Larry Ellison (Executive Chairman and CTO of Oracle) nailed it in a presentation at Oracle Open World this week:  he said that "there is not a "Mobile Strategy"—there is an HCM strategy and of course it encompasses mobile." Starting with that point, I have been in numerous analyst briefings as we barrel into the fall lineup of HR technology events, and the results from the new technology end is indeed impressive. Here I will review just a few of those that struck me as of particular interest for HR professionals. (You will no doubt see dozens more new products and features at HR Tech/US and Amsterdam as well.) The vendor community has been busy, as demonstrated by the innovation and new products. Innovation, perhaps a concept not ordinarily linked to HR products, reigns. As an example, ADP, known for payroll provision, has hired 115 "creatives" — agile, SCRUM-driven developers, designers, and anthropologists in a giant loft in New York City called the "Innovation Lab" to rethink not only what software can do, but how it can look and respond in the process. The current attention across solution providers to improve the user experience is driving innovators to create "cool" user interfaces that are intuitive - and, dare we say, fun to use. (Trend 1: HCM software seeks to actively engage today’s users.) While several vendors have revised their payroll products this year, the planning behind payroll has also gotten a solid review. Saba, for one, has redesigned the compensation design and management end - the program that comp administrators use to determine competitive and fair salaries across the workforce. Algorithms link the competitiveness of pay plus other short- and long-term incentive elements to look at when - and how much - a pay alteration could reduce retention on an employee-by-employee basis. The goal is to keep the star players; TIM (The Intelligent Mentor) a software "guy" created by Saba can pop up to assist and coach managers on making these decisions. (Trend 2: Algorithmic models are invading HR). Ultimate has an algorithm that uses comp and benefits history, job history and personal demographics to calculate retention risk (Trend 3: Retention a primary concern within HR today). Combined with two new embedded predictive analytics - the High Performer Measure and the High Performance Predictor, managers have actionable information regarding the likelihood that a star or critical employee might fly the coop. And again the focus on compensation management:  Ultimate delivers a new comp module in UltiPro with more modeling capability -- easy enough for a manager to understand use without needing to be a professional compensation administrator. Healthcare eligibility has entered the HCM software arena, allowing software to manage the sometimes complex rules that relate to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). ADP, Ultimate Software, and Ceridian provide capabilities that can track and calculate ACA actionability. Both Ceridian and ADP, as examples, integrate time, payroll and benefit calculations to determine eligibility then supports enrollment and form filing. (Trend 4: Compliance tracking reemerges as a product differentiator). You do not need to go it alone in figuring out ACA compliance. "The Cloud" has moved up the scale (see our April 2014 report "Investments in Human Capital Management Systems 2014: What Technology Users Have and What They Will Buy in the Year Ahead") ; it has become a "key driver" for new product decision-making for the first year. Software as a Service (SaaS) across the board—with Platform as a Service (PaaS) increasing to a "gotta have." As one example, Oracle launched its PaaS (and the underlying Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) at OpenWorld, providing a development platform that incudes mobile, social collaboration and extensive security as the development environment, with the tools to create extensions for customers who need applications in addition to those commercially available. (Trend 5: Cloud prevails (but you knew that.)) To a one, the providers mentioned here have dedicated major development dollars to the user experience—and it shows. Tile-based, one-click to almost anywhere (ADP uses content as a navigational point), with dashboard analytics displays and - in the case of SAP-SuccessFactors, a color wheel to change the red-green alerts system to other shades for those with color vision issues. Ultimate’s tile-based "discover and unlock your potential" experience walks the person through a game-like process to find the best opportunities as a candidate or next steps as a new hire. Oracle’s Gretchen Alarcon demonstrated a new performance management interface through which managers can arrange people in terms of their performance with easy-to-use sliders. These interfaces, focusing on the user experience (Ux) are colorful, uncluttered, pictorial, and are highly likely to achieve the goal of an improved experience for both managers and their teams. While most of what I am discussing here is multi-tenant SaaS - let me digress for one minute. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld, the large audience of on-premise PeopleSoft Human Capital Management users saw the new PeopleSoft Fluid User Interface (PeopleSoft Fluid UI) that works across smartphones, desktops, and laptops. It is delivered in the latest update to PeopleSoft HCM 9.2, which also includes a range of enhancements including payroll simplification, compliance support, and additional integrations. On-premise players are not getting left out on the innovation end. (Trend 6: Users interfaces are where the action is - intuitive, graphical, and intelligent - for users of tethered, laptop and mobile and an array of software). And let’s look managing new releases; this sometimes hairy issue is also being addressed by today’s software providers. SAP SuccessFactors recently delivered an "Upgrade Center" for its customers that provides documentation and self-activation of new features. It displays upgrades that are recommended for each customer’s system and provides additional information including a detailed description and video of the innovation, system prerequisites and then allows a one-click upgrade. It summarizes each upgrade for tracking purposes and importantly, one can undo the upgrade if desired. (Trend 7: Customers seek easier ways to manage their HCM applications.) A recent Glassdoor Summit drew attention to the widespread use of its solution in the recruiting and hiring processes—and further underpinning the important concept of brand in the employment process (Trend 8: Employment branding is critical - attend to your brand wisely). And let’s go back to where I started: mobile applications. It is not "my HCM strategy + my mobile strategy" - it is "my HCM strategy is my mobile strategy." Our love for smaller, portable devices shows no indication of slowing (Apple sold over 10 million units of iPhone 6 or 6 Plus in the first three days the devices were available[1]). (Trend 9: Your mobile strategy IS your HCM strategy - and vice versa). Attend to the trends: Trend 1: HCM software seeks to actively engage today’s users. Trend 2: Algorithmic models are invading HR Trend 3: Retention is a primary concern within HR today Trend 4: Compliance tracking reemerges as a product differentiator Trend 5: Cloud prevails (but you knew that.) Trend 6: Trend 5: Users interfaces are where the action is - intuitive, graphical, and intelligent - for users of tethered, laptop and mobile and an array of software Trend 7: Customers seek easier ways to manage their HCM applications. Trend 8: Employment branding is critical - attend to your brand wisely Trend 9: Your mobile strategy IS your HCM strategy - and vice versa   This publication contains general information only and Deloitte is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. Deloitte shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this publication.   As used in this document, "Deloitte" means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.   Copyright © 2014 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.   [1] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/09/22First-Weekend-iPhone-Sales-Top-10-Million-Set-New-Record.html

The HCM technology market is hot. Our 2014 research shows that 20 percent of HCM software buyers will replace their current standalone talent applications with an integrated talent management suite over the next 12 to 18 months. What’s driving the purchase of HCM systems? A top reason is the need for better analytics capabilities, cited by 53 percent of our survey respondents. (See Figure 1.) Many organizations are frustrated by their inability to access, integrate, and analyze talent data to make better decisions. And many are willing to dump their existing systems and purchase an integrated talent management suite to get these capabilities. To court these buyers, a host of vendors will be trotting out their analytics solutions at this week’s HR Tech conference in Las Vegas. IBM will be prominent among crowd. The company announced last week that its Kenexa Talent Suite now includes a Watson-powered data discovery application. This new offering allows HR and business professionals to access data, explore trends, and analyze patterns using natural language queries. SuccessFactors will undoubtedly be another voice heard among the din. Its workforce analytics solution provides access to HR data, benchmarks, and analysis capabilities. Oracle, Workday, and many other talent management system providers will also be at the event showcasing their analytics solutions. Aside from purchasing a system, HR organizations need to have the right skills to be able to access, analyze, and draw insights from data.  Does your HR organization have the skills it needs to measure, analyze, and draw insights from data? Find out in our new report on organizing and staffing your talent analytics function.  

Do you have a family member or friend who has been unemployed for six months or longer? Or perhaps underemployed for the last few years? It’s no secret that U.S. workers were hit hard by the Great Recession. One feature that has distinguished this recession from many past ones has been the persistence of long-term unemployment. Indeed, many workers who lost jobs during the recession have yet to find work, and many more have dropped out of the labor force completely. As of October 2014, 3 million Americans have been looking for work for six months or longer.[1] The long-term unemployed are much more likely to drop out of the workforce altogether and are also much less likely to find a job than their short-term unemployed counterparts.[2] What makes long-term unemployment so frustrating is that traditional (and even logical) explanations for unemployment seem to have no bearing on the issue. As we move toward a skill-based economy, it would make sense that under-educated workers are having a more difficult time finding work. But research has found that long-term unemployment does not discriminate. Job-seekers are just as likely to be college educated as not, and even relevant work experience does not seem to help the long-term unemployed.