I’m excited to announce that the highly-anticipated Talent Acquisition Factbook 2015: Benchmarks and Trends in Spending, Staffing, and Key Recruiting Metrics was published today.[1] This research report is particularly timely for contemporary Talent Acquisition (TA) leaders. With the job market continuing its recovery, TA leaders are applying a laser-focus on how they attract and engage the talent they seek. Why, you might ask, is this different than any another time? It boils down to this—candidates are not simply coming along for the recruiting ride—they’re driving the car now that the Internet has revolutionized candidates’ ability to search for jobs and market their skills. Potential candidates can learn detailed information about an organization just by performing a quick Internet search. Candidates can find open positions located anywhere in the world, and those with critical skills in scarce supply can easily find organizations willing to pay them more money to switch employers. Further, with the advent of social media came the ubiquitous ability to passively look for jobs (even when happily employed) by posting one’s employment experience on a social or professional networking site Of course, this is not new news. We have spent the past several months researching ways for recruiters to become more effective—from focusing on improving the candidate experience, recruiting the long-term unemployed, to maximizing campus recruiting efforts, implementing veteran hiring initiatives (publishing in May), and developing stronger relationships with hiring managers (publishing in July). So, where does the TA leader begin today? The Talent Acquisition Factbook 2015 should help TA leaders determine where they need to focus and may help them build a credible business case for further investment. This research helps answer the big questions TA leaders have regarding cost per hire, sources of hire, time to fill, and new hire voluntary turnover, e.g., In 2014, U.S. companies increased their average talent acquisition costs 7% from 2013, driven in part by an increase to nearly $4,000 cost per hire in 2014. Professional networking sites went from 4% of the recruiting budget in 2011 to 12% on average in 2014. By contrast, agencies and third-party recruiters took a hit, claiming 18 percent of the recruiting budget in 2014, down from 38 percent in 2011. Despite the increased spending on professional networks, the research shows that company websites drive more hires than other sources, followed by job boards, and internal candidates. Overall, companies are finding it takes 52 days on average to fill open positions—up from 48 days in 2011. High-impact TA functions have 40 percent lower new-hire turnover and are able to fill vacancies 20 percent faster than companies with more tactical recruiting functions. Interested in learning more? Download the complimentary WhatWorks Brief and join Jennifer Krider and me for an online webinar, "Benchmarking Talent Acquisition: The Shift to Candidate-Driven Recruiting," on June 9th at 2 p.m. EDT/19:00 BST. As always, feel free to add a comment below, connect with me on Twitter @RAEricksonPhD, or by email at rerickson@deloitte.com P.S. Bersin’s annual conference, IMPACT, is being held next week in Miami. The conference is sold out but you can follow the hashtag #IMPACTHR on Wednesday and Thursday, April 29-30, to hear Bersin by Deloitte analysts present new research and in-depth case studies by practicing corporate leaders   [1] For more information, Talent Acquisition Factbook 2015, Bersin by Deloitte / Jennifer Krider, Karen O’Leonard, and Robin Erickson, Ph.D., April 2015. Available to research members at www.bersin.com/library                 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.  

  Ninety percent of American adults have a cell phone and 58 percent have a smartphone,[1] generally defined as a cellular phone that performs many of the functions of a computer. A smartphone likely has a touchscreen interface, can access the Internet rather than just the cell network, and has an operating system capable of running downloaded applications.   In addition to the communication support (voice, email, and text) prevalent in mobile devices, and ignoring for the moment the camera and video technology generally included, smart phones provide users with a great many transactional or operational tools.  One can pay a bill or scan a check, book a car service, secure a boarding pass, monitor one’s home security system, and much more. What about at work—and those transactions relevant to talent and HR?    Increasingly many of applications are tied to human capital management solutions: 93 percent of the HCM solution providers in our recent study supported mobile applications. Significantly, many reported "developing for mobile first," meaning that their new product development targeted mobile devices, then were moved "backward" to laptops and PCs.   The vendors tell us that the functionality they offer is increasingly being enabled and used by their customers. These always-handy, "in-your-pocket" applications can provide immediacy and 24x7 accessibility to both managers and employees. For Kronos, as an example, 98 percent of client applications within talent acquisition have mobile apps enabled.[2] SuccessFactors’ monthly active users increased 95 percent year of over year.[3]  Workday reports that it has experienced a 400 percent increase in transaction volume coming from mobile devices.[4] Today’s vendors offer mobile solutions well-equipped to provide a positive experience for job applicants in seeking positions and applying for them with their mobile devices. These solutions can streamline the application process, potentially providing a positive experience for HR and the hiring managers as well. It is the ease of use, tabulation of relevant metrics, and efficiencies gained that can make a business impact through the use of smartphones. Onboarding is a critical ingredient in enculturation and new hire engagement. Tools that ease that early path to job productivity are also often viewed as instrumental in reducing unwanted attrition.  Not surprisingly, onboarding support was the area of greatest projected growth in smartphone app use in our recent study of end users and their plans for smartphone use in HR and talent in the year ahead.[5] HR professionals are likely to find increasingly more sophisticated apps in the future, covering many aspects of HR that are currently managed and used on "tethered" technology—such as desk-bound technology. Indeed, as the market is inundated with smaller, different devices such as smart-watches and other wearables, smartphone use for human capital management is likely to be just the first step into more portable, accessible, and lower cost workforce management. Join me on June 16, 2:00 p.m. ET / 19:00 BST for a web seminar entitled Getting Smart with Smartphones: Solutions for Human Capital Management for further discussion.   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 © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.   [1] http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fact-sheet/ - Pew Mobile Technology Fact Sheet. Pew Research Center.  January, 2014 [2] Source:  Kronos, 2015. [3] Source: SuccessFactors (SAP), 2015. [4] 3 Things to Expect from Workday’s New Mobile Experience November 4, 2014 by Joe Korngiebel http://blogs.workday.com/3_things_to_expect_from_workdays_new_mobile_experience.html?campid=ussm_tw_a_co_14.1431 [5] Smartphones for the Workforce: What HR Practitioners Tell Us About Planned Use. Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte. In  Press.  

