key imperatives for hr in 2015 - the glass...

Key Imperatives for HR in 2015

Insights from CEB’s Leadership Council Research

iii

At CEB, we are privileged to work with over 16,000 senior leaders at more than 6,000 companies and to have a unique perspective on how HR executives position their teams for success. As we reflect on the hundreds of conversations we’ve had with HR executives over the past year, we see four trends that are disrupting HR’s ability to drive business impact:

• The increasing power of HR customers (e.g., managers, employees, and candidates with growing access to data) creates demand for improved analytics and tools to manage the workforce.

• New (social and interconnected) patterns of work create new opportunities for (and barriers to) performance.

• Shifting workforce demographics increase the diversity of preferences, expectations, and needs of critical talent.

• Emerging technologies change how employees collaborate and how HR supports them.

Although these changes open new opportunities for HR to increase business impact, they also create acute pressure for HR teams to keep pace with changing needs. Despite focus and investment aimed at improving HR capabilities, the function’s impact has remained largely flat in the eyes of the business. In fact, less than one-fifth of line managers rate the HR function as effective or very effective.

Faced with these changes, the best HR teams are driving innovation across the following three key dimensions:

• Achieving thenext frontier of functional effectiveness—Eighty-one percent of heads of HR are looking to make changes to HR’s operating model. Whether due to the dramatic shift in learning from the center to the line or due to the growing pressure to increase recruiting clock speed, HR functions are feeling acute pressure to adapt. Leading HR teams are looking beyond internal customer satisfaction to measures of organizational impact in order to drive the next level of functional effectiveness.

• Redefining leadership—In the eyes of managers, less than

Introduction

one-third of business units have leaders who are prepared to meet the organization’s future needs. Although leadership investments typically improve leaders’ individual skills, they often fail to address key economic and psychological barriers to performance. We see the best organizations rethinking their leadership investments by addressing leader mind-sets, reducing collaboration costs, and improving rewards perceptions.

• Transforming organizational culture—Three-quarters of employees report organizational barriers get in the way of their performance. The best organizations are building cultures that support horizontal, peer-to-peer work and that encourage the right types of (productive) learning.

In 2015, we are undertaking a number of initiatives in these areas to support our members.

It is our privilege to work with the world’s largest network of HR executives. Thank you for your ongoing membership and support.

Best wishes,

MichaelGriffinExecutive Director, CEB

What trend do HR executives believe will cause

the most disruption to the function and its role

over the next three years?

Changing labor market demographics

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Contents

iii Introduction

1 Achieving the Next Frontier of Functional Effectiveness

2 Increasing the Influence of HR Data

3 Reshaping and Deepening Talent Conversations with the Board

4 Accelerating HR Business Partner Performance in the New Work Environment

5 Building the Next Generation L&D Function

6 Accelerating Recruiting

7 Using Employee Preferences to Increase the Impact of Total Rewards

8 Designing New HR Operating Models

9 Featured Resource: Functional Maturity Diagnostics

11 Redefining Leadership

12 Creating Enterprise Leaders

13 Improving High-Potential Identification and Deployment

14 Creating Compelling Career Paths

15 Increasing Representation of Women in Leadership Positions

16 Attracting and Retaining STEM Employees with Leadership Potential

17 Effectively Managing Millennials with Leadership Potential

19 Transforming Organizational Culture

20 Removing Organizational Barriers to Breakthrough Performance

21 Reframing Learning Culture

22 Attracting the Right Applicants for Your Organization

23 Activating Corporate Culture in Asia

25 Summary

26 About CEB

1

Aligning with [the organization’s] business strategies is a key factor to our success in HR. We also ground ourselves in data and factual information when considering best practices and use of resources going forward.”

Jayne ParkerExecutive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer The Walt Disney Company

Achieving the Next Frontier of Functional Effectiveness

“

2

SituationOrganizations are unsuccessful at translating talent data into business results. Only 8% of senior HR leaders believe they are getting returns on their talent analytics investments, and only 15% of business leaders have changed a decision in the past year as a result of data from HR.

InsightMost organizations attempt to improve their analytics by increasing their sophistication through skills, technology, and data investments. But improving sophistication without focusing on the business application of talent analytics insights is a wasted effort. Most organizations can increase impact by simply improving the application of their existing data, rather than making additional investments in sophistication.

By improving analytics effectiveness, the average organization can improve talent outcomes (e.g., bench strength, employee performance, quality of hire, employee engagement) by 12%.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Best practices for using talent analytics to improve business

decisions and provide actionable support to key stakeholders;

• A library of more than 200 HR metrics, with guidance on how to collect, calculate, and interpret each metric; and

• A database of ready-to-use HR dashboards designed to compellingly communicate data.

Increasing the Influence of HR Data

• Prioritize analytics on critical business questions.

• Build capability throughout the HR function to apply business judgment to data.

• Improve the credibility of HR data by providing business implications, not HR directives.