[3] In January 2014, the White House unveiled its plan that calls for employers to develop leading practices for recruiting and hiring the long-term unemployed, seeks to ensure that federal agencies give the long-term unemployed a fair shot, drives innovation around the issue through a Department of Labor grant competition, and enables workers to seek out training resources to increase their job-competitiveness.[4] The White House long-term unemployed initiative has received a positive reception from the business community, with over 300 companies signing the pledge. Many of these companies have already employed some leading practices with regard to recruiting the long-term unemployed, and others are sponsoring initiatives aimed at getting more Americans back to work. In response to the White House call to action, Deloitte Consulting LLP collaborated with The Rockefeller Foundation to develop three handbooks aimed at helping 3 million Americans get back to work: ·        For Employers: A Guide to Recruiting and Hiring the Long-Term Unemployed: A Handbook for Employers—this guide enables employers to leverage industry leading practices aimed at the long-term unemployed and includes a case for change, the long-term unemployed maturity model, recommendations for recruiting, an implementation toolkit, vignettes, and case studies. ·        For Job Seekers: New Guide, New Destinations: Navigating Out of Long-Term Unemployment—this guide for job seekers includes recommendations for retooling a job search, including personal stories and lessons learned from employers and the previously long-term unemployed. Also included are an overview of available resources, a checklist for successfully finding a job and interactive exercises and activities. ·        For Community Leaders: Engage Your Community: A Local Guide to Addressing the Long-Term Unemployment Challenge—this guide for local community leaders includes a four-step plan to help mobilize support in local communities, recommendations to develop a local strategy for addressing long-term unemployment, guidelines on identifying a local long-term unemployment ecosystem, sample action items for each ecosystem partner to mitigate long-term unemployment and talking points on how to advocate for the long-term unemployed. I’ve been happy to support this initiative for four reasons. First, according to leading economists, the United States’ current level of long-term unemployment could cause lasting damage to the U.S. economy as a result of skills deterioration, lower labor force participation, and higher levels of structural unemployment (the unemployment resulting from industrial reorganization, typically due to technological change rather than fluctuations in supply or demand). Second, I believe that the long-term unemployed are an overlooked labor pool. Despite decreasing unemployment, as of August 2014, there were still 4.8 million unfilled jobs in the United States.[5] It makes business sense for organizations to target the long-term unemployed with their recruiting strategies and the employer handbook will help them develop the business case for doing so. Third, like hiring veterans and the disabled, it’s a good thing to help Americans find work who may not have been given a fair shot (good from both the feel good perspective and for your employment brand!). Fourth, and much more personally, I also have family members and friends who are long-term unemployed or underemployed and I’m hopeful the job seeker handbook will help them. What can you do today to help our nation’s long-term unemployed? ·        Download a copy of the handbooks here for yourself ·        Help us get the word out: o   Share the link with your organization’s Talent Acquisition leader and recruiters and ask them to download A Guide to Recruiting and Hiring the Long-Term Unemployed: A Handbook for Employers o   Share the link with your family and friends and encourage them to download the New Guide, New Destinations: Navigating Out of Long-Term Unemployment handbook o   Share the link with your community leaders and encourage them to leverage the Engage Your Community: A Local Guide to Addressing the Long-Term Unemployment Challenge handbook ·        Tweet about the handbooks—please help us make these resources go viral! Here’s a shortened URL: bit.ly/1sIqdn7 ·        Look for the upcoming, complimentary Bersin research report Unemployed but Not Unemployable: Recruiting & Hiring the Long-Term Unemployed on www.bersin.com ·        Join me for the upcoming, complimentary Bersin webinar: Unemployed Long Term, Not Unemployable:  What Companies Can Do To Help on Thursday, November 13th at 2:00 pm ET [1] Source: "Employment Situation Summary," Bureau of Labor Statistics, September 5, 2014, www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm. [2] Source: "More Gloom for the Long-Term Unemployed, from Alan Krueger," Wall Street Journal / Jon Hilsenrath, May 22, 2014, http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/05/22/more-gloom-for-the-long-term-unemployed-from-alan-krueger/?KEYWORDS=long+term+unemployment. [3] Gretchen Gavett, "The American Way of Hiring Is Making Long-Term Unemployment Worse," Harvard Business Review (Online) (13 December 2013) http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/12/the-american-way-of-hiring-is-making-long-term-unemployment-worse/ [4] For more information, see the White House website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/02/10/more-300-companies-pledge-help-long-term-unemployed-0 [5] Source: "Job Openings and Labor Turnover—August 2014," Bureau of Labor Statistics, October 7, 2014. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf This publication contains general information only and Deloitte is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. Deloitte shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this publication.  