Talent analytics presents the second largest capability gap for organizations, trailing only the need to build better leadership. Three in four companies (75 percent) in a recent Deloitte study believe that using analytics in HR is "important," but just 8 percent believe their organization is "strong" in this area. So, despite a great deal of media attention and high-profile uses of analytics, our survey confirms that most HR organizations have been slow to get started. One of the top challenges to building an effective analytics capability is a lack of skills in HR for gathering, analyzing and interpreting data. HR teams need dedicated staff for these activities, and these roles require new and different skill sets. Data from Burning Glass shows that the demand for HR analytics roles is still strong, but the growth in job postings slowed in 2014. As shown in Figure 1, postings for HR analytics roles (which include a variety of data- and analytics-oriented job titles) grew substantially between 2010 and 2013. The number of job postings grew 63% between 2010 and 2011, and a robust 21% from 2012-2103. In 2014, the site listed 13,335 job postings for HR analytics roles, which is still strong, but just 3% higher than the prior year.   Source: Burning Glass    Part of the reason for the slowing growth in HR analytics job postings may be the difficulty in finding people to fill these roles. Due to high demand for analytics skill sets over the past few years, it is taking longer to fill these types of positions - and becoming more expensive. According to the latest BurtchWorks survey, salaries for entry-level data science roles rose 14% over the past year - to a median base salary of $91,000. Given the time and expense of recruiting external candidates, some organizations are starting to upskill their existing HR staff and/or borrow staff from other functions for their analytics work. So the difficulty in finding talent for these roles is one factor. But I believe the larger issue boils down to the fact that many HR organizations have not been able to develop a plan or get buy-in for their analytics initiatives. Many simply don’t know where to start. Recent data  from a survey by Harvard Business Review Analytics Services and Visier shows that one-third of HR organizations are not investing anything in improving their analytics capabilities. (See Figure 2.) For the companies that are investing, some of the efforts are encouraging - such as hiring a CHRO with a strong analytics background, or hiring an HR leader with finance or business experience. But just 9% and 16% of organizations, respectively, say they have taken these steps to improve how data is used to make workforce decisions. In addition, one in five organizations said they approved new HR analytics positions. Given the lack of analytics skills in HR, I’m surprised the figure isn’t much higher. This number is lower than the data from our study  in 2013, when 31% of HR organizations said they had hired additional staff for their measurement and analytics efforts - hence more evidence of the slowdown in job growth for HR analytics roles. One other figure here is interesting: 9% of organizations said they have moved analytics out of HR. If HR leaders continue to drag their feet with analytics, this may be the fate of an increasing number of organizations over time: a centralized analytics function or COE that covers all disciplines - HR, Finance, Marketing, Operations, and other functions. This is what I talked about in my blog "Will HR Lose the Battle over Analytics?" A centralized, cross-functional team has many advantages. But for HR, this would mean losing control over the crown jewels. In this model, HR will need to compete with many other functions to get the data and analyses they need (and think about how well this works today with IT.) To avoid this fate, HR organizations should assess where they are today and what they need to move forward. Most analytics teams get their start with a few small wins. Identify a business leader who wants to partner with you on an analytics project to solve a problem in the organization. If you don’t have any analytics staff currently, pull together a few people to do the project - someone who understands the business problem, someone can pull together the data, and someone with strong statistical modeling skills. This doesn’t have to be a formal team - just find people who want to apply analytics to an important business problem. Or hire a consultant or contractor to help. Show how the results can add value to the organization, and you’ll be on your way. Eventually you will need to hire talent to grow your analytics capabilities, and our research and skills evaluation tools can help. Analytics is a journey, so why not start now.     Figure 2: Investments in HR Analytics    Source: Harvard Business Review Analytics Services and Visier, 2015.

