by David Harder
The predictive analytics industry touts the Red Sox phenomenon as evidence that it can solve virtually every problem in business. While analytics has the potential to transform workforce planning, candidate selection, and employee development, the talent management leaders in our interviews suggest that we should not put our necks on the line with analytics just yet. But given a few years of development, big data could transform the practice of selection and hiring.
Predictive analytics has the potential to essentially remove hiring bias in a very short period of time. The process of accumulating vast quantities of data to predict which candidate is going to be most successful in a particular job offers a future where we make a big leap forward with right fit decisions.
Voices From the Front Line
We put the elements of employer brand, right fit, and the attraction/selection process in front of several talent management leaders, and they had much to share about the new world and how it plays into the game of employee engagement. Our interviews revealed the following insights from this impressive list of professionals:
• Angela Gardner, partner, Heidrick & Struggles. Angela currently leads assignments across the consumer markets and media, entertainment, and digital practices. Formerly, Angela built a sophisticated, from-the-ground-up talent acquisition organization for Fox and led executive recruitment for Yahoo.
• Kim Shepherd, CEO, Decision Toolbox. Recognized as a pioneer in the virtual workplace, Kim leads one of the world’s most innovative recruitment firms. A noted public speaker and author, Kim is active in a variety of philanthropic and entrepreneurial professional associations. Her firm has received the Alfred B. Sloan Award for Excellence in the Workplace three times. In 2013, Kim was named the National Association of Women Business Owners (or NAWBO)–Orange County’s Innovator of the Year.
• Jackson Lynch, president and founder, 90consulting. A human resources executive with an extensive background in growing organizations and leading human capital efforts during mergers and acquisitions, Jackson brings expertise from PepsiCo, Nestle, and Clearwater Paper Corporation. Over the years, Jackson Lynch has become a sought-after human resources executive who manages to link the best of human capital with profit performance. He is the founder of 90consulting, which provides human capital support to CEOs and equity investment groups.
• David Yudis, PhD, CEO, Potential Selves. As vice president of talent management, learning, and development at Disney Consumer Products, David developed an array of successful C-level executives. A highly polished professional, David integrates advanced education in psychology, business, and learning to build talent and leadership. He has led talent acquisition and talent development initiatives in a wide variety of environments.
David H.: How would you describe the current state of hiring and the changes that have hit this particular wheel-house, especially compared to what was happening over the last 10 years?
Kim: In today’s landscape, it is time to assume nothing in the hiring process. One size no longer fits all. Eight years ago, this was a candidate-driven market. For seven years, it was an employer-driven market. Now, the market is driven by technology.
David H.: What do you mean?
Kim: Today’s savvy candidate has instant access to real-time information about an employer. They go to Glassdoor to hear from the employees. Yelp provides a voice from customers. They get the truth from CareerBuilder. Supply and Demand provides full information on your real worth in any market. Employers live in a world of total transparency.
David H.: If that is the case, why are so many hiring practices mediocre to terrible?
Kim: It is another example of the extreme disengagement that filters through much of the workplace. According to our research, over 70 percent of employers create ill will during the hiring process. It is at their own hands.
David Y.: In the last few years, I have led talent acquisition initiatives and I have also been a candidate, so I’ve been on both sides of the fence. As a candidate, I’ve been appalled by experiences with many employers. There seems to be an attitude among many organizations that if you are a candidate, you are just a commodity. They are so stretched with resources that communications are thin to say the least. I was stunned at how impersonal many of the contact points were within organizations during what is, for the candidate, a deeply personal experience. These bad experiences leave deep impressions.
Kim: Most employers need to take a course in good manners. It takes a moment to send an email to every single person that contacted the company. There is a very simple standard to follow in building a strong and seamless hiring process: “Do unto others [as you would have them do unto you].”
Angela: I’m in complete agreement with David and Kim. The lack of effective pre-boarding and on-boarding processes turn many people off before they even begin. If you treat people with disrespect, you increase the probability they will not respect their jobs. At Fox, we created a seamless hiring and non-hiring process. We began by surveying the people we hired and didn’t hire to examine the perceptions we were creating in the market. The employer brand we create during the talent acquisition experience isn’t a functional issue. It is a matter of culture.
David H.: Angela, whenever you use the word “culture,” it seems you are signifying something that needs to come from the CEO or owner.
Angela: Absolutely. A lackadaisical attitude towards the employer brand from the CEO sentences the organization’s employer brand to mediocrity. When the person in charge makes employer brand and culture [the] number one [priority], everyone else works on the directive with intention. Develop the culture and the tribe until you can clearly articulate it to everyone and anyone. Not thinking it through is one of the most common business mistakes and the results will be brutal. Everyone knows! Everyone sees it.