Last week I attended the Talent Analytics Leadership Roundtable hosted by Northwestern University and co-sponsored by Sears Holdings Corporation. The event included over 20 talent analytics thought leaders from companies in high tech, retail, financial services, manufacturing, and service industries - a veritable Dream Team of analytics brainpower. The discussion revolved around how organizations are deriving value from talent analytics, their use of methods, models and technologies, and trends for the future. Here is a recap of a few key themes from the discussion. 1. Predictive retention models: Coming to a desktop near you. With their advanced analytics capabilities, most of the roundtable participants have built their own predictive retention models and are using these to understand and help prevent turnover. But these models will soon be available to the masses. Solution providers big and small have jumped into this space with pre-packaged solutions: Oracle, Workday, SuccessFactors, Visier, Evolv, just to name a few. In the near future, these models will be available to thousands of organizations. The question is: are HR and business leaders ready? If the models are constructed well, they can be extremely beneficial to organizations in uncovering potential problem areas and helping organizations identify targeted initiatives to help mitigate turnover. But HR needs to be able to validate these models over time and within targeted employee segments. One Fortune 100 company I talked with recently, for example, said that its model was very accurate for individual contributor and manager-level roles, but totally fell apart for senior leadership roles. HR needs an advanced analytics capability to be able to assess the accuracy of these models. In addition, some organizations worry about disclosing the predicting turnover scores for individuals, as managers may not use this information appropriately. If a manager can only send one of two high potentials to a development event, for example, perhaps she will send the individual with a lower predicted turnover score, figuring that to send the one with high predicted attrition would be a waste of money (and eventually the attrition becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy). For these reasons, HR leaders will need to decide who has access to these models and how they are used. Both HRBPs and managers will need training on how to use the information in the models, and new talent initiatives may need to be created given the different factors related to risk. The use of predictive retention models is an exciting step forward for analytics, but HR needs to get ahead of the game to make sure they serve their purpose.   2. Continuous performance feedback replaces the dreaded annual performance appraisal. We’ve been saying for more than three years that the annual performance appraisal is dead (or should be.) For many of the participants at the roundtable, this goal has become a reality. These organizations have moved past the static, once a year performance process in favor of more continuous feedback. This approach includes regular feedback check-ins with the manager (typically two to four times per year) plus ongoing feedback from peers (sometimes called "crowdsourced" performance feedback). While these organizations are enabling broader, more immediate feedback from a variety of sources, they still emphasize the importance of managers and employees having conversations about performance. In other words, peer feedback does not completely replace managers, but rather supplements and supports manager-to-employee conversations. At Sears Holdings Corporation, for example, employees have a digital cloud-based application they can access anytime on their computer or smart phones to request and give feedback to anyone else on the platform. The tool provides a view into how they are achieving results and how they are demonstrating capabilities and living the culture. The feedback goes directly to the employee and the manager has full visibility to all feedback an employee receives, helping both quickly identify what worked well and where they can improve. The new platform was specifically designed to structure feedback in the most effective way possible and create a growth mindset, facilitating continuous improvement. Launched three months ago, the new feedback tool is catching on, with over 10,000 feedback submissions in the first months of deployment. This is the future of performance feedback. Companies that are still stuck in the once-a-year review cycles would be wise to rethink now how they conduct their performance process.   3. An overhaul in employee engagement measurement. In a similar vein, the annual employee engagement survey process is due for an overhaul, and many leading organizations have moved past the static process in favor of continual measurement. Similar to the performance review issue, why wait for a once-a-year reading on the engagement levels of your employees? If you have a problem, most of your high performers will have left by the time you analyze the survey results. Instead, organizations with advanced analytics capabilities are continually monitoring employee engagement by analyzing employee postings on internal discussion sites and communities. IBM, for example, has an initiative underway to use sentiment analysis of internal postings to monitor engagement on a regular basis. By augmenting their traditional survey approach with ongoing monitoring of engagement, the company can get a better handle of issues as they arise and take prompt action. These are exciting trends but a big change for many companies. HR needs to be at the forefront, advocating for these ideas and paving the way for these changes. That will require a savvy analytics capability, a great deal of change management to gain buy-in, and development initiatives to upskill HR and business staff to appropriately glean insights from data.   4. Prepare to address privacy and ethical issues around analytics. Analytics offers so much promise, but it also brings up a number of ethical questions and privacy concerns. From the example cited earlier (what if managers start discriminating against employees with high predicted attrition scores?) to organizations wanting to scrape employee comments off external sites , ethical questions - as well as legal ones - abound. These are even more prevalent in Europe, where the legal standards on data are higher. Even something as seemingly simple as analyzing diversity data can be fraught with legal concerns. Analytics leaders need to be thinking about these issues now and establishing partnerships with their legal teams to address these concerns. Even if an initiative is "legal" it can raise concerns among employees that will cause a backlash. Just because data can be collected and analyzed, that doesn’t mean it should be. Analytics leaders will need to tread a fine line and decide what is appropriate for their organizations. The more transparent they can be about the purposes of the research and how it will be used, the more acceptance and support may be gained among employees - and the press. (For more insights on this issue, check out this article.)