Next Monday, May 25th, is Memorial Day. Many of us, myself included, are looking forward to long weekends with family to launch the start of the summer. But Memorial Day has a deeper meaning—it’s a national holiday in the United States for remembering the people who died while serving in our armed forces. Many families and volunteers will spend time this weekend decorating the graves of soldiers with flags and flowers. Life in the military can be hard on soldiers and their families, both when actively serving and when returning home. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. veteran population was more than 21 million strong as of 2014.[1] Given the advanced technical training, effective leadership skills, and strong work ethic that soldiers develop while in the military, one would likely think that veterans would be highly sought after in today’s competitive job market. However, the data says otherwise. The Bureau of Labor Statistics stated that the unemployment rate for Gulf War II veterans was 9 percent as of November 2014—25 percent higher than that for nonveterans at 7.2 percent.[2] Further, the unemployment rate for veterans has been higher than the nonveteran unemployment rate since the start of the recession.[3] And, according to a survey conducted by the Center for Research and Public Policy, the most serious concerns among veterans upon returning home include the applicability of military training to education / jobs (at 84 percent), job placement (at 82 percent), and career counseling (at 79 percent).[4] Many organizations today are already committing resources and implementing programs to help veterans find work. In some cases, organizations consider supporting veteran hiring initiatives an integral part of their employment brand. To help those employers go further and for the 55 percent of employers surveyed that do not yet participate in veteran-specific recruiting initiatives,[5] I have written a complimentary research report to provide inspiration and help in the development of a business case for veteran hiring initiatives. From the Armed Forces to the Workforce: Why Veteran Hiring is Both the Right thing to Do and a Smart Move to Make includes detailed information about what select companies are doing in terms of five types of veteran initiatives: Implementing significant veteran hiring targets Providing business skills training Developing military-friendly hiring websites Attending military job fairs Offering internships and scholarships. The report also includes detailed lists of resources for both organizations and veterans: Organizations that educate companies on how to build veteran-friendly hiring practices Veteran job boards Services and publications to prepare veterans for employment Both of my grandfathers served in the Army in World War II and my father served in the Army Medical Corps, so writing this report has been a labor of love. With the volume of veterans entering the workforce continuing to increase (240,000 to 360,000 veterans each year[6]), it is my hope that the information shared in this report about what makes veterans such valuable employees—as well as what other companies are doing and the many resources available—will inspire more organizations to embark on their own veteran hiring initiatives. It is, after all, not just the right thing to do but also a smart move to make. Download the report here and please share with your networks on social media: http://bit.ly/1ee9WBz As always, feel free to add a comment below, connect with me on Twitter @RAEricksonPhD, or by email at rerickson@deloitte.com P.S. Please join me and my colleagues at two upcoming Bersin Talent Acquisition webinars in the next three weeks: Partners in Process: Recruiters and Hiring Managers Align for Improved Talent Acquisition Performance on May 28, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. ET / 15:00 BST with Denise Moulton, Senior Research Analyst, Deloitte Consulting LLP Benchmarking Talent Acquisition: The Shift to Candidate-Driven Recruiting on June 9, 2015 at 2:00 p.m. ET / 19:00 BST with Jennifer Krider, Senior Research Analyst, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP; and Mike Walsh, Senior Product, Marketing Manager, Glassdoor         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.     [1] Source: "Employment Situation of Veterans Summary," United States Department of Labor / Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 20, 2014, www.bls.gov/news.release/vet.nr0.htm.   [2] Source: "Employment and unemployment among all veterans, Gulf-War era II veterans, and nonveterans," United States Department of Labor / Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 10, 2014, www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20141110.htm. [3] Source: "Why is joblessness for veterans so high?" MoneyWatch / Constantine von Hoffman, May 23, 2014, www.cbsnews.com/news/why-is-joblessness-for-veterans-so-high/.   [4] Source: "Veteran Unemployment," Forbes.com / John Ebersole, November, 15, 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/johnebersole/2013/11/15/veteran-unemployment/.   [5] Source: "Veterans Talent Index," Monster.com, 2014, www.monster.com/about/ veterans-talent-index.   [6] Source: The Fast Track to Civilian Employment: Streamlining Credentialing and Licensing for Service Members, Veterans, and Their Spouses, Executive Office of the President / National Economic Council and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, February 2013, www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/military_credentialing_and_ licensing_report_2-24-2013_final.pdf.

