Metric Driven Talent Management Making you aware of emerging ways to recruit, retain and manage by Dr John Sullivan www.drjohnsullivan.com

1. Metric-driven Talent
Management
Making you aware of emerging ways to
recruit, retain and manage
21st Century TM Conference -Tanzania
July 17, 2015
© Dr John Sullivan
1Slides can be found at: www.drjohnsullivan.com

2. 2
I’m from the Silicon Valley…
so I will move fast today
But please interrupt with questions at anytime

3. We all dress like CEO’s in the Silicon Valley
3
Mark Zuckerberg
Google’s office dress code
“I guess you should wear clothes”

4. 4
My 4 goals for today
1. To make you think
2. To expose you to some emerging
“different ways to do things” in Talent
Management
3. To get you excited about using metrics
to improve your results
4. To answer your questions on any Talent
Management subject

5. 5
The 5 topics for today
1. A quick tour of the unique ways we
manage in the Silicon Valley
2. Metric driven recruiting
3. Metric driven retention
4. The top 15 Talent Management actions
firms should be taking (but aren’t)
5. Metric driven workforce planning

6. 6
A quick tour of the silicon valley…
This will make you realize how different we are
and what we will do to create innovation
However… you may see your own future direction
Topic # 1

7. Remote work changes everything
7
Like it or not… you compete against Silicon Valley
 When leading global firms find out that there is top
talent living in your region… they will raid the
region and offer 100% remote work jobs…
 Then you have no choice but to match the job
features and excitement of Silicon Valley firms

8. 8
How does coming to work at your firm
compare to this?
“It's like… going to Disneyland everyday”
Source Google employee on Glassdoor.com

9. How does this compare to your office?
9

10. How does Amazon’s new HQ compare to yours?
10

11. 11
A view of and access to the SF bay

12. The campus design encourages collaboration
12

13. 13
The new Googleplex

14. How does this compare to your commute?
14
Google’s Wi-Fi shuttle buses

15. How does this compare to your commute?
15
Facebook and Google’s ferry

16. 16
Going to a conference room is different at Zappos

17. 17
Fun and collaboration on a Google conference bike

18. 18
Fun and collaboration in the video game room

19. Google wants going to a meeting to be fun
Slides in Google offices
(they see no compliance issues)
19Regular slide Long slide Fireman’s pole

20. 20
Fun while at work – Climbing wall

21. 21
Can you compete with this fun feature?

22. 22
Google wants you to think

23. 23
Google sends a message that they want you to think
Sound and light proof decompression/
stress reduction chamber ball
and nap rooms
Massage chambers

24. 24
Open space/ standing desk for collaboration –
“swing your arms and hit someone”

25. Alternative ways to pay
How does “equal treatment” make top performers
feel? (Google)
25

26. Freedom is an alternative way to manage
Google’s 20% time
If you really trust your workers, you have to give
them the freedom to innovate
From an employee’s perspective, under the rule....
“Nobody can tell you that you can’t experiment”
Larry Page CEO

27. Employee freedom
Google - Less management means more freedom
No hiring, p. appraisal or deciding who to promote
Zappos – It eliminated most managers
No job titles. No traditional bosses. No hierarchy
A radical approach called "holacracy," replaces
conventional command-and-control with a series of
self-governed teams to speed decision-making,
share authority and increase innovation (WL Gore)27

28. 28
“Freedom” practices at Facebook
28
“Bootcampers choose the team they will join at
the end” (onboarding)
Hackamonth allows you to select your next job

29. Freedom to change the rules
Google’s ‘Big Scrub’ fixes bad policies/rule
Every quarter employees list and then vote on the
top 20 rules they want to see changed
(Google pledges to fix those rules within 2 months)
29

30. 30
Our policies reveal freedom means we trust
---------------------
Facebook does not track employee absences
“There is no policy or tracking”

31. 31
Question 1
If your workers had a choice…
Where would you spend more time…
your current place to work… or the
Silicon Valley?