Key Takeaways

“I think most HR people talk about [workforce dynamics] in terms

of the people rather than in terms of the business, and so I think

the most important skill people can build is really developing

personally their skills in terms of analysis and insights.”

Anne Sample

Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer

Thrivent Financial

Peer Perspectives

3

• Focus board conversations on key talent risks throughout the organization.

Key Takeaway

SituationTalent is increasingly a critical differentiator of corporate performance. Yet scrutiny over executive compensation and governance is diverting the board’s focus on critical talent issues. In addition, the data and analysis that boards receive from HR often provides limited insight. As a result, most boards lack a deep understanding of talent issues outside executive leadership (e.g., executive compensation, CEO succession, CEO performance).

InsightProgressive CHROs work with boards to cultivate a greater understanding of talent issues and higher levels of assurance about critical talent risks. The most effective boards expand the perimeter of talent issues they monitor (going beyond simply executive leadership), and they approach conversations on executive performance evaluation and succession differently.

Ultimately, boards at top-performing companies are twice as likely to have a deep understanding of talent issues as are boards at lower-performing competitors.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Benchmarking reports and research briefs that explain why

and how talent conversations are changing between boards and CHROs and how to respond by adopting a new talent agenda;

• Dashboards to measure and manage HR risk and business cases in order to optimize investments in HR initiatives; and

• Guidance on designing and communicating executive compen-sation plans and adjusting them proactively to changing circum-stances.

Creating Value for Members

“This is the kind of conversation we need to have inside our boardroom around our talent [and] why it’s important—as opposed to maybe a narrow focus on just succession planning or executive compensation.” Pete Hammett Managing Director, Talent Management OGE Energy Corp.

Reshaping and Deepening Talent Conversations with the Board

4

SituationWhen business units receive more effective support from HR, they can improve talent and business outcomes. In fact, effective HR support can improve revenue by as much as 7% and profitability by as much as 9%.

Although HR business partner (HRBP) performance has improved, fewer than one in five HRBPs effectively supports line leaders when it comes to talent management.

Most organizations attempt to improve HRBP effectiveness by building business acumen and consulting skills and by hiring HRBPs whose credentials can build credibility with line leaders. The ultimate goal of these strategies is to build an effective relationship between the HRBP and the line leader.

InsightThe best organizations have realized that building the competency set of HRBPs is necessary but that it is only part of the story. To truly drive HRBP performance, the best organizations are also changing how HRBPs work. They are redesigning the role and the support system and are rethinking their approach to managing the HR function to enable HRBPs to deliver integrated talent solutions—thus improving talent outcomes.

By upgrading talent and removing organizational barriers to HRBP performance, organizations can increase the number of strategic HRBPs to four in ten in the next three years—and six in ten in the next five years. In addition, the most effective HRBPs can boost employee performance by 22%, employee retention by 24%, revenue growth by 7%, and profit growth by 9%.

• Deploy HRBPs to maximize enterprise flexibility, not line relationship stability.

• Facilitate cross-functional business partner networks (e.g., finance business partners) to make the most of diverse expertise.

• Rebuild the HRBP employment value proposition (EVP) and career path to attract and retain top talent.

“[To build a high-performing HR team,] I look for people who

are willing to think differently and get out of their comfort zone,

who want to grow more, who are very self-aware, and who have

really, really good consulting skills or technical knowledge if it’s an

area like benefits.”

Joanne Townsend

Senior Vice President, Human Resources

Commscope, Inc.

Peer Perspectives

Accelerating HR Business Partner Performance in the New Work Environment

Key Takeaways

SupportforMembersIncludes:• A collection of customizable individual development plans to

guide HRBPs through developing critical competencies;

• A just-in-time, self-service development resource portal for HRBPs;

• Diagnostics to evaluate HRBP effectiveness in the new work environment and to help individuals prioritize key development opportunities; and

• A cross-functional resource center that supports HRBPs partnering with the CFO, CIO, CMO, CTO, head of Sales, and more.

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SituationIn today’s L&D landscape, 79% of employees’ learning comes from outside the L&D function. Unfortunately, much of that learning is unproductive: more than half is of poor quality or focuses on the wrong development needs.

InsightThe standard approach—where the L&D function serves as the primary supplier of learning—is fundamentally broken and no longer fit for its purpose.

To create a stronger learning culture, progressive learning executives are confronting the following questions:

• What are the most critical functional objectives for the L&D function of the future?

• How can the L&D function help the line make better learning investments?

• What are the key learning capabilities to develop throughout the organization?

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Tools to enable better L&D–line partnerships,

• Learning innovation benchmarks and prioritization frameworks, and

• Step-by-step guidance to implement high-impact learning methods (e.g., network learning, action learning, peer consulting).

“As the business changes rapidly, L&D is about building a strong

learning culture and constantly reskilling the workforce to meet

changing needs. When communicating the value of L&D, I think

about it as three key things: connection, coaching, and curation.”