Application integration is essential. It is not just a technical issue, but also a business issue. Companies require one source of the truth about their people and processes in order to manage, monitor, and measure progress and success. Yet understanding how software solutions that are used in business actually connect with each other remains elusive. There are many reasons why companies want their HR software platforms to be integrated, including the following. Data and Analytics—In order to run meaningful reports, understand the state of the business, and implement talent analytics[1], companies need the equivalent of a "single system of record". Well-architected systems integration helps to make sure that all data is coordinated, easy to find, and accurate. User Experience—People don’t want to log into multiple HR systems to get their work done. If systems are not integrated, employees and managers often have multiple systems with multiple user interfaces to use, making HR systems difficult to learn and potentially, not well-adopted. Accuracy and Compliance—Most HR programs have some legal and regulatory requirements. Did a certain employee complete the mandatory compliance training, for example? If systems are not well integrated, then these processes may not be easy to track, and it may be impossible to verify or report on compliance issues. IT Cost—When systems are not integrated by vendors, IT may have to pick up the bill "Integration projects" may be put on the back burner, further complicating HR’s ability to provide services to its stakeholders. Integration is clearly an essential consideration in deploying an HRIS system. Beyond the compliance requirements of a core HR system, HR professionals may want to integrate data from background checks; competency, skill, or behavioral assessments; benefits administration; payroll and tax services; or, workforce management functions, such as clock-ins/-outs. Making the Incompatible Compatible Application integration between unlike products is not trivial. Products created at different times or by different vendors use different data models—basically, they store information in what can be vastly different ways. Consider naming conventions as an example. One application may ask for first name, last name, while another may do the reverse; but it could be that neither has consistency in dealing with hyphenated names. One application may refer to the company name by a three letter acronym, while another uses the words written out; as the data is passed between applications, will it appear as two distinct companies? Therein lies the difficulty with integration—getting the data between two or more points the way the user expects to see and use it. It is for this reason that integration is so important and, without sound practices, analysis of data is challenging across applications. The majority of HCM software providers have long supplied standard, documented application programming interfaces (APIs) for practitioners to use in connecting to a variety of their custom and third-party products.  APIs are tools that specify how some software components should interact with each other. Generally, an API is a library that includes specifications for routines, data structures, object classes, and variables—all of which are used by an IT staffer or a third-party technologist to create the integration between two applications, processes, or services.  The vendor in these instances has tested and certified the APIs for the use they will serve in the user’s environment.  Some bundle these as "connectors" which can be used to integrate two specific disparate applications—these may be chargeable, as is their implementation for the customer. Many users today integrate their talent management applications with their HRIS system of record, third-party products, such as other talent products from other providers, and services, such as prehire assessments and background checks, benefits, tax and payroll providers. These applications or services may or may not also be in the cloud (that is, accessible over the Internet via a browser or mobile device), rather than running natively in your data center. Users have choices in the way they choose to integrate all these disparate applications. Given the heterogeneity of the technology requirements today, many software providers support a third-party integration partner ecosystem to provide a choice to application users which need to integrate applications to an HRIS, or other third-party on-premise or cloud solutions. The integration of two very different systems, not only with each other, but with all of the related business applications and services on which HR professionals rely, is complex—hence time-consuming—and has to maintain the accuracy and integrity of employee data. Almost any data can be amalgamated via flat-file data transfer, but that is generally insufficient in providing the degree of integration companies rely on today. Third-party transport and data-routing tools exist, but often they too lack the deep integration that many organizations seek. Mind you, both of these measures serve to move data from one application to another. Middleware presents another viable option for integration. With the advent of SaaS and the rapid growth of cloud computing, middleware has had to address on-premise to on-premise data movement and consolidations, but also on-premise to the cloud, and even further, cloud-to-cloud integration. Many of today’s users of Cloud-based talent applications have tools available to ease the task. Documented APIs exist, and third-party applications and tools are available—many of which are certified by the vendors. Increasingly the vendors—recognizing that few of their customers live in a homogeneous software world, provide packaged integrations that are tested and often certified to address some of the many integration requirements of users today. Because these are not simplistic plug-and-play tools, they are likely to continue to require customizations as they are implemented to meet unique customer requirements. For managing talent, users often seek the ability to efficiently integrate data from their sourcing or hiring management software into onboarding, then to the employee profile, learning, and career preference applications - and then to their performance management and succession planning solutions, to name the more common. Acquiring all solutions from one integrated suite provider is one way to achieve integration; however, when your requirements cannot be met with that strategy, know that it is not an insurmountable show-stopper; you can look at other avenues.  It may cost you time (and perhaps expense), but the effort in amalgamating your data will likely prove worth the effort.   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. 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. Copyright © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.   [1]   For more information, Big Data in HR: Building a Competitive Talent Analytics Function - The Four Stages of Maturity, Bersin & Associates / Josh Bersin, April 2012. Available to research members at www.bersin.com.