David Y.: I don’t believe that many companies intend to create bad experiences in the interview process. The problem stems from CEOs who believe the employer brand and the culture is someone else’s job.
Jackson: Every company is going to have a culture, so the notion that you should passively let it happen to you doesn’t make sense to me. If a CEO is trying to only drive short-term profits, they are unlikely to invest in building culture, and as such, the strength of engagement will be weaker almost every time. The company, however, will still have a culture. It just won’t be the one that attracts people who are committed to and passionate about enterprise success. We have lived with this model of short-term profits for a long time and the results continue to be mediocre. I am in agreement with everyone at the table and yet setting strategies and policies that offer seamless and effective talent acquisition will require soul-searching for a variety of CEOs. Walking the talk will require many organizations to change their rewards systems. Many compensation packages are in direct conflict with building value. When we send a message through an organization that no matter how well you do, no matter how much value you bring to the table, you can be gone in a moment, why would anyone engage?
Kim: A simple and common-sense approach for employers is to answer the questions, “Who do you want to be? Is it intentional?” When I became the CEO of Decision Toolbox, I was looking for singular works and standards to drive the culture. I selected the word “respect.” All types of culture qualities came out of the word. For example, we live by the ethos of “on time.” Everyone is expected to be on time with clients, candidates, team members, and meetings. A second late is not acceptable. When we have a meeting, 200 team members around the world are expected to be on time. If we start a webinar at 11, I can log on at 10:59 and see every single member of the team is ready to go....”
David H.: In the last 10 years, what skills have become much more important across the board?
Jackson: I’m always looking for active learning skills. Jobs become so obsolete so quickly that we need employees who recognize the need for continual learning, who have curiosity and take personal responsibility for staying competitive.
David H.: How do you find that?
Jackson: Ask the right questions:
• Give me a learning experience. Now, apply that experience to a current problem.
• What was the last book you read?
• How did that book make you a better CEO?
Angela: I agree, but we also need managers who recognize the need for learning, who lead personal change. Work environments and expectations can change in a millisecond. Today, expectations are much more fragile. If the managers are not especially communicative, if they are not role models in personal learning, half the team can have a foot out the door.”
David H.: Kim, I wince every time I hear the words “soft skills.” It requires more courage to become a good communicator and relationship builder than learning a new software package. The words “soft skills” have often been used in a rather dismissible manner.
Kim: I’ve noticed that, but it doesn’t let them off the hook. One of the most important questions virtually every employer ought to ask is “How effective is this person at developing relationships?”
Jackson: Engagement begins with the relationship you have with your manager. Anyone in a leadership capacity needs the skills of developing strongly effective bonds with their workers. We’ve all heard the airline pilot say, “I know you have a choice of airlines, so thanks for flying ours.” When was the last time you heard your manager say the same thing about working for your company?
David H.: As well as the ability to change oneself?
Jackson: Of course, but that ability is just starting to reveal its importance.
David H.: We’ve discussed employer brand and the initial talent acquisition process. We have been finding that one of the single biggest breakdowns is with the hiring managers. Many have never been taught how to conduct an interview. Many hire with bias and are not even aware of their bias. What are your thoughts?
Kim: Fortunes in recruitment time and costs are lost every day because managers are often lousy interviewers. In most cases, the problem can be resolved with a little bit of training and coaching. However, the vast majority of employers don’t offer this to their managers and, in smaller organizations, few take the initiative to get trained. Unfortunately, smaller employers need this the most because they don’t have much wiggle room with hiring mistakes.
David H.: What about bias?
Kim: It goes on every single day and undermines good hires. I would suggest that we replace the word “bias” with “ignorance.”
David Y.: As I have developed high-potential executives for C-level positions, getting them to understand bias and how it influences their selection and development of talent represents a fundamental shift in their ability to lead.
Jackson: It isn’t enough to have a strong recruitment team while still having a mediocre onboarding process. Consider talent acquisition as a seamless supply chain. Then, find the truth about the strengths and weaknesses in each link. If we find that our managers have big shortcomings with their hiring decisions, train them to do better or enable them to rely on data rather than gut feel.
Angela: It is helpful to train hiring managers to do more than just conduct a good interview. When we had larger recruitment projects, we would actually create war rooms and bring hiring managers to work on the recruitment process. We showed them how to find candidates on LinkedIn and create a more vital kind of outreach. As we develop managers to make good hires, it is wise to give them understanding in generational differences and finding out what people really want.
David H.: Predictive analytics have the potential to eliminate much hiring bias and help managers make much better hiring decisions. Are we there yet or does this resource require more development?
Kim: Of course it requires more development, but we love it. We use analytics to drive candidate flow, to help identify top candidates as well as formulating compensation for each team member.
David H.: Compensation?
Kim: Our analytics measure a wide range of performance factors with each team member. A few, for example, include time to filling position, accuracy with candidate selection, customer satisfaction, and repeat business. These are the drivers behind Decision Toolbox’s growth.
Angela: For hiring decisions, not one company is close to using it effectively out in the real world.
David H.: Are you saying technology has yet to develop intuition?
David Y.: Predictive data is not an answer in itself, but it offers a means to refine our decisions. Consequently, it saves cost, time, and effort. Ultimately analytics could help us with bias because hiring managers continue to represent the biggest breakdown in talent acquisition.
Jackson: Every year brings so much more capacity to analytics that we need to pay close attention to innovations. I use it widely, but doing so requires that I’m educated in today’s limitations. However, the impact of big data will only grow.
Jackson: I also agree with definitions of right fit. But the vast changes that have happened in employment only elevate the need for us to coach our managers in how to identify right fit for their team. We need to locate the skills needed to do the job. We need to evaluate their raw talent for the future. We need to make sure the candidate’s motivations align with the organization. We need active learners. The change is great enough that many managers have a new bias from simply being rooted in the past.
David Y.: I am in complete agreement with Jackson. I am always looking for culturally adept candidates. There needs to be a work and role fit but it can’t stop there. We need to ask the question, “Can you be one of us?”
David H.: During a leadership program at Disney, one of the executives asked me what I felt the Disney employer brand was. I blurted out, “Disney is all about creating magic at great profit in the midst of chaos.” A collective gasp rose from the room and then laughter. If you happen to love generating a lot of money-making magic with chaos around you, you will want to be there forever.
David Y.: That is a great example. Each tribe has its own look, feel, dress, rituals, hours, and mission. Will this person fit in? Disney has a highly developed and unique culture. It is so strong that individuals who leave often have a difficult time letting go of it.
Jackson: Back to our managers. Don’t just hire what you like. Hire people who push you out of your comfort zone. Hire people who are smarter than you. Hire people who have the ability to become great.
Kim: I am also in agreement with David’s four types of right fit. The discomfort that I have is there is no “one size fits all” approach to employer brand and right fit.
Angela: Much of this conversation is about skill-building. The new workplace doesn’t thrive on black and white anymore. For example, analytics can help us, but we can’t afford to absolve ourselves of finding out the very real truth of each person we evaluate for our team. It requires that we assume nothing about the employer brand in our organization. This entire discussion is about becoming more skilled in surrounding ourselves with the people that fit our mission. That is the big payoff from this work.
Their contributions left me with the thought that when we really get the game right, when the attraction, selection, and development process falls together, we get to work with people like Angela Gardner, David Yudis, Jackson Lynch, and Kim Shepherd. This is the big payoff, colleagues who make us bigger, who demand the best from us and give us their all.
9
Mid-Management: Engagement’s Final Frontier
In a Harvard Business School study, mid-level managers emerged as the most disengaged of all workers.1 This is not a big surprise. Mid-managers are overworked, undervalued, and the most at-risk employees during lay-offs. Academics and business authors routinely suggest that we get rid of them as a first step to becoming more lean and improving organizational performance. It’s practically mindless at this point. It also protects the executive ranks from the impact of necessary downsizing.
Organizations have a history of adding more and more work to mi
d-managers. We frequently select many mid-managers because they get the job done quickly and accurately. We then promote them to manage others or to use that core strength to finish an important project. However, many do not receive management skills training, so instead of elevating to a level of management performance, they generally continue doing the work the way that led to their success. Thus, their workload goes up until they break or leave. Ongoing restructuring, the elimination of career ladders, and persistent insecurity have diluted mid-managers’ loyalty. Many become demoralized and disenfranchised. Why don’t we manage this group better?
In 2012, Harvard Business Review indicated that almost half of the Gen-Xs, which represents the largest segment of mid-managers, planned to leave their jobs within two years. A year before, Bersin & Associates released the findings of their research and indicated that: “Middle managers have fewer resources, manage more people, and are less engaged than all other employee groups.”2 This is backwards. If we think so little of them, why do we let mid-managers lead and motivate the organization’s largest number of workers, often the ones that directly touch our customers?
Take a moment to consider all of the managers in customer service call centers, grocery stores, department stores, service centers, specialty retailers, schools, insurance agencies, healthcare, and government. Now imagine that stressed, overworked, and disengaged professionals are managing the very individuals that engage with our prospective or dedicated customers. Yet we wonder why we complain about the poor customer service we experience and why it so pervasive. The problem has grown to the point that many companies routinely do nothing because the competition is exactly the same. Why change if the public hates everyone in the category? It has been normalized as something that cannot be avoided.