32. 32
Question 2
But our firm simply can’t afford
this approach?
We say instead…
You can’t afford not to match us…
because of the ROI on innovation

33. 33
Recruiting… What would it look
like if it was metric driven and
more aggressive?
Topic # 2
© Dr John Sullivan

34. 34
In the Silicon Valley we start by…
Showing the high economic value
of recruiting and retaining talent

35. 35
The business case starts with knowing the
differential
The best firms share one calculation, they all
calculate the performance differential between a
top-performer vs an average one in the same job?
- 25 times more than the average employee
- 300 times more than the average
- 1000 times more than the average
It is also a BP to convert HR results into $ -
25 X $2.2 million rev per ee =
Netflix & Yahoo -
Apple
Google
Microsoft
10 times the average employee

36. Always calculate the ROI of exceptional employees
36
It calculates that:
3 bad employees = 1 OK employee
3 OK employees = 1 good employee
3 good employees = 1 great employee
“We pay great employees up to 100% more than other
retailers (they cost more)”
But we get… “three times the productivity at two times the
payroll cost” (ROI)
“You save money, the customers win, and all the employees
win because they get to work with someone great”
They have a “10 % turnover rate” vs. 75% in the industry
Source : Container store web site (Texas)

37. 37
The business case for focusing on high-performers
Calculate the output surpluses produced by the
top 1% and 5% (What do you think they are?)
 The top 1% of your workforce produces what %
of your total output ?
 The top 5% produce
5%
26% (5X)

38. 38
How much $ do weak performing employees
cost the firm?
A weak employee may cause errors and disruption
each year up to 2 ¼ times their annual salary
(O’Boyle and Aguinis)
They take up a manager’s time because their
managers must spend nearly one day a week
(17%) dealing with them (Source: Robert Half)
Toxic employees make their teammates 54% more
likely to quit (Source: Cornerstone)
Bad ones stay forever… weak hires may stay 20
years, multiplying their negative impact

39. What is the performance cost of a
weak manager ?
39
“Removing a poorly performing boss and
replacing him or her with a top performing manager
Is roughly equal, in terms of productivity, to
adding an extra person to the team.”
Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

40. 40
Pay employees to leave
At Netflix... “cutting smartly” means:
 “Adequate performance gets a generous
severance package”… Why?
 “Managers feel too guilty to let someone go”, so
you must pay the employee to leave
“Pay to Quit” at Amazon
 “Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to
quit”. ($2,000 the 1st yr., to $5,000 the 5th)
 The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment &
think about what they really want in the long-run
 “An employee staying somewhere they don’t
want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the
company.”

41. 41
Learn from Google – Hire only smart people
Laszlo Bock VP at Google

42. 42
Focus on “A” players
Hire only “A” players
“The problem is that A players are only attracted
to work at places where they see other A
players… they smell B from a mile away” Inventor
James Dyson
Always hire the best managers, "A" people…
As soon as you hire a B, they start bringing in
B’s and C’s" Source: Steve Jobs
“If people see poor performers all around them…
your very best people will leave” Source: Laszlo Bock Google

43. 43
Use data and metrics to find
out what works (and what
doesn't’) in recruiting

44. 44
We live in a fast-changing unforgiving VUCA world
It is no longer… the big and established firms that
dominate the small ones…
it’s the fast, innovative and adaptive firms that
now dominate the slower firms
Warning: If the speed of change outside your firm
exceeds the speed of change inside your
organization,
your end is in sight!
You can’t move fast… unless you have metrics to
guide you

45. How are we doing in HR
Are we strategic?
How do we rank in the use of metrics?
45

46. 46
Almost everyone agrees that HR must become
more strategic
When CEO’s and board-level executives rank
business functions… which one is listed as the most
strategic?
Sales
Where was HR ranked on the list?
“the least strategic function” Source: DDI
46

47. 47
HR must increase its business impacts
Of the 18 business factors that contributed the most
to business outcomes…
#1 - with the highest impact was… reducing
operational cost structures
“Talent was dead last” (#18)
(source: KPMG / HfS research) 47

