Human Capital Management: Facing the Challenges of the 21st Century Workforce: Meeting Proceedings

OVERVIEW
Improving company performance is often about lowering the barriers to productivity, barriers which are often the direct effect of low employee engagement. That is why effective human capital management can transcend functional lines to create strong positive impacts on the performance of the organization.

At the May 2007 Global Benchmarking Council meeting, members, speakers, and invited guests gathered in Key Biscayne, Fla. to discuss "Human Capital Management: Facing the Challenges of the 21st Century Workforce." Topics of discussion ranged broadly across this landscape: from dealing with retiring baby boomers and engaging the new mix of generations in the workforce to transforming organizations through talent management.

Vice presidents, directors and managers of human resources, particularly in retention, redeployment or talent areas, and other process improvement professionals will benefit most from the case studies of six leading companies and the summarized transcripts from two facilitated roundtable discussions.


COMPANIES AND CASE STUDIES
Case studies include speaker biographies and company background before describing key challenges company leaders faced and how they overcame them, recent benchmarking research and results or the future of human capital management. Speaker anecdotes, quotes, select slides, insights and key take-aways all liven the case studies with personal touches and graphics.

• Thomson Corp. shared how it mounted a talent redeployment program to balance talent retention and new hiring during a major restructuring and business transformation. The presenter included useful insights and tips for handling such a difficult balancing act in "Retention and Redeployment in the Midst of Business Transformation."
• IMPACT Group explained it goes about addressing problems associated with the growing shortage of skilled workers and managers. Awareness of the specific impacts and tailoring plans to deal creatively with retirees and other transitioning employees headed the list of actions to ensure preparedness in "The iRetirement Model - Mapping Career/Life Transition."
• Teradata asked attendees to entertain the notion of a fully empowered employee in a completely transparent organization. In organizations where employees could share a "single view of the business," the ability to do everything from managing talent and business performance to maintaining a sharp focus on the customer was greatly enhanced as argued in "Creating & Driving Employee Relationship Management through Data and Resources."
• Best Practices, LLC shared preliminary findings of recent research into Employee Engagement. Themes that emerged included: most corporations take engagement very seriously even when they can’t “prove” the connection to business performance and leadership support is critical to success as presented in "Employee Engagement Playbook: Notes from the Field."
• WellPoint, Inc. shared its plan and the challenges involved in building a comprehensive and coherent employer brand to support a unique corporate positioning in the marketplace and specific business outcomes. The presenters provided a useful overview of the process they went through as well as many useful details about the drivers, strategies, and mechanisms for change in "New Directions in Talent: Strategy and Pipeline Development."
• Nationwide Insurance offered an insider’s view of driving recruitment by examining how to assemble and manage a high-performing recruiting team. By taking this refreshing look at the internal apparatus for recruitment, some practical considerations for selecting, motivating and nurturing the right individuals to achieve the right outcomes were highlighted in "The Perils and Pitfalls of Building a High Performance Recruiting Team."
• Hewlett-Packard addressed the issues of employee engagement by recounting the specific example of a program that took aim at linking the employee experience to business results. This large-scale effort revealed a great deal about the high-level strategy and daily effort required to bridge differences and distances en route to creating and maintaining a successful corporate-wide program as described in "Engaging Employees across Differences and Distance."

• Creating Value with Employee Engagement
• Stages of Engagement
• Capturing and Analyzing Engagement Data
• Top-down vs. Bottom-up Planning
• Employee Engagement Programs that Make a Difference

METHODOLOGY
This report was compiled from notes taken during speaker presentations and in-depth roundtable discussions at the May 2007 Global Benchmarking Council meeting, "Human Capital Management: Facing the Challenges of the 21st Century Workforce." For more information on the Global Benchmarking Council or to register for the upcoming meeting, visit http://www.best-in-class.com/gbc.

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