Abhijit Bhaduri

Chief Learning Officer

Wipro Technologies

“The future of L&D is that we must evolve to more closely mirror the

business; we should be just as agile and matrixed. L&D professionals

need to think of themselves less as specialists. This is a mind-set

and a skills shift for L&D that we have to begin preparing for now in

terms of how we recruit, develop, and support L&D staff.”

Diane Tiger

Dean

Vanguard University

Peer Perspectives

Building the Next Generation L&D Function

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SituationToday’s hiring process has become increasingly networked and complex, complicating the recruiting process and putting pressure on time to fill. Compared to 10 years ago, nearly twice as many people outside the recruiting function influence a typical hiring decision.

InsightEfforts to improve recruiting speed and efficiency often fail because they target traditional hiring processes instead of the new internal players influencing hiring decisions.

Organizations can better improve recruiting effectiveness by shifting Recruiting’s focus to better manage internal hiring networks.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• A recruiting-structure scenario planner to improve service

delivery,

• A contractor requirements calculator to streamline vendor costs,

• Next generation Talent Advisor development resources to unlock evolving staff skill requirements, and

• A maturity diagnostic to prioritize functional improvement investments.


“I rely on CEB to stay on the bleeding edge of what’s going on and to help lead thinking on where we should be pursuing new areas and new avenues.” John Delpino Senior Director, Executive Recruiting Walmart Stores, Inc.

Accelerating Recruiting

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SituationEmployee reward preferences are shifting; employees are increasingly trading longer-term upside for short-term pay certainty and prioritizing work–life benefits. This shift is trapping a significant percentage of pay and benefits in low-return rewards.

InsightAlthough most organizations find employee preference information valuable, few (36%) act on it. The best organizations systematically identify employee preferences and incorporate them into total rewards plan design to boost the value of their offerings relative to cost.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Preferences data that demonstrates the relative value employees

place on different total rewards attributes;

• Talent outcome data that shows how well different total rewards plan designs drive employee attraction, performance, enterprise contribution, and retention; and

• Best practices from progressive organizations using employee preferences to increase returns from their total rewards plans.

Using Employee Preferences to Increase the Impact of Total Rewards


“What [CEB] does really well is provide a lot of data. Data around talent, data around performance, and data around compensation, frankly, are not very easy to find in the marketplace, and what you find isn’t very relevant to leaders. [CEB] data helps me sell my specific concepts to the organization [at] the CE levels, the CEO level, the leadership level. Those folks [CEB has] credibility with: they understand the kind of effort that’s put into developing this kind of data, and it helps me build my business case.” Kent Lingerfelt Senior Vice President, Total Rewards Equifax, Inc.

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SituationThe rapidly evolving nature of data is increasing the organization’s demand for improved analytics and tools to manage the workforce. The nature of work has become more social and interconnected— rendering many current manager-centric tools obsolete—and new technologies are changing how employees work and how HR supports them.

InsightHR often lacks sufficient analytic and change-management capabilities to meet line leaders’ needs. In addition, HR structures have failed to keep pace with the rate of change that the broader organization demands. As such, 81% of CHROs are prioritizing some change to their operating model in 2015.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• An updated functional maturity diagnostic to reflect the new

model of Corporate HR,

• How-to guides for building an analytics function, and

• Manager and employee guides on navigating their roles in an organization that is less manager centric.

Designing New HR Operating Models

The HR Operating Model Is Increasingly Outdated Percentage of CHROs Prioritizing Some Change to Their Operating Model

n = 99.

Source: CEB 2014 Agenda Poll.

81%

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Seeking to improve functional effectiveness, HR leaders have historically pursued one of two options:

1. Improve strategic planning processes—More than four in ten HR executives rate their functions as ineffective at strategic planning. However, even the best-designed plans don’t remain relevant for long—ranging from one year during stable times to as short as two months when the organization faces turbulence.

2. Transform the function for greater business impact—Four in five HR functions have recently undergone a redesign or are in the process of one. Unfortunately, this redesign activity doesn’t make much of a difference.

Maturity models offer an effective means by which to assess functional performance and improve effectiveness.

In response to member need, we developed a series of functional maturity diagnostics covering all HR focus areas, including workforce strategy, recruiting, L&D, and total rewards.

Executives use the diagnostics to assess and benchmark their function’s progress against core objectives and discrete activities. The assessment results help organizations understand their critical maturity gaps and prioritize areas for improvement; identify next steps for critical areas and plan a long-term path to desired maturity; and accelerate execution.

Featured Service: Functional Maturity Diagnostics


“CEB’s functional maturity diagnostic helped us refocus on priorities that had lost momentum…[and] motivated us to implement improvements before the upcoming performance review cycle.”Tim McKeown Vice President, Total Rewards and Policy American Red Cross

• Diagnose and benchmark the function’s strengths and weaknesses.

• Support short- and long-term planning, clearly identifying next steps and associated resources.

• Ensure alignment of strategy and resources with market opportunities and business needs.