48. 48
Almost everyone agrees that HR doesn’t use many
analytics – so there is room for improvement
Where does HR rank in analytics usage compared
to other bus functions?
% of advanced users % of non-user
1.Finance 58% 7%
2.Executive team 51% 11%
3.Operations 48% 9%
4.R&D 44% 23%
5.Marketing 41% 16%
6.Sales 34% 20%
7.HR (last) 27% 23%
Source: AMA/i4cp 2013

49. 49
CEO’s do not have faith in our metrics
Only 12% of CEO’s are confident on the quality
of Human Capital metrics
49
AICPA survey 2012

50. 50
What is HR best at? Worst at? (KPMG)

51. 51
Learn from Google
Laszlo Bock VP at Google

52. 52
Google is the world’s only data driven TM function
“All people decisions are based on data & analytics”
"We want to bring the same level of rigor to
people-decisions that we do to engineering
decisions"
“You can measure everything”... “we measure
revenue, productivity, engineering” Eric Schmidt
“The best thing about using data to influence
managers… is that it’s hard for them to contest
it”

53. 53
You need metrics in each of these 4 areas
1.One for every major program goal – Ex. new
hire on-the-job performance and retention rate
2.One for every major improvement area – Ex.
increase the diversity rate, cut offer rejects etc.
3.One for every major executive budgeting
decision criteria – ID and gather information to
meet each of the executive funding criteria
4.Data for assessing the ROI of a process- use
data to calculate the ROI and then shift resources
to the recruiting processes with the highest ROI

54. 54
There are 6 categories that should be covered in the
metrics for assessing an entire HR program
1.Quantity (Volume) Number hired
2.Quality (Error rate) Performance on the job
3.Time (On time or the time to complete) Time to fill
4.Money (Cost or revenue generated) Cost per hire ($9k)
5.Satisfaction (Of the users) Hiring mgr. satisfaction
6.Comparison number Aver. CPH is $4k
QQTMSC Recruiting example

55. 55
Let’s shift our focus to recruiting
“Hiring is the most important thing you do”
(Google gets nearly 3 million applications a year)

56. Being data-driven allows you to focus your
resources on HR tools with the highest impact
56Source: BCG/WFPMA - From Capability to Profitability: Realizing the Value of People Management, 2012
Which HR function normally increases revenue & profit the most?

57. Mid and lower impact HR functions
57

58. HR must identify and focus its resources
on activities that increase revenue & profit (BCG)
58Source: BCG/WFPMA - From Capability to Profitability: Realizing the Value of People Management, 2012
Which HR functions have the highest impact on rev. /profit?
What single factor in recruiting had the highest
overall impact on TA results?
“Strong relationships with hiring managers” is
the #1 contributing factor to TA performance. It is
4X more influential than the other 15 drivers.
(Source: Bersin by Deloitte 2014)
.Source: BCG WFPMA – From Capability to Profitability: Realizing the Value of People Management, 2012

59. If you’re not familiar with really aggressive
recruiting
Here are a few quick examples
59

60. 60
POP “mobile” recruiting
Yahoo coffee cart recruiting at the Google bus
stop
60

61. 61
POP “proximity” recruiting
BigCommerce recruiting at hi-tech bus stops with
“poached” egg sandwiches and coffee
61

62. Mobile recruiting… the creative way
Zscaler drove a van with this sign around the
neighborhood of their competitor Blue Coat
62

63. 63
Would this be aggressive recruiting on Craigslist?
Searching for 2 F**king Great Developers ($115k -
$140k / yr) (San Diego)
If you're a great f**king developer who wants to make a bunch of
money working somewhere awesome then keep reading. We're a San
Diego Tech Company (relocation covered for the right candidates)
that's looking for not one but two awesome developers. So digest this
ad, accept your fate, and take one last lap around your office to say
goodbye to your friends because you're about to upgrade.
What You'll Be Doing:
This quarter you'll be adding kick ass new features to our already
massively successful products. Afterwards depending on your ability,
interests, and attitude you'll be working on any number of projects like
new products, internal tools, improving our already f**king great
scalable architecture, or skunk works machine learning data
analysis for new product R&D.

