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.

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.

One of the things I enjoy the most about being an analyst is the opportunity to speak with Bersin members about the Talent Acquisition issues they’re facing. Last spring, we started getting a lot of questions about campus recruiting programs, e.g., How should we structure our campus recruiting program? Do you have any frameworks, metrics, or other guidance for developing a campus recruiting strategy? What metrics should we use to measure program success?   In response to this member demand, I’m excited to announce that we’re publishing a new research report today, Developing an Effective Campus Recruiting Program, that answers these questions and more.   Why should organizations invest the time and resources in a campus recruiting program? Campus hires can provide organizations with a consistent pool of workers in today’s talent-constrained global business world, with 73 percent of large organizations hiring interns to fill full-time positions.[1] Campus programs boast high retention rates with 69 percent of campus hires remaining with an organization after five years.[2] This is good news, given that employee turnover can be costly.   Campus recruiting can deliver additional strategic benefits by helping organizations manage talent gaps and elevate their profiles as potential employers on campuses. It also can bring fresh and diverse perspectives to the organization on topics ranging from technology to contemporary workplace policies.   To help organizations assess the current state of their campus recruiting programs and identify opportunities to develop a strategic approach, the report outlines six critical steps: ·        Create a compelling business case. Present convincing business reasons for increased investment and commitment to campus programs, such as how they can tap rich talent pools, reduce turnover, and help build leadership pipelines. Presenting a clear vision for your recruiting efforts is critical to creating an effective program. ·        Identify stakeholders and decision-makers. A large number of individuals need to champion, support and ultimately manage program development and implementation. Executive buy-in and support are likely to contribute to the overall success of a campus program. ·        Develop strategy and tactics. A campus recruiting program may satisfy a variety of needs, from traditional internships and cooperative programs to entry-level positions and even experienced hiring. Organizations should align their campus recruiting initiatives with their overall talent acquisition strategy and develop a work plan. ·        Determine a budget. Some campus recruiting programs fail to launch due to lack of financial support from leadership. Set a realistic budget and look for ways to optimize efforts by using niche job posting sites, hosting virtual job fairs, and partnering with local universities. ·        Align resources. As the need to hire more skilled entry-level staff and interns in competitive fields grows, organizations should look to individuals from the business, former interns, and college alumni networks to help align campus strategies and program execution. ·        Ensure sustainability. Delivering a sustainable program requires anticipating emerging business needs and continued identification of the successes and shortcomings of a current campus recruiting program. Assessing ROI and the value of the program will be the truest measure of a program’s success.   Interested in learning more? Download the complimentary WhatWorks® Brief and join Denise Moulton and me for an online webinar, Going Back to School: Developing a More Effective Campus Recruiting Program, on February 24, 2015 2:00 p.m. ET.   As always, feel free to add a comment below, connect with me on Twitter @RAEricksonPhD, or by email at rerickson@deloitte.com                 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: "Infographic: Internships Survey and 2014 Internship Trends," Internships.com, January 23, 2014, http://www.internships.com/eyeoftheintern/news/idc-news/internships-survey-2014-internship-trends/ . [2] Source: "2014 Internship & Co-op Survey," National Association of Colleges and Employers, April 2014, http://www.naceweb.org/uploadedFiles/Content/static-assets/downloads/executive-summary/2014-internship-co-op-survey-executive-summary.pdf .  