Primary Benefits

11

We are keenly focused on developing the talent bench of the company. This includes a variety of key activities, such as identifying capability needs, designing high-impact learning solutions, and supporting leaders on a day-to-day basis as they oversee increasingly large and complex parts of our business.”

Bill McLawhon Head of Leadership Development Facebook

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Redefining Leadership

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SituationOrganizations don’t have the leaders they need for the future. In fact, in the eyes of business managers, only 27% of business units have leaders who can effectively take the organization into the future. In addition, one-third of HR leaders would replace members of their senior leadership team if given the opportunity.

Unsurprisingly, organizations have been investing in improving leadership talent: 25% of the typical HR budget goes to leadership-related investments.

However, only 33% of CHROs believe they are a getting a good return on their leadership investments.

InsightThe most effective leaders in today’s new leadership environment are Enterprise Leaders: they lead their teams to high performance and also contribute to and employ the performance of other units and teams.

Although leadership investments typically improve leaders’ individual skills, they often fail to address key economic and psychological barriers to performance. We see the best organizations rethinking leadership investments—by addressing leader mind-sets, reducing collaboration costs, and improving rewards perceptions—to drive enterprise leadership.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Insight-driven views on key drivers of enterprise leader

performance,

• Frameworks and tools to shift leader and team behavior toward network performance, and

• Guidance on building leaders’ ability to create team-focused communication and action plans to activate network performance.

Creating Enterprise Leaders

• Help leaders change their mind-set, not just build new skills.

• Provide leaders with the information they need to be better enterprise contributors.

• Redesign leader evaluations to promote enterprise leadership.

Key Takeaways

“I’m constantly thinking about…getting leaders to look at their jobs

increasingly as people leaders. I’d like leaders to view themselves

as the chief recruiting officer, chief talent management officer, and

so on. This is something we have to constantly grapple with in HR

as the function becomes stronger.”

Dan Henkle

Senior Vice President, Global Human Resources

Gap Inc.

Peer Perspectives

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SituationDespite the importance of developing and retaining high-potential (HIPO) employees, many organizations struggle to achieve positive returns from their HIPO program investments.

• Only 27% of organizations believe their leadership bench is prepared to succeed in today’s work environment.

• A projected 55% of HIPOs will fall out of the leadership pipeline in the next five years, for a variety of reasons.

InsightMany organizations confuse performance to date with potential for the future. The best organizations, however, recognize that employees need something more than strong performance in their current role to succeed in future roles. In particular, they focus on the three critical levers of potential—aspiration, ability, and engagement—to most effectively identify and deploy their rising leaders.

Organizations that address all three levers can realize the full impact of their HIPOs. In fact, 75% of HIPOs are likely to demonstrate success at the next level of their career (versus just 25% of high performers who are not HIPOs).

SupportforMembersIncludes:• A proprietary, data-driven model of HIPO employees that

distinguishes between performance and potential,

• Tools and guidance for HR and line managers to accurately calibrate HIPO characteristics and identify HIPOs, and

• Analysis of the most effective strategies for increasing HIPOs’ ability, commitment, and aspiration.

EngagementAbility

Aspiration

CEB’s High-Potential Employee Model

Source: CEB analysis.

Improving High-Potential Identification and Deployment

• Create simple, business-relevant criteria to more accurately identify HIPOs and communicate their status to them.

• Redesign communications to ensure HIPOs know what to expect from the organization.

• Partner with the line to create a HIPO deployment strategy that challenges rising leaders and maximizes their business impact.

Key Takeaways

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SituationShortages of critical talent are constraining organizational performance. The combination of changing organizational structures and new workforce preferences is forcing firms to explore how they map and plan careers for critical talent.

InsightTo attract, engage, and retain the talent they need to be successful, organizations are rethinking traditional career paths and talent mobility practices. Despite these efforts, only 18% of critical talent believe their organization offers diverse career options.

The best organizations restructure career frameworks, use data analytics to manage career stalls, and develop employee careers inside and outside the organization.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Leadership transition support services to assist your senior

leaders,

• Detailed career path maps and ladders,

• Tools to build alternative career paths at your organization,

• Employee resources to help determine career path options, and

• Manager guides for having alternative career conversations.


“Certainly we’re not alone in having some challenges around depth of succession bench strength….So having tools or information or even case studies on how other organizations have faced that same challenge and dealt with vacancy risk…[is] really helpful to make a case to not only our CEO but also the HR committee of our board.”Kristen Tagliamonte Vice President, Talent Strategy Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota

Creating Compelling Career Paths

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Increasing Representation of Women in Leadership Positions

SituationLack of gender diversity among leaders is the second-biggest leadership challenge for heads of HR, second only to lack of collaboration throughout the organization. A range of initiatives have been tried, but HR neither has seen desired results nor believes current strategies are effective.

InsightConventional wisdom suggests the key challenge for women is to break the glass ceiling, but in reality it’s about overcoming micro-challenges throughout the female leader’s career life cycle.