64. 64
It takes a great bus case to justify
outrageous referral bonuses
ThoughtSpot offered a $20,000 referral for any job
Any “friend of the company” qualifies for the $
They hired 9 in 1 month (from a base of 32 employees)
Why? “People don't always listen to recruiters,
but they do listen to their friends”

65. Let’s look at how…
Each of the steps in recruiting
should be metric driven
65

66. 66
Data-driven recruiting steps
Forget past practices or hunches, shift to data-
driven recruiting
1. Find the job requirements KSAEE that correlate
with… on the job success in this job family (i.e.
factors that predict Q of H)
Let’s look at some examples >

67. These Google data points might change
what you think you know about hiring
“GPA’s
“Test scores
“Brainteasers
Interviews – “many managers, recruiters, and HR
staffers think they have a special ability to sniff
out talent. They’re wrong”
“it’s a complete random mess”… “we found a
zero relationship” (between interview scores and on-the-job performance)
No value is added “after 4 interviews”
College –“the proportion of people at Google
without any college education…has increased over time”
What predicts? – “capability & learning ability”
67
are worthless as a criteria for hiring”
are worthless”
are a complete waste of time”
Laszlo Bock, Senior VP of people operations at Google The New York Times

68. 68
Most selection criteria are inaccurate
Gate Gourmet at O’Hare used big data to
improve new hire performance
 It analyzed new hire turnover rates
 It learned they were closely connected to…
commute distance and access to public
transportation
 After changing its hiring criteria, the firm
achieved “fully staffed status” for the first time
 And cut unwanted turnover to 27%
68Source: Talent Management 11/22/13

69. 69
Data-driven recruiting steps
2. What % of the qualified targets are actively
looking and what % are passive? (employed)
3. For actives, use surveys to identify their job
search approach and steps
4. For passives, identify what makes them active
5. Use surveys to find out where actives would see
an open job or recruiting message…
and passives would see a branding message
6. When is the best time to recruit - when a lot of
qualified applicants are looking but few firms are
hiring let’s look at an example >

70. 70
Recruiting on the “right day”
On most days, you will get a hard “no” from top
prospects… except on these “right days”
 Birthdays and New Year are reflection days
 A boss/ mentor/ best friend / CEO left
 Day of a merger or layoff
 Lost a promotion or a key project
 After their yearly bonus
 After their performance appraisal
 When their project is ending
 Their annual work anniversary an example >

71. Traditional HR would guess / speculate for
recruiting purposes… when do new hires quit?
Source: entelo.com using 1 million resumes
Waiting period
Metrics can prove what causes these “turnover spikes”
Employees that quit
Years at the firm

72. 72
Data-driven recruiting steps
7. Use surveys to identify the company (brand)
and job factors that attract… those with the
right job requirements and put them in the
position description let’s look at an example >

73. High-performers demand different things
to take a job… and stay in a job
Criteria for top performers
73
1. High pay
2. Guaranteed pay
3. Exceptional benefits
4. Security
5. Time off with pay
6. No surprises/predictable
7. Seniority matters
8. Equal treatment
9. Minimize risk and stress
10.Work/Life balance
Criteria for average workers
Doing the best work of your life
1. “Can’t put it down” exciting work
2. Proud of their impact
3. Work with top co-workers
4. Great managers
5. Learn new things rapidly/growing
6. Opportunity to innovate & take risks
7. To be constantly challenged
8. Freedom, a choice of projects
9. Opportunity to implement ideas
10.Be an expert/mastery of an area
11.Input into schedule/location
12.Opportunity to make decisions
13.Measure & reward performance >

74. 74
11 Data-driven recruiting steps
8. Identify the best sources during onboarding…
that produced Quality applicants/hires (referrals,
boomerangs, events, viewing their work, contest
winners, internships)
9. Identify the most effective way for pairing the
best individuals to your open jobs?
10.Identify the most accurate assessment
approaches that predict on-the-job success
11.Identify the best approaches for selling/closing
quality applicants

75. 75
Use data and metrics to find
out which recruiting
approaches and sources
produce the best performing
hires

76. 76
Many have difficulty in finding top talent
It may “seem like” top talent is not available
But the real problem may be that you have no
compelling attraction bait or recruiting approach