Infor hosted industry analysts last week at an Innovation Summit in its decidedly upscale digs in New York. Celebrating its most successful nine month period in the history of the company, President Duncan Angove reported a five percent year to date increase in license revenue growth, driven by sales of SaaS subscriptions and perpetual license growth that exceeded 30 percent. Its booming SaaS business grew nearly five times year to date, and Human Capital Management platform sales have nearly doubled, in part fueled by an uptake in health care companies of their HCM solution. Angove cited 3100 new customers in the last nine months—totally new to Infor, not upgrades from their legacy products.   It is their business proposition that is resonating in today’s ERP market: business solutions created for microverticals (See Figure 1), with the very explicit features needed in what might to other vendors be niche markets not worth dedicated development work. The horizontal solutions, such as HCM and customer relationship management (CRM), can run in concert with any of its ERPs, or sold separately. Interestingly in a day of increasing standardization in software, the company also provides solutions and services to vertical-specific customization, recognizing that one size indeed does not fit all. Figure 1. Infor’s Cloud Microverticals Source: Infor Inc., 2015. The bane of any newly fledged Cloud company is the extent of its installed base, on on-premise legacy systems. This is especially challenging for Infor, as it was originally a virtual hodge-podge of ERP, financial, and other software acquisitions (such as Baan, Lawson Software, Infinium, System 21, and many more).  Now, while dated, the legacy products are still supported by Infor, with migration paths available whenever the customer is ready.  One new program, called UpgradeX, is designed to ease - and perhaps hasten—that move in the customer base. With 2750 cloud customers globally, Infor serves 35 million users. The number of multi-tenant solutions they have will expand to 33 by the end of this year and the company reports that users in more than 90 countries are accessing Infor products in the Cloud.     Part of the value proposition for customers is the deep level of very specific vertical functionality - the kind that is often bolted on a more generic ERP. Examples are fund accounting for public sector, nurse scheduling and staffing for healthcare, catch weight for food industries, and kit generation by quantity size breakdown for the fashion industries. Let’s not forget innovation.  An innovative face on what might appear stodgy old manufacturing may seem a disconnect - but Infor has innovation labs  staffed with creative engineers in a culture where they can experiment; its Hook and Loop  designers also develop custom solutions for their customers.  The efforts of their creativity is apparent in their user interfaces, their mobile apps for NYPD, and other solutions. Last year the analysts told Infor execs that they may be the ERP market’s best kept secret—and they listened. Over the past year, the company has invested in marketing, print ads, airports posters, and begin making a name for themselves in sponsoring charitable events in the metropolitan area. While not the business equivalent of a household word yet, the company is likely a future force to be reckoned with.     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.    