We just finished our 8th annual IMPACT research conference in Florida, and our theme was Bold HR - pushing the envelope on talent and HR practices, reinventing what we do, and starting with a fresh sheet of paper.   Let me start by saying that theme turned out to be perfect. We had more than 500 committed, passionate, hard working HR and L&D leaders joined us from around the world (US, Europe, India, Australia, Taiwan, Quatar) and everyone agreed that this is a transformational period for HR and learning leaders everywhere. In my keynote I cited some important research: Among 3,300 HR and business leaders, today the average gives HR a C- in our ability to directly impact the talent challenges in our companies  Nearly 1/3 of all new CHROs are coming from non-HR backgrounds, demonstrating how CEOs want new thinking brought into the HR function Zenger Folkman research shows that business leaders who are "Bold" in their thinking (vs. those practicing "Good Judgement") are 11X more likely to succeed in today's business environment. So the message is clear:  in order for HR to thrive and add value in today's new world of work, we have to be bold in our thinking, bold in our strategies, and bold in the redesign of what we do. What does the world Bold Mean? Let's look at the dictionary: "Not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff." "Courageous and daring." "Not hesitating to break the rules of propriety." "Thinking beyond the usual limits of conventional thought or action, being imaginative." How Bold are you in your HR strategies and programs?  Is your team able to innovate and reinvent your HR and talent programs? Are you courageous and imaginative in your recruiting or management practice? Our research suggests that if you aren't being bold, you're probably falling behind. The Four Principles of Bold HR  As we spent the last year preparing for our conference, I identified four key principles for Bold HR today. (You can download our overview here.)  First is B: Build the Irresistible Organization The first principle is to focus heavily on the employee engagement and culture. Today, as I discuss in Forbes, "Culture is the New Black." Every program, strategy, and investment you make should focus on helping people become more productive and engaged. Mo Jesse, the CEO of Earl's Kitchen and Bar, told the story of how he dramatically turned around their chain of restaurants by focusing heavily on empowering their people. Rather than try to "fix the menu" or "hire celebrity chefs," Mo spent time listening and learning at the grass root level, and focused on making Earl's a fun and empowering place to work. Within two years their revenues and margins grew and customer satisfaction started to skyrocket. Our research clearly shows that employees today are more demanding than ever - so the #1 thing we must do, regardless of our role in HR, is focus on building programs and strategies that make work fun, engaging, and more enjoyable. Making work easy is actually very hard work - but as our research and stories showed, when we trust and focus on our people, the business responds rapidly. As I described in my keynote, building an Irresistible Organization is not always easy. Today it means creating great jobs, hiring for fit, supporting managers and leaders, creating opportunities for growth, building a flexible and fun environment, and delivering on inspirational leadership. These are difficult tasks to do well, and every company will create engagement in their own unique way. Part of this new world of engagement is a focus on real-time feedback and giving employees a voice. We talked extensively about this topic throughout the conference and an exciting set of new vendors with real-time feedback and engagement tools has emerged to help. The second is O: Own the Leadership Agenda One of the biggest areas you impact the business is in your ability to help select, coach, and develop leaders. More than 87% of companies rate "gaps in their leadership pipeline" as a critical business issue and the challenges of leadership are a perennial problem. Today, as Millennials make up the largest segment of the workforce, we have to think about leadership from the bottom up. First line leaders (who typically make up 40% or more of the leaders in your company) are continuously under stress as they learn their new role. If you take the time to coach and develop leaders early in their career you build brand ambassadors for life. Facebook, for example, has a business rule:  a movement into leadership will not be a promotion. This simple idea helps make sure that people who move into team leadership or managerial roles are doing it because they truly want to add value through the success of others. We, in HR, have to constantly focus on helping the company identify great leaders and make sure the organization understands that leadership is not a destination, but rather a journey. Today there are literally hundreds of vendors, models, and consultants to help you build great leaders. Bold HR means you innovate, identify the characteristics of great leaders in your own company, and build a leadership development program that speaks to your own company's culture. By the way, the leadership development market (over $14 billion) grew by more than 14% last year - part of owning the leadership agenda is making sure that your CEO and other leaders feel comfortable to invest continuously in this area and they put their personal time into helping you push the leadership agenda. Third: L - Leverage Learning Everywhere The third part of Bold HR is to focus heavily on learning.   Income inequality and the fast-growing economy has shown that now, more than ever, people are in a mad scramble for skills to help them improve their professional careers. MOOCs, video learning portals, online learning academies, and learning marketplaces are everywhere.  (LinkedIn just acquired Lynda.com for $1.5 Billion, 10-times sales.) This disruptive growth in online learning has forced corporate learning departments to catch up. Our research shows that corporate learning has exploded as an issue (moved from 8th to 3rd biggest topic in business leadership this year) yet only 14% of chief learning officers feel fully aligned with their business leaders. Today HR organizations must reinvest in learning and provide engaging, relevant learning experiences (and assignments) to employees at all levels.  Millennials expect developmental assignments and job rotations every year, and most companies are struggling to redesign their strategies to make this work. At the IMPACT conference, our award winning program was a fantastic early-career global management program at Marriot. Through this program young employees spend their first two years on rotational assignments at various hotels around the world, learning management jobs in various parts of the hotel. This program is so exciting that it's now a huge tool for recruitment and employment brand. Fourth, D - Demand data. The fourth dimension to Bold HR is to get good at data. Listen, we in HR are the last part of business that hasn’t totally gotten our data act together.  Nobody would run finance or sales without good data, so now its time to do the same with HR. This new area of People Analytics is far more serious than the "HR Analytics" we’ve done in the past.  As one of our top HR leaders put it, we have to "spend time where the money is being made"  We are being asked to directly advise on critical business questions: Why are some sales teams outperforming others? Why do we lose certain high performers? Why do some nursing units or service teams deliver better outcomes? And why do some parts of the organization suffer from higher fraud or errors than others? The answer to all these questions lies in people analytics, and that is our bold new charter for the coming years. And One Final Thing  Let me leave you with the most important element of all:  YOU. You and your HR leadership have to "be bold." I was at a large consumer goods company a few months ago and the CHRO and I were talking about the issue of their HR "personality." This is a very well known company with a reputation for being one of the best places to work for ambitious marketing people around the world. And they have some of the smartest and most passionate HR people I have met. She told me that the biggest challenge her team has is "standing toe to toe with business leaders" and giving them the feedback and advice HR believes they need. While HR professionals certainly don't run the business, we are often the ones with the information and insights business leaders need to dramatically improve performance. If we can't boldly and confidently deliver our message, we won't be heard. This is an exciting time for the HR profession. The global economy is growing, recruitment is more competitive than ever, and a new generation of workers is demanding opportunities and changes to the way we work. Now, more than ever, is the time for HR to be bold, reinvent, and lead our organizations into the new world of work. I want to thank all the participants, vendors, and support people who made IMPACT 2015 our best-ever conference. We look forward to working with you on your own Bold HR strategy in the year ahead.