77. 77
11.Internal executive search
12.Competitor analysis
13.Project NH trajectory
14.Reward recruiters (QofH)
15.ID your farm teams
16.Acqui-hiring
17.Give them a real problem
18.Inside best practice sharing
19. Hire them both (buddy)
20. Select a rec. strategy >
1. Data-driven TA
2. Using Q of H info to shift
3. Prioritize jobs by rev impact
4. Hiring innovators
5. Raise referrals to 50%
6. Raise boomerangs to 15%
7. Speed to get quality
8. Ranked on best place lists
9. Poach /Team lift outs
10.Most wanted list
Top 20 recruiting actions
with the highest strategic impact

78. Referrals are #1
78
 “Over 93% of the top performers in their field
find a job by being “referred by someone they
know”, they do not find their jobs through a job
posting”…Source: Forbes 8/03/2014
 Facebook and Twitter hire more than 50% of
their hires from referrals and the average for top
firms is 46% Source YesGraph
 Referred workers are more productive during
their first 400 days (Source: Evolv)

79. 79
Referrals are #1 for quality hires
Use the “give me 5” referral approach (Google)
Proactively approach top performers and ask them
 To identify the top five people that they know in
their field… in these categories
The best performer you ever worked with
The most innovative
The best team player
The best manager
The best working under pressure
 Then ask your employee to contact these 5
individuals and try to convince them to apply

80. 80
Boomerangs are #2 for quality hires
Use a Boomerang re-hire program
 Determine when they are leaving who you
would want to re-hire based on their performance
and skills
 Use offboarding to explain your desire to keep in
touch
 Build a corporate alumni group on LinkedIn or
Facebook
 Periodically push information, discounts and
relevant jobs… ask for business referrals
 Use reference checking calls to your firm as an
indication that they are looking

81. 81
“Proactive” tools
Reach out to job references for referrals
 Identify top performing hires from last year
 Call their references that said accurate things
 Thank them
 Ask them “Do you know anyone else as good?”
 Ask them to be a future reference source

82. Reconsider semifinalists
Implement a "silver medalist” approach
Maintain ties with candidates who have been
runners-up for past jobs… and
• Those that rejected our offers
• Soon to be qualified
• Bad fit for this manager
• Top recruiting process dropouts
"we hire a ton of people from that group"
Silver medalists get emails and text updates as
more job opportunities become available
Also used by GE and Intuit
82

83. 83
Employee Videos are powerful messaging tools
Employee videos make “finding and feeling the
excitement” easier for outsiders (Film Festival)

84. 84
Referral cards can be powerful
Your customer service just now was exceptional.
I work for the Apple store and you’re exactly the
kind of person we’d like to talk to.
If you’re happy where you are, I’d never ask you to
leave.
But if you’re thinking about a change, give me a call.
This could be the start of something great.

85. 85
Simple but effective recruiting tools
Ask for names during the hiring and the on
boarding processes
During interviews, challenge the industry
knowledge of your best candidates by asking
them to list the names of the outstanding
individuals that they know
Also ask all top new hires during onboarding
“who else is good at their former firm and in the
industry?" Next ask the new hire to help you
recruit any desirable individuals that they know.

86. 86
Simple but effective recruiting tools
Make your job postings exciting
Most job descriptions are painfully dull
So hiring managers and recruiters should work
together to rewrite them so that they “sell” the
exciting aspects of the job (video job descriptions)
At the very least, job descriptions should be
tested side-by-side against your competitors’
descriptions to ensure they are more compelling

87. 87
Simple but effective recruiting tools
Utilize the mobile platform because people carry
them 24/7
Smart recruiters take advantage of them because
of their high response rate
Make sure that your corporate website and
application process is compatible with smart
phones
And then use it’s text, picture, voice and video
capability to communicate your recruiting
messages

88. 88
Simple but effective recruiting tools
Develop a “company sell sheet”… because
managers do a poor job selling the company to
potential recruits
Survey your key employees to identify the
specific factors that make your firm superior to
your competitors
Provide them with a “side-by-side” opportunity
comparison sheet showing where your firm’s
opportunities are superior to each of your
competitors
You can also attach a version of this sell sheet to
your application form