We just released new research which shows an astounding gap between what business executives say and what they do, and one of the biggest issues highlighted is a lack of focus on leadership development. Here is the data: A majority of America's business leaders (66 percent of CXOs and 63 percent of CXOs in waiting, among the 300 surveyed) say they are very confident that their organizations will outperform the competition over the next 12 months. But when asked about their confidence in their ability to address specific obstacles to growth, nearly half had some doubts (43 percent of CXOs and 44 percent of CXOs in waiting). Note: A "CXO in Waiting" is an executive in succession to take on a CXO role. What is keeping these leaders up at night? It appears to be three things. First, problems CXO's worry about (talent and skills gaps, cyber risk, competition from emerging markets) are not getting funded adequately. The data shows, for example, that 72% of the executives who worry about Cyber Risk are not prioritizing investments in funding and incident response; 67% of the executives worried about emerging markets are not adequately investing in talent and business in these markets, and 35% of the execs worried about skills shortages are not prioritizing investments in HR and people development. While the research does not explain why this gap exists, it appears that CXOs simply struggle to get their teams to develop actionable solutions to these issues. Second, and perhaps more importantly, CXOs are not confident in their leadership pipeline. Our Global Human Capital Trends research shows that leadership remains the top talent issue among businesses around the world, with only 14% of companies stating they feel they feel their leadership pipeline is "ready." Fig 1: Findings from Deloitte Business Confidence Survey Third, organizations are not adequately investing in the development of leaders. In this study the data from CXOs was striking: only 48% of top executives believe their direct reports have the skills to become part of the C-Suite in their organization, and 50% of the individuals who are CXOs in waiting have "little or no access to leadership training" to help them grow into these positions. Even worse, only 49% of the the up and coming emerging executives told us that "the organization creates opportunities for me to succeed" and only 49% of CXOs state they are committed to developing leadership skills at all levels of their organization. So one could argue that the problem is executives themselves: they are not asking for or spending time on the development of their own top teams. We have been studying leadership development practices in companies for almost ten years now, and our 2014 Leadership Development Factbook shows that spending in this area increased 14% last year and large companies spend between $7,400 and $10,600 on top executive development each year. So companies are spending the money and they are making an effort, but unfortunately the solutions are inconsistent and not delivering the impact we need. This research shows, for example, that only 26% of companies even have successors identified for their top positions - so the problem is not only one of development, but more significantly one of "selecting the right candidates." Selecting the right senior leaders is difficult. Internal experience, motivation, cognitive skills, personality, relationship skills, and entrepreneurial skills all play a role. Too many companies promote people who are "in the pipeline" or "highly successful in their prior role" and then find that it takes several years for these high-potentials to realign themselves as senior leaders. (Our data shows that only 36% of executives even have a successor identified.) Our High-Impact Leadership development research, based on the study of more than 700 companies over the last five years, shows that successful leaders have skills in four broad areas: people leadership and execution, intellectual capacity and drive, adaptability to different cultures and situations, and ability to influence and align people toward a goal. These are broad skills which must be assessed slowly and once identified, leaders who move into CXO roles need support. Coaching of these "new executives" is critical. One senior HR executive told me that "the worst thing we do is promote a highly successful VP into a SVP role and then not give him or her the right level of support in their new position, often letting them fail and go to the competition." Executives have to realize that it often takes years for new leaders to become seasoned, high performing executives. Finally, our research shows that despite the best intentions of Human Resources leaders and Leadership Development teams, without direct senior executive involvement, leadership development programs fall flat. Companies that have leaders who are directly engaged in selecting leaders, teaching, and coaching their team are more than three times more likely to have robust leadership pipelines and highly engaged leaders.   Fig 2: Financial Impact of Strong Leadership The bottom line: executive confidence is directly related to confidence in leadership, which in turn is related to executive focus on leadership development. When we asked investors to tell us how they value companies, they gave companies with "strong leadership teams" a 35% premium in valuation. Time and again stories show that companies that look at leadership as part of their competitive advantage build capability that drives innovation, performance, and engagement at the same time they're shipping new products and capturing market share.

HR already is grappling with the challenges of out of date, incomplete or potentially inaccurate about corporate employees. Analytics teams are addressing issues of data cleansing and the creation of data dictionaries to solve the linguistic and data model incompatibilities across the organization. (Note the great variation in what constitutes an "employee," or how "attrition" is defined across a company).   However, in the current flood of attention paid to analytics in human capital management, we as practitioners need to keep one more point in mind: thatbusiness-relevant (not just HR relevant) analytics will stem from the combination of HR data with production and financial data. This creates an immediate challenge for the HR professional.   The challenge for HR becomes to better understand the intersections between the workforce in total, and the mission and vision of the organization — current and future. Furthermore, HR will need a firm grasp of the comparative costs of workers of all types: not only competitive salary data and benefits;, employer costs of labor; and workforce overhead, for example,  but also the costs related to an increasingly contingent workforce.   The analytics required will need to assist the HR team in the hiring and development of a disparate, global workforce such that the team has the data necessary to deploy just-in-time talent where and when it is required. New data types abound within HR: video and telephone-derived candidate interviews and the job applications themselves are just one example. Capturing text communication between recruiters and candidates or employees and customers is another. We can anticipate that these and other data types will proliferate across the other areas of the business as well. This leads to the bigger challenge of synthesizing, extracting meaning, and storing unstructured data; data gathered from all parts of the organization. How will HRIT and IT professionals derive standard data models from these more recent types of data? How will it integrate with the structured data in the employee profile and system of record today?  The focus on business-relevance leads to cross-disciplinary analysis; the added requirement for managing new data types is an added challenge for both HR and HRIT. Begin building your analytical skill sets now! And download Karen O’Leonard’s High-Impact Talent Analytics: Building a World-Class HR Measurement and Analytics Function for more details!   This publication contains general information only and Deloitte is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. Deloitte shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this publication.   As used in this document, "Deloitte" means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.   Copyright © 2014 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.