To kick off the second day of Deloitte’s CHRO Academy event last week, Lisa Weber highlighted many of the challenges facing today's HR leaders. If you don’t know Lisa, she previously served as Chief Human Resources Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, and President of one of the largest operations at MetLife. We are lucky to have her as an advisor to Deloitte. A few of the key themes from Lisa’s presentation are as follows. The Bold, Business-savvy CHRO Lisa provided data showing that turnover among CHROs in F100 companies is high: 39% over the past two years, in fact. Many of these roles have been filled with leaders from outside of HR - executives from marketing, finance, operations, or lines of business.  The turnover isn't that surprising, given that only 5 percent of respondents in our global survey rated their organization’s HR performance as excellent (see Figure 1.)   Driven by the need to deliver greater business impact and drive innovation, the CHRO role is changing. The need for CHROs with strong business and financial acumen is more pressing than ever. CHROs need to understand where the business is going and how the business makes money. Most HR leaders have only a fleeting glimpse of what really drives the business. There is also tremendous pressure these days to be data-savvy. Data and analytics can help CHROs to see new directions and can bring better perspectives. But Lisa commented that the data alone is not enough. CHROs need to take those insights from the data and apply foresight - using their experience, wisdom, and judgment.   With this combination, great things can happen. So CHROs need to be business-savvy and data-savvy, but they also need to be bold. What does "bold’ look like? Bold is advocating a point of view on the company’s critical growth areas and how to get there. Bold is identifying where the company is weak and proposing solutions. If your company is thinking of opening a facility in a new location, for example, speak up on the talent implications: Can we find the right talent there? How long will it take us to recruit? What are the local labor laws and practices? Is this a wise move from a talent perspective? A bold CHRO is also proactive in identifying trouble spots and creating talent initiatives in response. During the keynote, an HR leader at a cosmetics company shared an initiative that originated from his CHRO. In response to flagging sales numbers, the organization built a sales capability COE within HR to help recruit and retain high performers. The CEO commented on how impressed he was that HR was proactively taking steps to increase sales - independently, without being asked or pressured. It reminded me of a conference I attended a few months ago where one business leader said in exasperation, "I don’t want my CHRO waiting for me to tell her what to do. I want her to tell me what we should be doing."   Know Your Strengths A recurring theme at the event was "play to your strengths." Each person on the leadership team has a role to play, and by capitalizing on everyone’s particular skill sets, the team can be more effective. So work closely with others with complementary skills, such as your CIO, CFO, and CMO.  Leverage their expertise and perspectives in combination with your talent management prowess. Too often we fixate on our (and our employees') weaknesses and spend countless hours trying to bolster these deficiencies. By focusing on what people do well, and understanding and leveraging the strengths of others, we have much greater potential to add value to the organization. Within my own workgroup we are using Gallup’s StrengthsFinder to discover our individual talents. As an example, one of my strengths is that of an "Activator," which Gallup describes as "someone who can make things happen by turning thoughts into action." Activators can bring energy and clarity to others’ ideas and bring concepts to market; these individuals should team up with people with complementary skills, such as "Futurists."  By learning our strengths and sharing them with each other, we hope to get greater productivity out of our team. Team members who understand each other’s abilities have greater trust and respect for each other. And they can selectively spend their time in certain areas, while leaving other areas to their teammates with other strengths. The team is therefore more efficient as well as effective.   Focus on What Matters CHROs have a never-ending to-do list. Many try to do too much and end up working on things that don’t bring much value to the organization. Lisa’s advice: Be decisive about how you spend your time. Look at your to-do list and prioritize the most important items, then leave the rest.  This advice reminded me of similar comments made by Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO, who said in an interview that if you are completing everything on your to-do list, you’ve probably spent time on some relatively unimportant tasks. One priority for your to-do list: building relationships with business and functional leaders. In fact, Lisa recommended that 20% of your time should be spent networking. Oftentimes we let our calendars get filled up with meetings. Lisa’s advice: Don’t let your schedule manage you - you need to manage your schedule. Decide what meetings are critical and politely decline the rest. And if you’re in a new HR leadership role, it’s important to get focused early. It can be a lot easier to make changes when you are fairly new in your role. Get to know the business and landscape first and then make some bold changes in the first year. If you wait too long, the opportunity for change may pass you by.   Be Mindful Lisa talked about the importance of being mindful, or being present and fully aware. How many of us have this level of presence at work, or in our personal lives, for that matter? As Lisa pointed out, "It’s hard to be mindful when your mind is full." Most of us are running at hyper-speed. So take some time to reflect, to bring focus to your thoughts, and to be fully present in the moment. You will likely see your judgment, decision-making, and relationships with others radically improve. Oftentimes CHROs feel they have to have the answer to everything. "I don’t know" or " I would like to think about that" are perfectly acceptable answers. We are much more effective when we respond, rather than react. Mindfulness helps us to respond.   Success is Deliberate    Finally, one of the things I loved about Lisa’s talk was her quote, "Success is deliberate." You need to decide to succeed and go after it. Pick just a few things and over-deliver on those. Then prioritize the next set of deliverables. Many CHROs feel the need to say ‘yes’ to everything and then get caught up doing busywork all day. It’s easy to lose perspective when you are doing too much. The job of the CHRO requires hyper-prioritizing. But prioritizing often isn’t popular, and you will likely get pushback from other executives and business leaders, who are irritated that you’re not focusing on their requests. Be clear but firm about what you are working on and why. And by all means - deliver!

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

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! 

All over the world companies are trying to find new ways to change their performance management practices to improve employee engagement, performance, and development. Many are eliminating performance ratings, forcing managers to check-in with employees regularly, and rethinking their compensation strategies.  Some are doing pulse surveys, revamping their engagement models, and opening up their internal communications systems. As I study this market and talk with managers all over the world, one thing keeps coming out:  we need to build a business around feedback. Feedback is a big topic, and it's more complicated than you think: We all want it and we all want to give it ... but it's difficult to give and even more difficult to receive. And in the corporate world, people who give a lot of feedback are often labelled trouble-makers. Today building a feedback-rich culture is a tremendously important task, and it impacts teams, organizations, customers, and the whole company. Well a new world of feedback tools and approaches has arrived, and I believe it could be one of the most exciting things happening in management and HR. I just finished more than two years studying this space and wrote a long article I encourage you to read. Let me know what you think, I'd like YOUR FEEDBACK on all these ideas and new tools in the marketplace!