Josh Bersin has led the market with a message for HR practitioners at all levels:  Be Bold! Take the reins, mobilize the troops, and capture the HR and Talent field in your organizations.  The mantra for the HR community includes - perhaps for the first time—words such as "innovate," and "become data-driven," to "boldly go where no HR team has gone before." Hyperbole aside for a minute, the charter remains; but stepping up to the proverbial plate requires fearlessness and gumption; willingness to take a risk, and the courage to lead. Today’s HR leaders recognize this. Boldness is not just for the HR department however: companies that supply software for managing HR also face the need for such decisive action.  One example is SilkRoad, a SaaS-software company that launched a core HR product a few years ago that failed to meet the standards the company sets for itself.  Here is where the bold part come into play: management decommissioned the product and went back to the drawing board; rather than trying to be all things to all people, the new product which emerged, SilkRoad HRMS, is far more focused, leaving areas to third parties where third parties may do them best, such as payroll and benefits management. Product providers can be bold in their market strategies as well. Consider innovative ways to look at HR, such as "how much core HR is enough?"  What does a core HR software solution need to look like for, for example, a mid-sized company that has no international employees?  When talent profiles sprouted in the last decade, many of us analysts hypothesized that that employee profile could "take over" the system-of-record employee profile in the core HR system.  For many of the vendors that today provide  both core HR and talent  management systems  (such as talent acquisition, learning, career, performance, and succession management), that integration has happened:  there is one employee profile that contains both employment information and talent information.  But the innovation comes in with those suite providers who are talent-only - often linking to a third party HRIS system.  What employee information is indeed sufficient?  Some talent solution vendors see an opportunity to support their users—again, mostly less complex business environments—with one employee profile stemming from an integrated talent suite. Think about it: One single point of truth for information about a given employee without the complexities that sometimes accompany an HRIS.  The boldness of replacing a traditional HR system with a talent management system and an employee profile—no matter how complete—may not be sufficient in organizations that rely on the HRIS to determine ACA eligibility, as only one example.  But you must admit it is intriguing at a time when companies are looking for less complex ways of managing their businesses. I’m not forgetting HR however; consider emboldening your team. Look where you can reskill or upskill your department with the skills they will need for the rest of the decade.  Improve business acumen across the HR team. Upskill analytic skills. Enhance proficiency with today’s technology. Collaborate tenaciously with other divisions in the organization.  Build internal project management and change management proficiency within your team. Re-envision HR; re-envision the solutions you use every day, or if you are a solution provider, that you create. Consider revision -a word that does not mean "do over"—but "to look at with new eyes." Let’s be bold enough to re-envision and  revise.   This publication contains general information only, and none of the member firms of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, its member firms, or their related entities (collective, the "Deloitte Network") is, by means of this publication, rendering professional advice or services. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional adviser. No entity in the Deloitte Network shall be responsible for any loss whatsoever sustained by any person who relies on this publication.   About Deloitte Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of DTTL and its member firms. 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 © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved. Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited

Hello! I am the newest member of the Bersin by Deloitte analyst team and it is a pleasure to make your virtual acquaintance! My research focus is leadership and succession management and I look forward to lively conversations around these important and interesting topics with you. A little bit about my background: prior to joining Bersin, I pursued a dual career as leadership researcher and consultant and I worked closely with organizations in both the USA and Europe (I am Austrian!) to drive methodical and practical business research. I consider leadership as both a social process as well as an organizational phenomenon and I am excited about our future research endeavors that will help us understand how best to leverage human leadership capital for individual and collective business outcomes. The way we think about leadership has changed dramatically in the past few years. Hierarchical structures, centralized decision-making and a "subordinate" workforce are expiring principles, as markets and business challenges rapidly change and organizations are required to engage a new type of workforce: future employees. Future employees - who, by the way, may already be working at your organization! -  will have grown up in a fully digitalized, connected and diverse world  in which new forms of work habits  and values  have emerged. Their requirements for being engaged, motivated and inspired may differ from what most organizations have seen before. The question for companies has become: How to build leaders who are able to connect with this kind of workforce so that strategies are executed and business goals can be met? Participants needed for new leadership research study! Reading a lot of secondary literature, my current research suggests that one effective response can be to develop a highly responsive, adaptive and flexible type of leadership, on the organizational and the individual leader level. In the coming weeks, I am conducting research interview to this effect and I am currently looking to talk to HR and business leaders who want to participate in our research! If you are interested in a 30-minute phone call with me, or know a senior HR or business leader who is, please send me an email: aderler@deloitte.com. I look forward to hearing from you! 