Workday Rising, the annual Workday conference for its customers and prospects was held in early November in San Francisco. Attendees heard from Workday executives on upcoming products, from current customers on their deployments and ensuing outcomes, and from vendors and systems integrators on the fit of their solutions with their Workday customers’ technology and implementation requirements. In addition were the well-received customer collaboration meet-ups, which were customer-driven discussions about relevant topics of customer common interest. With close to 5000 in total attendance, this year’s conference is the largest Workday Rising to date. Workday now reports close to 700 customers on its human capital management platform, 100 of which also use the financial management platform. The spring 2014 announced recruiting product has twelve companies live in production on it. All customers are on an identical version of the product, with their own configurations running on top of it. New releases are bi-annually, with, the company announced, updates that used to take 24 hours now taking as few as six. Key areas of the presentations at the conference included the ever-of-interest analytics, the new user experience, and technology updates on applications and the platform in general. Analytics: "Analytics is the new frontier ," according to Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield, co-founders and, respectively, the CEO and Chairman of Workday. Analytics played center stage in their joint keynote, as the two leaders of the company kicked off Workday Rising with a discussion of current and future product features from the company. They see three progressive phases in analytics of increasing sophistication and benefit to end users: the first, more common today, is data that describes the organization as it stands; the second is predictive: a theme common to many software providers in the HR community today; and the third, demonstrated in this keynote, adds the ability to recommend actions based on those predictions. Simply put, Aneel stated that the versions of analytics support moved from "that happened," to "what could happen," and finally to answer the question "what should you do about it?" Workday Insight Applications, the new suite of applications, uses advanced data science and machine learning algorithms to enable both financial and workforce-related decision-making. Each Workday Insight Application will address a specific business scenario by providing insights, surfacing predictions, and recommending actions that a decision-maker can take, all of which can be accomplished on mobile devices. To accomplish this, Workday also introduced SYMAN, an intelligent information engine that weaves a predictive engine, a recommendation engine, matching algorithms, and search relevancy throughout the Workday foundation of HR, talent, and financials.It creates industry trees, which are taxonomies organizing hundreds of job positions and job categories for more than 20 industries representative of Workday’s customer base. Here mapping of like titles and positions are classified and normalized into common definitions.As adaptive technology, the solution "learns" over time, in theory, making it more reliable in its predictions and recommendations. With its unique perspective among standalone HR and talent providers with support for a complete financial suite, Workday also provides analytics on financials. Predictive analytics — almost a buzzword in today’s software vernacular — was demonstrated at Workday Rising with this example: ascertaining the fit and likelihood of success for an existing employee in various "next jobs." In this example, an employee has a very high risk of leaving the firm (95%) and is a fairly high performer. The system evaluates the likelihood of Jack’s success in three different moves that his manager could suggest as a career advancement. The employee retention model in general contains a total of 62 factors, including evaluation of such areas as the market demand for skills, the employee’s tenure in the organization, and the length of time between promotions. To this end, Workday had acquired Identified in February 2014, using both its data scientists and technology for improved sourcing technologies, predictive analytics, and machine learning.[1] The new product sets will be available to Workday customers in 2015. User Experience Like all providers of software solutions for HCM today, Workday is focused on improving the experience that end users - employees in addition to HR staff—have with their applications. The new interfaces were designed to make the experience of technology at work mimic the ease of the consumer experience. This is the second "new look" that Workday has created over this year; this incorporates the flat design as seen in Apple’s iOS 8. With a "develop for mobile first" philosophy, Workday is close to completing a migration from Flash to HTML5 support throughout the product. Users can elect to access the new interface now if they are users of iPhone or iPads; Android users will see these in March with the release of Workday 24. Application Updates Higher education, often an ill-served industry, is the target of Workday’s student applications, developed for mobile devices. Higher ed is a key vertical for Workday; the ensuring product set was designed with input from institutions including University of Texas at Austin, Yale University, Stevens Institute of Technology,Broward College ,and Tallahassee Community College, among others. The first offering in the higher education suite is student recruiting which uses analytics to match prospective students to profiles of historically successful predecessors who actually complete their degree. Recruiter management, campaign and event management, success tracking, and the use of smartphones to keep track of likely applicants is part of the current release, with more features beyond student recruiting scheduled for the future. Other additions to applications include those to the recruiting module to support questionnaires, activity streams, and social job postings. New organization charting displays are now included in the core HR module. Unlimited custom dashboards are supported for user who want to design their own - and often many different dashboards. Enh ancements to mass operations were another area of attention in current and upcoming releases. First translations of Workday’s mobile apps on mobile devices are now available, as is embedded video for use in onboarding. Supply and demand analysis for future workforce planning is also provided. While announced earlier this fall, Workday highlighted its new Composite Reporting functionality at Rising, which enables customers to combine various data sources such as actuals, budgets, statistics, and headcount into live multi-dimensional reports that users can format, drill down into, and act on all within Workday, rather than having to export to tools such as Excel. Financial Management Betsy Bland, the VP responsible for financial management products highlighted a new application that will predict employee expense deviation and predict areas of overspending - including which workers are most likely to deviate. Upcoming functionality in Workday Financials will include financial scorecards and KPIs, as well as additional enhancements to reporting, dashboards, and analytics, according to Bland. Inventory management is also forthcoming—this will allow businesses to purchase materials, and track and manage their storage and use. For global customers, the future will include more prepackaged localizations of taxation and the like. Technical Updates Workday’s 700 customers are currently generating one billion transactions per month on