All over the world companies are trying to find new ways to change their performance management practices to improve employee engagement, performance, and development. Many are eliminating performance ratings, forcing managers to check-in with employees regularly, and rethinking their compensation strategies.  Some are doing pulse surveys, revamping their engagement models, and opening up their internal communications systems. As I study this market and talk with managers all over the world, one thing keeps coming out:  we need to build a business around feedback. Feedback is a big topic, and it's more complicated than you think: We all want it and we all want to give it ... but it's difficult to give and even more difficult to receive. And in the corporate world, people who give a lot of feedback are often labelled trouble-makers. Today building a feedback-rich culture is a tremendously important task, and it impacts teams, organizations, customers, and the whole company. Well a new world of feedback tools and approaches has arrived, and I believe it could be one of the most exciting things happening in management and HR. I just finished more than two years studying this space and wrote a long article I encourage you to read. Let me know what you think, I'd like YOUR FEEDBACK on all these ideas and new tools in the marketplace!

All over the world companies are trying to find new ways to change their performance management practices to improve employee engagement, performance, and development. Many are eliminating performance ratings, forcing managers to check-in with employees regularly, and rethinking their compensation strategies.  Some are doing pulse surveys, revamping their engagement models, and opening up their internal communications systems. As I study this market and talk with managers all over the world, one thing keeps coming out:  we need to build a business around feedback. Feedback is a big topic, and it's more complicated than you think: We all want it and we all want to give it ... but it's difficult to give and even more difficult to receive. And in the corporate world, people who give a lot of feedback are often labelled trouble-makers. Today building a feedback-rich culture is a tremendously important task, and it impacts teams, organizations, customers, and the whole company. Well a new world of feedback tools and approaches has arrived, and I believe it could be one of the most exciting things happening in management and HR. I just finished more than two years studying this space and wrote a long article I encourage you to read. Let me know what you think, I'd like YOUR FEEDBACK on all these ideas and new tools in the marketplace!