We just finished our 8th annual IMPACT research conference in Florida, and our theme was Bold HR - pushing the envelope on talent and HR practices, reinventing what we do, and starting with a fresh sheet of paper.   Let me start by saying that theme turned out to be perfect. We had more than 500 committed, passionate, hard working HR and L&D leaders joined us from around the world (US, Europe, India, Australia, Taiwan, Quatar) and everyone agreed that this is a transformational period for HR and learning leaders everywhere. In my keynote I cited some important research: Among 3,300 HR and business leaders, today the average gives HR a C- in our ability to directly impact the talent challenges in our companies  Nearly 1/3 of all new CHROs are coming from non-HR backgrounds, demonstrating how CEOs want new thinking brought into the HR function Zenger Folkman research shows that business leaders who are "Bold" in their thinking (vs. those practicing "Good Judgement") are 11X more likely to succeed in today's business environment. So the message is clear:  in order for HR to thrive and add value in today's new world of work, we have to be bold in our thinking, bold in our strategies, and bold in the redesign of what we do. What does the world Bold Mean? Let's look at the dictionary: "Not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff." "Courageous and daring." "Not hesitating to break the rules of propriety." "Thinking beyond the usual limits of conventional thought or action, being imaginative." How Bold are you in your HR strategies and programs?  Is your team able to innovate and reinvent your HR and talent programs? Are you courageous and imaginative in your recruiting or management practice? Our research suggests that if you aren't being bold, you're probably falling behind. The Four Principles of Bold HR  As we spent the last year preparing for our conference, I identified four key principles for Bold HR today. (You can download our overview here.)  First is B: Build the Irresistible Organization The first principle is to focus heavily on the employee engagement and culture. Today, as I discuss in Forbes, "Culture is the New Black." Every program, strategy, and investment you make should focus on helping people become more productive and engaged. Mo Jesse, the CEO of Earl's Kitchen and Bar, told the story of how he dramatically turned around their chain of restaurants by focusing heavily on empowering their people. Rather than try to "fix the menu" or "hire celebrity chefs," Mo spent time listening and learning at the grass root level, and focused on making Earl's a fun and empowering place to work. Within two years their revenues and margins grew and customer satisfaction started to skyrocket. Our research clearly shows that employees today are more demanding than ever - so the #1 thing we must do, regardless of our role in HR, is focus on building programs and strategies that make work fun, engaging, and more enjoyable. Making work easy is actually very hard work - but as our research and stories showed, when we trust and focus on our people, the business responds rapidly. As I described in my keynote, building an Irresistible Organization is not always easy. Today it means creating great jobs, hiring for fit, supporting managers and leaders, creating opportunities for growth, building a flexible and fun environment, and delivering on inspirational leadership. These are difficult tasks to do well, and every company will create engagement in their own unique way. Part of this new world of engagement is a focus on real-time feedback and giving employees a voice. We talked extensively about this topic throughout the conference and an exciting set of new vendors with real-time feedback and engagement tools has emerged to help. The second is O: Own the Leadership Agenda One of the biggest areas you impact the business is in your ability to help select, coach, and develop leaders. More than 87% of companies rate "gaps in their leadership pipeline" as a critical business issue and the challenges of leadership are a perennial problem. Today, as Millennials make up the largest segment of the workforce, we have to think about leadership from the bottom up. First line leaders (who typically make up 40% or more of the leaders in your company) are continuously under stress as they learn their new role. If you take the time to coach and develop leaders early in their career you build brand ambassadors for life. Facebook, for example, has a business rule:  a movement into leadership will not be a promotion. This simple idea helps make sure that people who move into team leadership or managerial roles are doing it because they truly want to add value through the success of others. We, in HR, have to constantly focus on helping the company identify great leaders and make sure the organization understands that leadership is not a destination, but rather a journey. Today there are literally hundreds of vendors, models, and consultants to help you build great leaders. Bold HR means you innovate, identify the characteristics of great leaders in your own company, and build a leadership development program that speaks to your own company's culture. By the way, the leadership development market (over $14 billion) grew by more than 14% last year - part of owning the leadership agenda is making sure that your CEO and other leaders feel comfortable to invest continuously in this area and they put their personal time into helping you push the leadership agenda. Third: L - Leverage Learning Everywhere The third part of Bold HR is to focus heavily on learning.   Income inequality and the fast-growing economy has shown that now, more than ever, people are in a mad scramble for skills to help them improve their professional careers. MOOCs, video learning portals, online learning academies, and learning marketplaces are everywhere.  (LinkedIn just acquired Lynda.com for $1.5 Billion, 10-times sales.) This disruptive growth in online learning has forced corporate learning departments to catch up. Our research shows that corporate learning has exploded as an issue (moved from 8th to 3rd biggest topic in business leadership this year) yet only 14% of chief learning officers feel fully aligned with their business leaders. Today HR organizations must reinvest in learning and provide engaging, relevant learning experiences (and assignments) to employees at all levels.  