the platform (which, by the way, is 45 million as an average each working day.) While they can never touch the code for the product, they can - and do - configure many processes and reports suitable to their specific organization. According to Stan Swete, Workday’s Chief Technology Officer, customers have created 448,000 custom reports, and 137,000 custom business process definition in the system. Integration is always a critical issue for customers, as companies typically have many disparate solutions across their enterprises, especially if they are large or global[2] Workday’s early acquisition of the Irish company Cape Clear resulted in the Workday Integration Cloud, comprised of an integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) that allows all application integrations to run in the Workday Cloud without a customer having to use on-premise middleware. Mr. Swete states that "Workday is committed to raising the bar on integration." Here we review what the company provides today. One option is documented APIs with which customers can create their own integrations, another is tools such as the Enterprise Integration Builder and Workday Studio, and packaged integrations. Customers can define and create their own custom APIs through Reporting Services, referred to as "Reports-as-a- Service"  to extract data out of  Workday.  They can also create integrations against the Workday API using other own middleware technologies, such as Microsoft.NET, TIBCO, or Oracle Fusion Middleware. The Workday Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) tool is a simple graphical and guided interface to define inbound and outbound integrations without requiring any programming.  At a more complex level, Workday Studio is another development tool enabling customers and partners to build sophisticated integrations to and from Workday that are deployed and run on integration servers in Workday’s data center. Workday also provides "packaged" connectors that are tested, certified, and supported by Workday itself. These include connectors to, solely as examples, Cornerstone OnDemand for learning, HireRight for background checking, and in this release, large legacy payroll vendor integrations, such as to the SAP payroll, whether provided by ADP, NGA, or SAP itself. Workday supports an in-memory architecture, which means its data is main memory resident rather than stores on disks, which allows faster retrieval of data. It uses a database named Riak, an open source solution from Basho Technologies, the creator and developer of Riak, an open source distributed database (sometimes categorized as a NOSQL database) and Riak CS, a cloud-based object storage system that sits on top of Riak. Riak is architected for low-latency, availability, fault-tolerance, operational simplicity, and scalability. Conclusion Today, as a nine-year-old company, Workday provides enterprise cloud applications for human capital management, payroll, financial management and analytics. It has grown rapidly to the 700 customers using its software suites today. Workday Rising is the major event for those customers, who gather to hear about new products, the future roadmap, and as importantly, to talk to other customers like themselves. The growing number of technology and implementation partners is demonstrated by the increased presence of software provider and systems integrators in the exhibit halls. This publication contains general information only and Deloitte is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. Deloitte shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this publication. As used in this document, "Deloitte" means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Copyright © 2014 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.   [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/27/workday-acquires-identified-a-potential-disruptive-move-in-recruiting/   [2] See Deploying HCM Technologies: Making Change Work. Katherine Jones, Ph.D., Bersin by Deloitte. June 2014.  

UCLA’s annual HR Roundtable Retreat featured an interesting discussion of future workforce trends. Led by Marina Gorbis of the Institute of the Future, part of the discussion focused on the growth of "microworkers," individuals who freelance a variety of projects or jobs for different employers. Although freelancers are nothing new to the workplace, numerous online platforms such as oDesk, Elance, and Freelancer.com are making it easier for these individuals to find work, so that the freelance movement appears to be growing. According to Forbes, an estimated one in three Americans (roughly 42 million workers) are freelancers. That number is expected to grow to 50 percent of the workforce by 2020. Many individuals turn to freelancing due to challenges in finding full-time employment in a tough job market. But for a growing number of workers, freelancing is a lifestyle choice. These individuals prefer the benefits of freelancing - being their own boss, flexible work schedules, and the comfort of working from home - over the structure of a full-time office job. From the organization’s perspective, freelancers provide a ready source of talent to supplement the existing workforce. Go to any of the popular freelancing sites and you can find a great many individuals with wide-ranging skills. Some of the top freelancing roles include: Writing Editing PowerPoint creation Graphics Data analysis The last item on this list, data analysis or analytics, is a prime area for freelancers. The lack of analytical skills is one of the key challenges in HR organizations today, yet most of these organizations have yet to create a clear roadmap for developing these capabilities. These organizations can turn to freelancers, who have the skills to help organizations analyze, interpret, and visualize their data. Kaggle, for example, provides a competition platform for top analytics talent. Organizations post their data, and statisticians and data scientists from all over the world compete to create the best solutions. If you are nervous about turning over your organization’s sensitive data, you can require individuals to sign confidentiality agreements through a Masters Competition. Many organizations have used Kaggle to find the expertise they need, including my own organization, Deloitte. HR leaders need to help their organizations understand how to best incorporate this talent into their workforces. If your organization has yet to utilize freelancers on a wide scale, this may initially require a bit of legwork. You may need to involve your procurement department to specify how to hire freelancers. You will likely also need to involve your compliance and legal groups to make sure you don’t run afoul of employment laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act. You may need to modify your contracts, confidentiality and intellectual property agreements, insurance requirements, work schedules (for different time zones), and payment terms to accommodate freelancers. Furthermore, your HR systems and tools may need to be modified to track this new category of workers. For managers, hiring freelancers will require a shift in how to onboard and incorporate this new talent into work streams. The organizational culture will need to build an acceptance of freelancers as part of the workplace ecosystem. These are areas where HR can help. Many organizations are already leveraging the talents of the freelance community. According to Gorbis, one of her large tech clients staffs many of its projects with a ratio of 10 freelancers or microworkers for every one employee. Even on a less grand scale, freelancing promises to change the dynamics of the workplace. HR leaders should look at how they can help to build this larger talent ecosystem.

We are a research organization, and one of the most important thing we do is share information, data, and perspectives. Over the coming weeks there will be a lot of new insights coming, and I want to highlight some important things you can do to help. First, we are in the final stages of producing the Bersin Talent, HR and Learning Predictions for 2015, which will be out soon. I have personally spent countless hours on this research, and it brings together our combined perspectives on the ten biggest imperatives we believe HR and talent professionals should consider in the coming year. I won't give away any secrets, but stay tuned it's coming soon. The second big project I want to highlight is one you can participate in right now: Deloitte's Third Annual Global Human Capital Trends study. This is a massive global project I lead with two other partners, and it represents one of the biggest (if not the biggest) global studies of talent and HR issues around the world. Like last year, we expect to have data from more than 90 different countries and we have already found some dramatic shifts in the issues and capability gaps in HR around the world. Right now we are in the final stages of closing the survey, and we would like your help. Please take the survey here - it will help give you (and your peers) great insights into the global issues we face in 2015, and I greatly look forward to sharing results with you. I am excited to start sharing our perspectives for 2015 in the coming weeks!

Most HR organizations have been slow to adopt analytics - too slow, in fact, in the minds of many impatient business leaders.  Our research conducted last year showed that just 14% of HR organizations in the U.S are using advanced or predictive analytics to make talent decisions. These companies have created strong analytics teams with a diversity of skill sets and have established data governance processes for data quality and integration.   Despite the prognostications that 2014 would be "the year of predictive talent analytics," things haven’t changed all that much. I keep hearing the same questions from HR leaders over and over again: "How do I get started with analytics?" "How do we clean and integrate our data?" "How do we upskill our staff to be more data savvy?" If HR continues to drag its feet, it risks losing control over its data, and its chance to gain some real power within the organization. Witness the articles in support of CFOs owning analytics within corporate America. CFOs understand the value of data and are already using analytics to help them understand and predict margins, pricing models, and potential new revenue streams. For decades Finance has been using analytics to better understand where the business is strong and where it needs improvement. CFOs could be a natural fit to lead analytics across the organization - taking over responsibility for HR analytics, marketing analytics, and operational analytics. Most CFOs are in a position of power within their organizations. They already control much of that data on company financials and operations.  They have credibility and are seen (in many companies) as the source of truth.  They understand data and know how to use it. In many organizations, HR falls short on all of the above. Which is why HR risks losing control of its talent data to CFOs, who may be looking to further expand their leadership roles and spheres of influence throughout the company - and who are tired of waiting for HR leaders to "get it" when it comes to analytics.  I’ve already talked with several companies over the past two months that have centralized their analytics across functions. In a some cases, the CFO is running the analytics organization. In others, it  falls under the COO or CIO.  This should be a wake-up call for HR leaders. The battleground over corporate data is threatening to heat up, and HR can’t throw up the white flag and  lose its stake in the one area that promises to bring it credibility with executives and power over talent and business decisions. If your HR organization is still new to analytics, here is one thing you can do: Find a business leader who is willing to partner on an analytics project to solve a problem (e.g. reducing turnover, improving engagement, reducing accidents/theft/leakage, etc.) Put together a skunks works team, borrowing talent from another department if necessary or partnering with a university or external supplier, and look to get a small ‘win.’  After that, evangelize the results and find another internal stakeholder or two to partner with on another, slightly larger, project. After you have a few small wins and have built some credibility with business leaders, you can ask for some additional resources and start building an analytics team. Many HR people say, "I can’t get the funding for analytics,"  and it's no wonder...since they haven’t proven the value and their credibility yet.  So start small - look for a  supportive business leader with a pain point  - and grow from there. Any don’t wait too long, or before you know it, your CFO may be managing your talent data.