In addition, many falsely believe that women don’t have the same level of leadership aspiration. However, what women lack is knowledge of leadership opportunities.

Finally, many organizations treat flexible work schedules as a special benefit and believe that when female leaders opt out, they are effectively resigning from their leadership position. The most progressive organizations, however, make flexible schedules a default offering, and they understand that opting out is temporary, not permanent.

Ultimately, organizations with more women in the leadership ranks have better financial results. Furthermore, women are more likely to be Enterprise Leaders (15% versus 11%).

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Best practices for increasing the representation of women

in leadership positions,

• Guidance on launching a diversity recruiting program that promotes inclusion, and

• Implementation support to develop and enable rising women leaders.

Career Life Cycle Along the Leadership Pipeline Current Distribution of Men and Women in Organizational Roles

Source: CEB Q1–Q3 2014 Global Labor Market Survey.

Note: Using the methodology of Peter Cappelli and Monika Hamori (“The New Road to the Top,” Harvard Business Review, January 2005, pp. 25–32), we compiled information on 1,000 top executives at Fortune 100 organizations in 2012.

Entry- and Mid-Level Employees

First- and Mid-Level Managers

Department Heads to General Managers

Top Executives

41% | 51%

68% | 32% 79% | 21%

60% | 40%

Men Women

• Increase women’s knowledge of the organization’s leadership opportunities.

• Make flexible work schedules the default for women at all career levels.

• Create accelerated on-ramps to reactivate women who temporarily opt out.

Key Takeaways

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SituationAs demand for STEM talent (roles in Information Technology, Research and Development, and Engineering and Design) accelerates, companies struggle to attract top talent. In fact, time to fill has increased by 77% over the past four years from 43 days in 2010 to 76 days in 2014. Companies also struggle to engage STEM talent, a segment that has lower engagement scores than do other key talent segments.

InsightThe best companies are managing and empowering STEM employees in a different-in-kind way:

• Rather than emphasizing compensation alone to attract STEM talent, the most progressive organizations recognize that STEM talent tend to care more about development than do other employees, and they accentuate it in their offers to this segment.

• One-third of STEM employees list advancing to a senior management position as one of their top two career goals, compared to 28% of non-STEM employees. However, very few STEM employees (17%) have discussed possible career alternatives with their managers. The best organizations empower STEM talent to manage their own careers, rather than force them through the traditional career ladder.

• Non-STEM employees are almost twice as good at leading successful working relationships with internal and external customers, although more STEM employees work with a variety of employees from different organizational functions. The key to transforming STEM employees into enterprise contributors is building their stakeholder management skills.

Attracting and Retaining STEM Employees with Leadership Potential

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Proven strategies for better managing STEM talent in your

organization,

• Best practice employment branding techniques for STEM candidates, and

• A playbook to maximize returns on your STEM talent development initiatives.

23% 19% 18%

28% 28% 29%

Leading and

Deciding

Enterprising and

Performing

Interacting and

Presenting

n = 242,684.

Source: CEB 2001–2014 SHL Universal Competency Framework.

STEM Employees Lag Behind in Leadership Competencies

• Emphasize career development (not compensation) to attract STEM talent.

• Rethink the career life cycle and improve performance management to drive the effort and commitment levels of STEM talent.

• Drive STEM talent’s enterprise contribution by embedding network management into STEM roles.

Key Takeaways

STEM Non-STEM

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SituationMillennials—people born between 1980 and the early 2000s—are discussed widely in today’s media, and there seem to be endless opinions about this generation in the workplace. Many assumptions about millennials are true (e.g., they expect to be paid more and promoted faster; they are more likely to leave their jobs; they place a higher value on career development opportunities), but some myths complicate the effective management of this workforce.

InsightOne common myth is that millennials would rather collaborate than compete. In reality, millennials are more competitive than non-millennials. The best companies create comparison opportunities for millennials by making their impact more visible—or even making a game out of work performance.

Another myth is that millennials are more likely to rely on their peers to get work done. However, millennials don’t trust peer input at work: 37% of millennials indicate they only trust themselves to accurately complete a work assignment, while just 26% of non-millennials feel this way. It’s critical, then, to emphasize to millennials the value of peer input and to help all employees see the full effects of collaboration.

A third myth is that millennials want to “organization hop.” In reality, however, they want to “experience hop.” In fact, 53% of them believe internal job opportunities are desirable—nearly the same as other generations. The best companies offer millennials diverse career experiences—not fast promotion—and clarify the benefits of career moves within the organization.

Millennial Disengagement in the Workforce Percentage of Employees

High Intent to Stay High Discretionary Effort

22%

41%

14%

26%

Millennial Employees All Other Employees


Effectively Managing Millennials with Leadership Potential

• Create comparison opportunities for millennials by making their impact more visible, or even making a game out of work performance.

• Emphasize to millennials the value of peer input and enable all employees to see the full effects of collaboration.

• Offer millennials diverse career experiences—not fast promotion—and clarify the benefits of diverse career moves within the organization.