Millennials expect developmental assignments and job rotations every year, and most companies are struggling to redesign their strategies to make this work. At the IMPACT conference, our award winning program was a fantastic early-career global management program at Marriot. Through this program young employees spend their first two years on rotational assignments at various hotels around the world, learning management jobs in various parts of the hotel. This program is so exciting that it's now a huge tool for recruitment and employment brand. Fourth, D - Demand data. The fourth dimension to Bold HR is to get good at data. Listen, we in HR are the last part of business that hasn’t totally gotten our data act together.  Nobody would run finance or sales without good data, so now its time to do the same with HR. This new area of People Analytics is far more serious than the "HR Analytics" we’ve done in the past.  As one of our top HR leaders put it, we have to "spend time where the money is being made"  We are being asked to directly advise on critical business questions: Why are some sales teams outperforming others? Why do we lose certain high performers? Why do some nursing units or service teams deliver better outcomes? And why do some parts of the organization suffer from higher fraud or errors than others? The answer to all these questions lies in people analytics, and that is our bold new charter for the coming years. And One Final Thing  Let me leave you with the most important element of all:  YOU. You and your HR leadership have to "be bold." I was at a large consumer goods company a few months ago and the CHRO and I were talking about the issue of their HR "personality." This is a very well known company with a reputation for being one of the best places to work for ambitious marketing people around the world. And they have some of the smartest and most passionate HR people I have met. She told me that the biggest challenge her team has is "standing toe to toe with business leaders" and giving them the feedback and advice HR believes they need. While HR professionals certainly don't run the business, we are often the ones with the information and insights business leaders need to dramatically improve performance. If we can't boldly and confidently deliver our message, we won't be heard. This is an exciting time for the HR profession. The global economy is growing, recruitment is more competitive than ever, and a new generation of workers is demanding opportunities and changes to the way we work. Now, more than ever, is the time for HR to be bold, reinvent, and lead our organizations into the new world of work. I want to thank all the participants, vendors, and support people who made IMPACT 2015 our best-ever conference. We look forward to working with you on your own Bold HR strategy in the year ahead.

Josh Bersin has led the market with a message for HR practitioners at all levels:  Be Bold! Take the reins, mobilize the troops, and capture the HR and Talent field in your organizations.  The mantra for the HR community includes - perhaps for the first time—words such as "innovate," and "become data-driven," to "boldly go where no HR team has gone before." Hyperbole aside for a minute, the charter remains; but stepping up to the proverbial plate requires fearlessness and gumption; willingness to take a risk, and the courage to lead. Today’s HR leaders recognize this. Boldness is not just for the HR department however: companies that supply software for managing HR also face the need for such decisive action.  One example is SilkRoad, a SaaS-software company that launched a core HR product a few years ago that failed to meet the standards the company sets for itself.  Here is where the bold part come into play: management decommissioned the product and went back to the drawing board; rather than trying to be all things to all people, the new product which emerged, SilkRoad HRMS, is far more focused, leaving areas to third parties where third parties may do them best, such as payroll and benefits management. Product providers can be bold in their market strategies as well. Consider innovative ways to look at HR, such as "how much core HR is enough?"  What does a core HR software solution need to look like for, for example, a mid-sized company that has no international employees?  When talent profiles sprouted in the last decade, many of us analysts hypothesized that that employee profile could "take over" the system-of-record employee profile in the core HR system.  For many of the vendors that today provide  both core HR and talent  management systems  (such as talent acquisition, learning, career, performance, and succession management), that integration has happened:  there is one employee profile that contains both employment information and talent information.  But the innovation comes in with those suite providers who are talent-only - often linking to a third party HRIS system.  What employee information is indeed sufficient?  Some talent solution vendors see an opportunity to support their users—again, mostly less complex business environments—with one employee profile stemming from an integrated talent suite. Think about it: One single point of truth for information about a given employee without the complexities that sometimes accompany an HRIS.  The boldness of replacing a traditional HR system with a talent management system and an employee profile—no matter how complete—may not be sufficient in organizations that rely on the HRIS to determine ACA eligibility, as only one example.  But you must admit it is intriguing at a time when companies are looking for less complex ways of managing their businesses. I’m not forgetting HR however; consider emboldening your team. Look where you can reskill or upskill your department with the skills they will need for the rest of the decade.  Improve business acumen across the HR team. Upskill analytic skills. Enhance proficiency with today’s technology. Collaborate tenaciously with other divisions in the organization.  Build internal project management and change management proficiency within your team. Re-envision HR; re-envision the solutions you use every day, or if you are a solution provider, that you create. Consider revision -a word that does not mean "do over"—but "to look at with new eyes." Let’s be bold enough to re-envision and  revise.   This publication contains general information only, and none of the member firms of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, its member firms, or their related entities (collective, the "Deloitte Network") is, by means of this publication, rendering professional advice or services. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional adviser. No entity in the Deloitte Network shall be responsible for any loss whatsoever sustained by any person who relies on this publication.   About Deloitte Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of DTTL and its member firms. 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 © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved. Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited