Embracing the Future
Written by Susan Burns
With the new year upon us there’s no shortage of predictions for 2009. But, predicting the future is a tricky game, especially in times of increased uncertainty – and that’s the one thing 2009 promises to bring us! Your company has most likely completed a plan for the coming year and is also taking a broader view to consider a longer time horizon, ensuring the company is well positioned for 2010 and beyond. The “and” here is very important because, as economic and business cycles go, how a company will weather through a downturn is only half the story. Being prepared to fire-up momentum coming out of a downturn is as important as how the downturn is managed, and a direct result of the decisions made.
So, how has this flowed down into the talent function in your company and how is it influencing the way you’re thinking about 2009 and the future? What does your strategy look like to successfully navigate what the year brings and what the future holds? The absence of strategy in itself is a strategy – just one that lacks deliberate intention and attention. A well-defined strategy that reflects a longer time horizon and includes contingency options to shift and recalibrate as things evolve will support a stronger and more competitive positioning.
Here are a few questions you can reflect on to ride the wave of uncertainty, align your talent function with the strategic business plan and insert agility into your talent function to embrace the future and prepare your company and yourself for success.
Strategy or Economy: What’s having the greatest effect on the company’s business? Is there a good business strategy in place that’s simply feeling the impact of the wide-spread economic downturn or is there something else going on as well? This is important to know because it will have a very different effect on business over the long-term, staffing momentum, and potentially your company and employment brand. Also, how will the natural business cycle of your company weather the uncertainty and what will that mean to talent planning?
Business and Talent: Are you meeting regularly with business and financial leaders in your company? Is there a clear understanding of which segments of the business are being impacted and what the short and long-term outlook is for each of these in terms of investment decisions and/or recovery? What are the differences in growth and contraction across key businesses and what role does talent planning play in the short and long-term for each? Given the outlook and big picture, how will this influence the talent your targeting, your active pipelines and ramp-up time to meet business objectives?
Beyond the Brand: Is your company actively hiring or are they in a frosty freeze? What does the experience look like for job seekers? Attracting new talent and engaging prospective talent in your proprietary community should always be a priority. The experience that each job seeker has with you now will determine if they are open to hearing from your company in the future – so when you reach back out to a candidate in 6, 12 or 18 months – when everyone else is as well, will they take your call and prioritize their interest in your company. The ultimate cost here is the impact on your employment brand. How can you not only protect your brand but enhance it even further? Investing in developing a social media strategy is one way to further support your brand, if your not already doing it. And, even if you are already actively working social media into your strategy this is the time to further embrace it and build up visibility and sustainability. Does your structure support a sustainable social strategy? This is a low cost investment and one that needs time to take root. I’m a big believer in establishing a structure that supports a “community manager”, a term borrowed from the consumer world, to ensure a solid and sustainable solution is in place. I’ll write more about this in a future post but for now what should be considered is the time it takes to actively develop and nurture community. Full-cycle recruiters simply can’t sustain what’s needed to deliver the ROI. Reallocating work across the recruiting team could be one way to free someone up for 15 – 20 hours a week to begin, which should allow you to see a good ROI in 6 – 12 months. The opportunity here is, that in time, you can show the value of the investment and either continue with someone part-time or build a case for a full-time resource. Continuing to identify talent, build relationships and actively qualify talent, even if your not hiring today, will ensure your prepared for the future. I realize that there’s likely been a significant increase in the volume of resumes, referrals and phone calls flowing in but with the technology available today there’s every reason to perform as a high-touch staffing organization.
Backwards and Forwards: Look back at the past 10 years and ask yourself how much has changed in a relatively short period of time that affects how you, your team and the talent your trying to attract think and operate. Think about how many new tools and technologies are now a part of your daily toolkit that didn’t exist before. How have these influenced recruiting and talent management? How about the way we receive, manage and share information? Now look forward 10 years to 2019. Yes it feels like a long way off! But, it will be here faster than we can imagine. Remember life without Google, an iPod and corporate websites – not so long ago was it! So, what can you anticipate and be ready for and how will you and your team keep pace to attract the best candidates, provide them with the best experience, and provide your company with a progressive and highly effective recruiting strategy?
Learning for the Future: Its easy to be successful when times are good and much more challenging when they’re not. In the retail industry it was always desirable to have someone anniversary their own business results to enhance their learning, skills and business acumen. Was the business last year a result of excellent planning and execution or timing? When the business climate is challenging it may not be fun but its an excellent learning environment. What is your team learning and how can you operationalize and capture the learning? Granted its not that you want to go through this again but how will what your learning today influence how you operate in the future to deliver enhanced efficiency and results.
Nurture Active Dialogue: How is information being shared to keep everyone on the same page, moving in the same direction, staying focused and having fun. Facing tough and/or uncertain business over a period of time can certainly take its toll. Keeping information flowing and inviting an active dialogue across the recruiting team, and broader HR team, keeps everyone focused, ensures people are informed and demonstrates a commitment to transparency. Taking an approach that looks at both internal and external information and trends is key. Having a process in place to develop and share competitive, economic and market intelligence is important at any time but especially now. What has an effect on your industry, company and the type of talent you need to attract and retain? Knowing the interest and status of your internal talent community supports transparency and ensures that both resources and priorities are aligned. These are all things that will benefit your hiring today, protect the company’s existing talent, and positively impact how prepared you are for the build in momentum that will arrive.
Train for Endurance: As business turns around do you want to sprint or just quicken your pace? How adept is the staffing team at keeping pace with exploring new tools and techniques that will advance talent strategies and actions over the long-run? Technology and tools are changing so quickly that its become an endurance sport just to keep up with the changes, filter through what’s really important and identify what’s right for your company, as well as ease the adoption curve. Perhaps there’s someone on the staffing team that has a high affinity for technology – if not, there really should be. Can additional time be allocated to keeping a pulse on emerging technologies and educating the balance of team members so that when business does pick up your drinking from a straw rather than a fire hose?
Visibility and Review: Are you still on a path that supports your strategy? Is the path your on still relevant? Keep your goals visible and revisit them often so your always aware of what you’ve committed to doing differently to advance your strategy, and its clear what your still doing. It takes 21 consecutive instances of practicing something new to make it a habit. And, it only takes 5% of a familiar past experience to trigger habitual patterns that bring you back to where you were! Lasting change comes one action, one decision, one behavior at a time built up and strengthened through consistency.
With the new year comes a time to reflect and to then begin moving your ideas and plans to action.…a chance to begin anew. It also brings an opportunity for learning. Welcome the challenges that arise and embrace the future!
Comment by Michael Hanson
Made Friday, 16 of January , 2009 at 7:53 am
Susan – you have provided an excellent framework for internal and external discussions with this posting. BIG KUDOS!!
Comment by Adam Gordon
Made Friday, 6 of March , 2009 at 7:36 am
Caught up with this interesting post – thanks. I think being able to judge predictions of others is something I would add. Kudos again. Adam Gordon Author \"Future Savvy,\" Amacom Press