Key Takeaways

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Proven strategies for better managing millennials in your

organization,

• Tips for adapting your attraction and sourcing strategies based on the qualities unique to millennial candidates,

• A playbook to improve millennial employee learning, and

• Quantitative insights to maximize compensation’s role in attracting and retaining millennials.

19

Getting the people agenda right has a direct correlation with business results.” Ben LawrenceChief Human Resources Officer Wesfarmers Limited

Transforming Organizational Culture

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SituationWinning organizations have more enterprise contributors—employees who not only effectively perform their individual tasks but also work well with and because of others. Our research shows that increasing the number of employees who are effective at performing this type of horizontal work (in addition to their own tasks) can have twice the impact on profitability than driving individual task execution alone. To achieve the next level of impact, many organizations are pursuing strategies to motivate employees to be enterprise contributors (e.g., focusing on values, creating MBOs) or to build the skills required to be an enterprise contributor. But such approaches fail to significantly move the dial on performance.

InsightThree-quarters of employees want to become enterprise contributors but feel their organization makes it difficult to do so. HR must reconcile four competing organizational priorities—what we call “performance paradoxes”—to successfully drive enterprise contribution:

• The Competition Paradox—Coworkers are asked to help each other, but they also compete for raises and promotions.

• The Empowerment Paradox—Employees need autonomy, but they also require direction in prioritizing their activities.

• The Collaboration Paradox—Although collaboration tools can improve quality, they also can slow execution.

• The Motivation Paradox—Employees value contributing, but being rewarded for it actually reduces their motivation.

Transforming your employees into a workforce of enterprise contributors can boost year-over-year revenue growth by 11% and profit growth by 5%.

• Create productive competition by having employees publicly recognize the contributions others have made to them.

• Enable fast collaboration by redesigning work processes to focus on interactions between employees, not the employees themselves.

• Focus less on providing employees with transparency and more on providing context to give them directed autonomy.

• To improve employees’ network performance, reward them by showing the effect they have on others through their contributions.

“Collaboration is more than working well together. We look at it

from a constructive conflict perspective. Very often, what we

discuss is a challenge that requires us to adapt, and there is no

clear answer. That’s where the enriching conversation allows us

to negotiate and reach a smarter trade-off. But for this to work,

we require a level of trust and the right social dynamics.”

Simon Riis-Hansen

Senior Vice President, Executive Human Resources

The LEGO Group

Peer Perspectives

Removing Organizational Barriers to Breakthrough Performance

SupportforMembersIncludes:• A data-driven model of high performance in the new work

environment,

• Proven strategies to help employees perform as enterprise contributors,

• A diagnostic to measure the effectiveness of your organization’s performance review process,

• Custom project management support tailored to your current performance management maturity level, and

• A playbook to redesign your performance management system to foster enterprise contribution.

Key Takeaways

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SituationThe learning landscape has changed substantially: the line has different skill needs, and most learning takes place outside L&D’s control. L&D executives understand that, to drive their function’s impact, they must extend their reach to influence the always-on, just-in-time learning that employees receive from non-L&D sources. To expand their sphere of influence, three in four heads of L&D focus on building a learning culture, mostly by investing in providing more learning choices across more channels, engaging leaders in prompting more informal learning, and advocating the importance of on-the-job learning.

InsightSuch approaches to building a culture of learning may create more learning activity, but much of it is wasted. The best companies focus not on creating a culture of learning participation but on building a productive learning culture in which employees focus only on the most relevant learning opportunities, have the learning acumen needed to capitalize on those opportunities, and feel responsible not only for their own learning but also for that of those around them.

By equipping employees to be better learners and focusing on the most productive learning activities, an organization can avoid losing US$5 million in wasted L&D spend and more than US$130 million in lost employee productivity each year.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• A business case builder for fostering a productive learning culture,

• A step-by-step guide to building a productive learning culture, and

• A database of proven tactics to build a productive learning culture at your organization.

Culture of Learning Participation Productive Learning Culture

Key Components:• Increasing Choice• Building Learning• Promoting Employee

Ownership of Individual Learning

Key Components:• Directing Choice• Building Learners• Driving Shared Ownership

of Learning Environment

Only 10% of organizations have a productive learning culture.

From a Culture of Learning Participation to a Productive Learning Culture

• Instead of increasing learning choices, refine learning choices by removing learning opportunities that are not highly relevant and effective.

• Instead of just creating learning content, build effective learners by teaching them how to learn.

• Instead of only focusing on the individual’s responsibility to learn, foster shared responsibility for supporting the learning of others.


Reframing Learning Culture

Key Takeaways

22

SituationOrganizations are receiving more applicants for open roles, but candidate quality is low. The problem of low-quality applicants is compounded by the fact that businesses today require candidates with new types of skills, often in new markets where potential applicants may not even be familiar with the organization. One of the biggest challenges organizations face is how to present themselves in new and existing markets to attract the right-quality applicants for the role.