For almost 15 years I have been focused on using research as a tool to help businesses solve strategic HR, learning, and leadership challenges. As most of you know, this focus has helped us pioneer a special breed of "actionable research" designed to help HR and learning professionals understand the marketplace, learn about trends and leading-practices, and diagnose their strategies to better understand next steps. We are very proud of our innovations - they include the use of validated maturity models (with detailed data and benchmarking behind them) in more than 20 different areas, comprehensive data on spending and resource allocation, and of course much detail on HR technology, solution providers, and content vendors and how they typically fit into the market. Throughout this journey our goal has always been simple:  to help companies address their most pressing talent challenges, and hopefully make their own workplaces more engaging and rewarding. And in the process of doing all this hard work, we realized that we could also help the HR community enhance its own professional skills and expertise - and of course help make businesses better at serving customers. This week, after more than two years of effort, we are introducing the next step in our journey - a new set of content and technology offerings we call BersinOne. While I rarely write blogs promoting our own offerings, in this case I just want to explain what we've done so you can learn more and see where we're going. Moving from Understanding to Action. Over the years we always asked our analysts to focus our research on "actionable information" - models, tools, frameworks, and examples that can help people solve problems. And most of you have told me this is very valuable and very helpful.  But it hasn't been enough. Despite our best efforts to write as much as we can, people continuously come to us and say things like "thank you for explaining that maturity model or that practice, but how can I implement it in my organization?" After thinking about this issue for many years, we believe we have come up with a new approach - and that is the focus of BersinOne.  Simply explained, what we realized is that major HR, learning, and talent management solutions tend to revolve around six basic steps, and when we want to build a world class solution, we always go down this path: Learn:  The first step in a problem is to learn about the space. If you have retention problem, or a hard time attracting candidates, or a gap in leadership capabilities - the first thing you should do is "learn about the space."  This means learning the vocabulary, understanding some of the basics, and starting to identify what "world class" looks like.  Our Lexicon, frameworks, case studies, and research reports are heavily focused on giving you the "101 course" in almost every area of talent, learning, and leadership.  And now we also include CHRO and VP level content, designed to help leaders quickly learn what they need, while you dive into detail as a practitioner or project leader. Prioritize:  The second step in developing an HR or talent solution is to prioritize. Where do we start?  What parts of our existing process or program should we throw away and what parts should we keep?  Should we double investment in this area or just tweak what we have?  These issues of how much to spend and what areas to prioritize can be tricky, because many companies aspire to copy a company like GE or Google, only to find that they simply "can't get there from here" and it might take years to reach that level. So here we provide diagnostic tools, Factbooks (books of spending level by maturity and industry), and maturity models to help you figure out precisely what the "next step" means to you and your organization. Design:  The third step is the fun part - designing a solution.  Here is where we sit down with a whiteboard (or website) and start to design how we want to redesign our onboarding program, architect our new leadership development, or maybe change our pre-hire assessment or interview guide.  Our goal here is to give you lots of guidance, tools (very precise checklists and action plans), and examples (case studies and artifacts from other companies) so you don't have to "reinvent the wheel."  And of course we try to show you what we've learned about design areas that are potential pitfalls or errors others have experienced, to help prevent you from making mistakes.  And by the way, design practices tend to change every year or two, so you have to stay current. Right now mobile apps, behavioral economics, and gamification, for example, are becoming very important. Select:  The fourth step, and sometimes the biggest of all, is to select a solution provider, product, or platform to help. My experience shows that there are very few HR and learning solutions that don't involve vendor technology, content, or platforms.  So we believe one of your most critical steps is finding the right partners, selecting the right tools, and sifting through the thousands of content and assessment providers to find the one best for you. This is why we focus on being effective HR analysts - we want to give you as much insight as we can about who does what, where they focus, and what their relative strengths are. Implement:  The fifth part of a solution is implementation. This, of course, is where the rubber meets the road - and topics like education, change readiness, change management, communication, and stakeholder buy-in can be especially critical. We are just introducing a major new area of research on change, and I think we've learned a lot to share with you - because no matter how beautiful and elegant a solution may be, if people don't use it there is no value at all. Measure: And finally, perhaps more important now than ever, is the need to measure what you've done. As an engineer with a background in analytics, I think measurement is very often a missing piece - and in HR, just like any other part of business, there are many things we can now measure. We study all areas of measurement and analytics and we offer tools, working groups (people you can learn from), diagnostics, and lots of templates to help you measure what you're rolling out. Measurement is far more than computing the ROI - it's putting in place an ongoing process to monitor and help continuously improve the program you've created. From a technology perspective, BersinOne is a major upgrade and face-lift to the BersinInsights platform we launched back in 2012. The new platform integrates all our research, tools, community, and diagnostics into an clean and new experience that will soon include role-based access to help you immediately find exactly what you need. Our goal with BersinOne is to be "the single place you go" to learn, address problems, and meet others in our community.   Part of the new content and platform strategy is to redesign our content around what we now call Bersin Blueprints - specific content designed to address current pressing talent challenges. The Bersin Blueprints, and there are four being launched today, compliment the Bersin Playbooks and extend them to give you step by step guidance using the six phases discussed above. And we have made it easier then ever to find what you need.  While all our subject areas and practices remain, all our content and tools are now also organized by nine solution areas - so you can quickly focus on a problem rather than look for content by topic or date. Becoming World Class at Talent:  More Important than Ever The world of HR, leadership, learning, and recruitment is more important than ever.  We will continue to develop innovative research and tools to help you stay ahead, solve problems, and develop your team. I look forward to sharing more with you, and of course welcome your feedback and comments.

  A leadership vision: followership in 2030 Imagine a group of elementary school children and fast-forward fifteen years to the time they enter the work force. What will they be like? What will they be interested in? What will inspire them and which principles will guide their choices? Which organizations will they want to work for, and what kind of employees will they turn out to be? Every attempt to describe the best leaders in 2030 should begin with asking about their followers. Knowing about the nature of their work, their values and expectations can help define key leadership skills. The primary factor for the fundamental differences between previous and future generations of workers is the near unlimited access to information. Enabled by technology, individuals and teams in 2030 are expected to be better informed and educated than ever before as they continue to explore ways of acquiring, managing and utilizing data. Future employees will have grown up in a fully digitalized, connected and diverse world in which new forms of work habits and values will emerge. Eventually, these changes will likely transform the role of employees within the leader-follower relationship.   Fewer limitations in regards to when and how people work, the freedom to share information and learn in more democratic ways have already begun to change work principles towards collaboration flexibility, and decentralization. As the corporate ladder is often a thing of the past, employees can create their own networks and career paths instead of relying on hierarchies and position thinking. These developments are changing the nature of followership dramatically. Better access to information provides employees with deeper knowledge and enables a higher degree of intellectual autonomy and emancipation. In 2030, workers will likely expect to be part of - not subject to - leadership processes. They should not just be followers but collaborators, associates and allies who require a new type of leadership than the generations before them. The best leaders in 2030... ...should understand that the workforce continues to transform into an emancipated and informed entity that openly disregards traditional structures, thinks independently, acts autonomously and knows what to expect from extraordinary leaders. More on what constitutes an extraordinary leader in this context next time! Feedback and comments are welcome! Please email me at mailto:aderler@deloitte.com     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.  

Here is an interesting proposition. You are a software provider, but you know you will never have the time to create every feature your customers might need, especially in the timeframe they want it. But you have other choices:  typically, a company might partner with other providers, such that their customers can get the solutions they need - but you may not have too much influence over that partner’s roadmap or product direction.  Or perhaps you as a software provider might just acquire that other company rather than partnering with it: a venture that may prove pricey, and may or may not deliver long-term value.   But what if there were something in the middle - more skin in the game than partnering—but not as much skin as if you acquired the whole company? This is the road that software provider Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD) is taking: the "something in the middle."  Through its Innovation Fund, the company provides venture capital, workspace and mentorship to the young companies, particularly those seeking to build businesses in the LA area, where Cornerstone is located. That said, one of the early growth stage companies involved in the program is in Silicon Alley—New York City.  Named One Month, it has an interesting value proposition:  that its clients can learn a new technical skill in one month. Its video-based courses help students complete a project (such as building an app), possibly while learning a new software tool, such as Ruby, Python or Swift.  Company executives state that 25,000 people have taken its courses with a high retention rate.[1] Course enrollment start at $49 a month.[2] Named one of Social Media Week’s "10 Start-ups to Watch"[3] last February, it has had three rounds of investors, including Cornerstone in the third round.[4] In theory, this functionality could be available to CSOD’s customers as a means of promoting rapid learning models.  The company has made no promises for any long-term support of the solution for its customer base. Silicon Valley isn’t totally ignored here either. Rallyteam relocated to San Francisco from the Santa Monica area to participate in the Orange Fab accelerator program.  Backed by Norwest Venture Partners,[5] among others,[6] and now by CSOD, the company provides SaaS solutions which encourage what it calls "smart matching" of employees to projects for agile and effective teamwork.[7] Workpop and Strive are both in Santa Monica and both companies have created programs for hiring management.  Workpop was recently named one of the "Coolest New Businesses in LA" by Business Insider.[8] It provides tools and data to give an employer a better understanding of a candidate’s fit within a company, with the goal of both reducing time to hire and decreasing attrition. A key feature of Workpop is its tracking of people across companies rather than solely within a specific company. Workpop has completed its second round of funding.[9] Strive, also in its second round of funding,[10] goes after that illusive technical software developer.  Founded by the same team that created CodeWars (a community in which developers compete on code challenges), Strive’s goal is to automate the technical hiring process for its client companies. Its platform is intended to source and test qualified developers, exercising their coding skills for more effective matching with positions. Investing in young startups is nothing new in the software industry: companies such as Salesforce.com have been doing it for years.  However, in the integrated talent management suite world it is a bit rarer: Cornerstone may well be a bellwether as to the effectiveness of such an initiative by an HCM software company.     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   [1] https://onemonth.com/ [2] As reported by One Month executive at an introductory event sponsored by CSOD. [3] http://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/events/startups-to-watch-why-entrepreneurs-will-build-the-future/ [4] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/one-month-rails [5] http://www.nvp.com/team/matt-slotnick/ [6] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/rallyteam/investors [7] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/rallyteam [8] Business Insider, February 18, 2015. [9] With $7.9 Million In Funding, Workpop Launches As A Job Marketplace For Hourly Workers by Ryan Lawler. September 16, 2014 http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/16/workpop/ [10] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/codewars/investors

