do that, you and your employees must put into practice the tips and advice health experts have been preaching for months.

Your employees, though, need to hear the message from you – their employer. Having company leaders and managers endorse steps to prevent the spread of the H1N1 Virus can be reassuring and will help employees take the issue more seriously.

To stay current, check with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and local health departments to find out about outbreaks in your community and other locations where your company has facilities.

We want to hear from you!

Findley Davies recently published a Client Advisory Bulletin on the H1N1 Virus, providing guidelines for organizations to use in responding to this pandemic.

Your comments here may help others…Has your organization been affected by the H1N1 Virus? If so, how have you responded? If not, what steps are you taking to protect your workforce? Or, are you not concerned that this will be an issue for your organization?

I suppose we could attribute the low adoption rate in HR to the types of projects HR has historically undertaken. These projects may not be seen as complex from a technical standpoint as IT projects. However, if you consider the rapid changes in HR technology and the impact that this has on HR policies and procedures as well as the healthcare reform changes coming down the pipe, there is no time better than the present to introduce your HR organization to project management methodology.

It’s also important to keep in mind that a project is a project. There are many applications for project management methodology in HR. PMI defines a project as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result” and project management as “the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.” The goal of project management is to deliver the product, service, or result on time, within scope and within budget.

In my opinion project management methodology is one way HR can begin to transform itself into a strategic business partner. It would lend credibility to projects from the business units. It would ensure that project objectives are clearly articulated and tied to business outcomes. It would enhance communication. It would help HR deliver results on time, within scope, and within budget. And what company is not worried about budgets?

• Education and Labor
• Ways and Means
• Energy and Commerce

A bill similar to HR 3200 was passed by the Senate’s HELP Committee (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) and yet another version was being reviewed by the Senate Finance Committee when they adjourned for the August recess.

You’d think from media reports that the AAHCA is on the verge of becoming law. As a result, emotions are running high. It would serve us well to calm down and realize much remains to be done before any version of the AAHCA is passed and becomes law.

I spent time reading the AAHCA to understand what it contains and how it might impact my clients, my firm, and my career. The AAHCA is divided into three (3) parts:

• Division A: Affordable Health Care Choices, pages 4-214;
• Division B: Medicare/Medicaid Improvements, pages 215-855; and
• Division C: Public Health & Workforce Development, pages 856-1,018

I focused my attention on Division A. This does not mean Divisions B and C are not important. To the contrary, I’ve looked through those parts of the AAHCA, and I’m very interested in how Medicare will evolve.

The attached article includes my observations and questions on Division A. The opinions I’ve expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Findley Davies, its shareholders, or its clients. After reading this article, I encourage you to use the link to HR 3200 to examine it and draw your own conclusions about its intent, consequences and chances for success.