InsightMany organizations spend a lot of money and effort on employment branding and focus their efforts on becoming better known as a great place to work—an approach we call “branding for appeal.” The better approach involves “branding for influence”: giving applicants the trusted guidance they need to make better decisions about whether to apply and driving consideration of fit.

By branding for influence, organizations improve applicant quality by more than 50% because they can persuade the highest-quality candidates to apply while dissuading the lowest-quality ones from doing so.

In addition, by improving applicant pool quality, the typical organization can see a 22% improvement in quality of slate and a 9% improvement in quality of hire, leading to more than twice the number of high-performing new hires and a 23% reduction in new hire turnover.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• A keynote presentation to introduce branding for influence to

your organization,

• A workbook to guide recruiters in branding for influence, and

• A quarterly labor market trends report that monitors shifts in candidate perceptions and behaviors.

• Shift from branding to a wide array of talent segments to customizing more deeply to your most important talent segments.

• Build a network of brand influencers by focusing less on determining which channels (e.g., social media) have the biggest impact and more on the messenger.

• Create messages that consult rather than sell: use messages that challenge applicants’ thinking, rather than focus on applicant preferences that typically cluster around a common handful of popular themes (e.g., work–life balance) that applicants are likely to hear from any potential employer.

Attracting the Right Applicants for Your Organization


“CEB is there as a support structure, as a thought leader in terms of some of the ideas that I can get and leverage.” Sharon Tan Global Head of Recruitment ANZ Banking Group

Key Takeaways

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• Assess corporate culture effectiveness in Asia.

• Humanize corporate culture, and cultivate key behaviors.

• Inject corporate culture into the value chain.

Key Takeaways

SituationIn Asia today, 66% of organizations rely on old-fashioned, command-and-control management structures. At the same time, Asia is poised to lead the world’s economic growth for the next few decades.

It’s not surprising, then, that in such a diverse region with highly variable market maturity, HR often struggles to cultivate the company-specific climate required to achieve and sustain competitive advantage.

InsightThe key to activating corporate culture in Asia is deploying HR strategies that focus on “growth mind-set” approaches. The most progressive organizations:

• Create a productive learning culture,

• Help leaders in Asia drive innovations, and

• Cultivate growth mind-sets throughout the entire workforce in Asia.

By reengineering the Asia talent management system, organizations can accelerate innovation and growth in fast-moving Asian markets.

SupportforMembersIncludes:• Proven practices for fostering a growth mind-set throughout

the Asia workforce,

• Toolkits to help managers empower their Asia-based teams,

• Benchmarks on where and why growth mind-sets exist in talent markets throughout Asia, and

• HR practices redesigned in the Asia context for accelerating the shift to growth management and mind-sets.

Activating Corporate Culture in Asia

Legacy Mind-Sets Hold Back Asia Organizations

66%The percentage of companies using hierarchical, not empowering, management approaches in Asia

9%The percentage of employees, managers, and leaders in Asia who have a growth mind-set

Source: CEB 2014 Asia Labor Market Survey.

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Summary

HR’s To-Do List: 15 for 2015Achieving the Next Frontier of Functional Effectiveness1. Analytics: Realize higher returns on your HR data investments by

focusing intently on practical business applications of HR data (rather than pursuing analytic and technology sophistication as an end in and of itself).

2. Board Management: Expand the perimeter of the board’s conversations on talent to provide greater visibility into and assurance on critical talent risks.

3. HR Business Partners: Remove the organizational barriers inhibiting the strategic effectiveness of even the most capable HRBPs, such as inconsistent standards, misaligned line leader expectations, and uneven support from cross-functional peers.

4. L&D: Evolve the L&D operating model to reflect where learning is happening in the line and to drive reductions in wasted learning.

5. Recruiting: Accelerate recruiting speed (without sacrificing quality) by identifying and addressing the biggest roadblocks to timely hiring.

6. Total Rewards: Avoid the risks and realize the benefits of integrated total rewards by prioritizing integration of the strategy and functions first.

7. Functional Maturity: Move HR to the next level of business impact by assessing the function’s maturity level in critical activities—including workforce strategy, recruiting, L&D, and total rewards—

and creating detailed action plans for improvement.

Redefining Leadership8. Enterprise Leadership: Rather than focusing exclusively on

building leaders’ individual skills, address key economic and psychological barriers to performance.

9. HIPOs: Rather than focusing exclusively on high performers, identify and support HIPOs who are engaged, able, and aspiring.

10. Career Pathing: Update your career paths to retain, engage, and accelerate the development of rising leadership talent.

11. Critical Talent Segments: Don’t fall for common myths about critical talent segments such as women, STEMs, and millennials; use data-driven insight about their preferences and needs to better engage and retain them.

Transforming Organizational Culture 12. Performance Culture: To successfully embed enterprise

contribution within your corporate culture, change how you measure and reward employee impact, communicate with employees about job responsibilities and tasks, and enable employees to work together.

13. Learning Culture: More isn’t more: shift the focus of learning from participation and toward productivity. This means focusing on directing (not increasing) learning choices, teaching learners how to learn, and fostering shared ownership of the learning environment.

14. Attraction: Transform your employment branding strategy so you move away from a branding-for-appeal approach—which simply promotes the organization as a great place to work—and toward a branding-for-influence approach, which guides applicants’ decision making to help you persuade the highest-quality candidates and dissuade poor-quality candidates.

15. Regional Culture (Asia): Accelerate innovation and growth in fast-moving Asia markets by deploying HR strategies that focus on fostering a growth mind-set throughout the Asia workforce.

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Having the experience and exchange and best practice and data from different companies is a huge, huge advantage.”

Piotr Bednarczuk Senior Vice President, Corporate Human Resources Merck KGaA

About CEB

“

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CEB, the leading member-based advisory company, equips more than 10,000 organizations around the globe with insights, tools, and actionable solutions to transform enterprise performance. By combining advanced research and analyt-ics with best practices from member companies, CEB helps leaders realize outsized returns by more effectively managing talent, information, customers, and risk. Member companies include approximately 90% of the Fortune 500, more than 75% of the Dow Jones Asian Titans, and 85% of the FTSE 100. More at cebglobal.com. Approximately 90% of the Fortune 500

More than 75% of the Dow Jones Asian Titans

85% of the FTSE 100

16,000+ Senior Executives

300,000+ Business Professionals

10,000+ Organizations

110+ Countries

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Thirty years ago, we realized that the most pressing challenges facing business leaders everywhere had often already been addressed—or were being solved—by other executives. That remains true today and is at the core of our business.

CEB offers more than 50 different memberships aligned with functional and key industry leadership roles. Our membership model delivers insights, tools, and advice that lead to transformative outcomes for your team and your company.

Leadership CouncilsLeadership Councils are for innovative leaders who want to optimize the performance of their function—and business.

They provide on-demand access to best practices, easy-to-use analytic and implementation tools, and tailored advisory support—at a fraction of the cost of other professional advice sources. Our Leadership Councils help functional leadership teams benchmark their performance and execute effectively by applying insights from peer companies.

Unlike other resources, our insights and tools are intelligently sourced from a world-class member network, selected without bias, and proven effective through intensive quantitative analysis.

Features of MembershipResearchandInsight: Our more than 200 unique studies published annually help business leaders evaluate new is-sues and challenges.

Proven Best Practices: Our more than 300,000 tested approaches to solving business challenges are derived from our network of more than 5,300 leading companies.

AdvisorySupport: Experts in more than 220 disciplines provide personalized guidance and project support for executives and their teams for pending decisions, new tactics, internal presentations, and other needs.

Decision and Diagnostic Tools: Analysis and support provide customized, actionable views of the most important performance metrics in your corporate function.

Peer Benchmarks:Relevant, quantitative data and analysis provide clarity on the most efficient resource allocation and high-impact areas of focus.

Executive Networking:On-request advice, feedback, and perspective comes from peer interaction with more than 16,000 leading executives as well as from online peer discussion groups.

LiveandOnlineLearningEvents: We offer a wide variety of events exclusively for senior executives as well as staff training and skill development opportunities.

Leadership Transition Support: Avoid the common pitfalls specific to your leadership transition. Rely on our transition expert advisors to navigate the transition period with objective third-party guidance, insight, and joint problem solving.

About Best Practices and Decision Support

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Best Practices and Decision Support for HR Executives

CEB Corporate Leadership CouncilTM

• Employee Engagement

• HR Strategic Planning

• Performance Management

• Employment Value Proposition (EVP)

• HR Transformation

• Succession Management

• HR Metrics and Analytics

• Organizational Design

• Talent Management

• HIPO Employees

• Organizational Management

• Workforce Planning

• HR Business Partners

CEB Learning & Development Leadership Council• ROI of Learning Solutions

• L&D Strategy and Structure

• Leadership Development

• Leadership Transitions

• Coaching and People Management

• Building a Culture of Continuous Learning

CEB Recruiting Leadership Council• Sourcing and Building Talent Pipelines

• Recruiter Performance

• Selection and Assessment

• Employment Branding

• Hiring Manager Partnerships

• Quality of Hire

CEB Total Rewards Leadership Council• Total Rewards Strategy, Migration, and Measurement

• Total Rewards, Pay, and Benefits Plan Design and Employee Preferences

• Total Rewards, Pay, and Benefits Communications and Manager Engagement

• Pay for Performance, Including Reward and Recognition Programs

• Health Care Cost Containment, Reform Planning, and Informed Consumerism

• Wellness and Disease Management

• Global Total Rewards

• Total Rewards Functional Management

CEB Asia HR Leadership Council• Talent Strategies in Asia

• EVP

• Leadership Development


• Retention

• HR Effectiveness

CEB HR Leadership Council™ for Midsized Companies• HR Planning and Strategy


• Manager and Employee Development

• Performance Management

• Succession Management

• Recruiting

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