It's HR Technology season, and once again vendors are introducing amazing and disruptive new technologies in all areas of HR.  I developed our "Ten Big Disruptions" report again this year, which I encourage you to read. At a high level, let me summarize what's going on - and as always we encourage you to reach out if you'd like to discuss more. The HR Technology market tends to go in cycles, as companies install new solutions and go through a 5-7 year cycle of implementation, rollout, and then replacement.  In several areas of HR we are nearing the end of a cycle, so let me summarize some of these evolutionary changes - then you can read the report for more detail. First, there is a massive replacement of licensed, traditional HRMS systems taking place. More than 40% of all companies are replacing or plan to replace their core HRMS systems. Cedar-Crestone believe 60% of all companies are working on a new enterprise HR systems strategy and 46% are increasing budgets. Interestingly, Stacey Harris (one of our alma maters) also found out that companies with new, recently upgraded HRMS platforms are spending 22% less per employee on HR, so they are seeing financial benefits (even though the cost of implementing new HR technology is high). These new HRMS systems are cloud based, and they are coming from vendors (Oracle, SAP, Workday, ADP, Ceridian, Ultimate Software, and others) that have mostly built-out talent management suites.  Almost 26% of the companies in the Cedar-Crestone survey are doing "rip and replace" - totally throwing away their old systems. I just hosted a panel with Delta Airlines (SAP implementation), Macy's (Oracle implementation), and United Technologies (Workday implementation) and we discussed the highly complex, multi-year process these companies are going through to replace their core technology. In every case the company selected a vendor that had particular capabilities that met their needs, and in each case there are many incumbent systems, payroll providers, and outsourcers involved. Erica Volini, Deloitte's service line leader in HR Transformation and Technology, explained clearly that there are no "best products" in this space - it's all a matter of where you're coming from, where you're going, and the vendor who's roadmap best matches yours. Second, the talent management market is being redefined. I've been in this market for 15+ years and the standalone market for learning, recruitment, and other talent applications is being redefined. The LMS markets is being disrupted by new video-based learning solutions, many of which will be complimentary to installed systems. There are a host of new, disruptive recruitment vendors who are clearly going to change the applicant tracking market. In fact I believe that market is ripe for disruption, since most ATS systems are quite old (as are the vendors).  And the market for new performance management systems is emerging. I know, the ERP vendors do all this stuff. Well even so, companies of all sizes will often either A) not use the ERP vendor's products, or B) can't afford the ERP solution - so these new vendors have a huge marketplace ahead. As always, once the gorillas emerge they will likely be acquired by the big HRMS/Payroll providers, but that's years ahead. Third, the market for feedback, culture, and engagement apps is here. I wrote extensively on this in the article "Feedback is the Killer App." The traditional annual engagement survey is going the way of the dinosaur (slowly however) and a new breed of pulse tools, feedback apps, and anonymous social networking tools has arrived. If you aren't exploring this space you are missing a huge opportunity to make your company better. I wont list the vendors here, but every one of them is growing and I see this as a whole new segment. Fourth, we have a maturing market for employee well-being, wellness, and productivity systems. We have published a lot of research which shows that employees are overwhelmed, and right now I'm working on next year's Deloitte Human Capital Trends (click here to participate) and you'll see even more on this coming up. To deal with this companies are now introducing some very exciting and well developed systems that let your employees join health-related challenges, track their fitness, collaborate with their health care providers or others, and just help balance their work-life. Personally I think this will be a huge market going forward, and even device manufacturers and exercise equipment providers are developing these systems. Fifth, the era of People Analytics is here. I just published another article on the Ten Things We Have Learned in People Analytics.  In short, this space is now maturing. While most companies are early in their implementations and solutions, there are now a good set of organizations that have implemented strong people analytics strategies, and almost every vendor now has some form of predictive analytics embedded into their product. Rather than seeing dashboards, you're likely to see "recommendations"- so some of this technology is invisible behind the scenes.  Tools to predict flight risk, assess high potential job candidates, even find toxic employee behavior - are all in the market today.  While many are not highly proven yet, they all work to a degree, providing great value to any company. Apps as the Platform of the Future The final note I'll make here is that "appification has arrived."  As you'll read in the report, mobile apps are the future - and they are different and more powerful than typical browser-based web systems.  Not all the killer apps have been created yet, but most of the new, exciting HR applications coming are apps first, then web systems later. This does not mean they aren't powerful and complex behind the scenes, but they expose themselves as pinch and swipe on your phone - making it easier than ever to embed location and peer to peer collaboration into the system.  We'll write more on this soon. If you haven't been evaluating HR technology lately, you should now. The investment and venture capital pouring into new companies is astounding, and many of these new tools are transformational in their value. It's an exciting year to be an HR professional: the worlds of technology, mobile computing, analytics, and behavioral economics are all coming together for you!  We look forward to helping you understand and implement some of these exciting new solutions.