89. Example of a “Side-by-side sell sheet”
89
They offerWe offer
Growing by 10% each year
3 weeks of training
Industry-leading products
5 locations to work at
“Best place to work” award
Recent layoffs
1 week of training
Cheaper copycat products
Only 2 locations
None
2.3 Glassdoor CEO rating4.6 Glassdoor CEO rating

90. 90
Simple but effective recruiting tools
Select a hiring team
Some managers aren't good salespeople or
recruiters
So identify a group of your employees that excel
at selling candidates and let them do most of the
hiring
Because they will do a lot of hiring, they will
naturally understand the recruiting market and
be better at it… than a single manager that only
does hiring once or twice a year

91. 91
Simple but effective recruiting tools
Show them where they will be in 2 years
Provide top candidates with a profile of what
“others like them” have accomplished and learned
while at your firm
Excite them by showing them their likely
trajectory (where they could be in a year or
two)… if they were to join your firm

92. 92
Simple but effective recruiting tools
“Hire them both” buddy program
This is a variation of the successful U.S. Army
program
When you encounter an exceptional candidate,
offer to hire them and their best friend at the
same time (i.e. colleague, college friend or
spouse/partner)
This may provide a desirable candidate with an
opportunity to commute together or to work
together with a best friend

93. 93
Simple but effective recruiting tools
Utilize "exploding offers”
Try offering a significant sign-on bonus that is
contingent upon accepting an offer immediately
(either before they leave your facility or the same
day)
If the offer is not accepted right away, the bonus
continually decreases over the next few days
This bold approach can provide a powerful
incentive to accept or make a quick decision

94. 94
Simple but effective recruiting tools
Get referrals/names at professional events
Encourage your firm’s attendees to compile a
referral list by asking speakers and attendees…
“who is the best”, “who do you learn from” and
“how would you solve this problem __________?”
Provide recruiters a “call me when you are
ready” card to hand to10 people
Ask “the smartest person” to coffee/lunch
Have your employees find the top people in
competitor’s trade booth and assess those that
come through yours
Find the best at certification/ training classes

95. Recruiting your customers
Recruit customers because they already “like you”
95

96. 96
Improving candidate assessment
1. Live video interviews will make more candidates
available (iPhone app)
2. Give them real problems during the interview
(like you would hire a chef)
3. Ask them to project the future of their job/the
industry
4. Give them a flawed process and ask them to find
the weaknesses
5. Review samples of their work
6. Hire them for one time weekend or remote work

97. WHY RETENTION IS
HEATING UP
And why it must be data-driven
97
Topic # 3
© Dr John Sullivan

98. 98
Retention is an important issue among executives
A SHRM/economist survey of global C-suite
executives showed these top issue over 10 years
1. Retaining and rewarding the best people
2. Attracting the best people to the organization
SilkRoad’s survey on “Things that keep HR up at
night” ranked it #1 (2014)

99. Data really educates managers on retention
99

100. 100
Most hiring is inaccurate
“46% of new hires fail within 18 months”
100
Source: Forbes 1/23/12 Based on study tracking 20,000 new hires

101. 101
During what month do most salespeople quit?
I
Source: Entelo 2015
Turnover seems even… until you add December

102. 102
A data-driven approach to retention
6 key retention principles to remember
1. Most retention processes are not data-driven
2. Companywide retention actions that equally
impact all employees have a low success rate / ROI
3. Prioritize jobs and key employees because you
can’t (and don’t want to) keep everyone
4. It takes a “career impact event” to trigger leaving
5. Everyone has a unique set of reasons for leaving, so
you need a personalized retention plan
6. The #1 reason for leaving is generally under their
manager’s control example >

103. Rule #1
You may be the problem!
“No one ever quits a company…
they quit their manager!”
Conclusion of the Gallup Survey
Managers… “had a much greater impact on employees’
performance… than any other factor” Google project oxygen
103

104. 104
Google’s “project oxygen" showed managers had
the #1 highest impact on productivity
8. Have key technical skills to advise the team (not #1)
7. Have a clear vision and strategy for the team
6. Help your employees with career development
5. Be a good communicator & listen to your team
4. Don’t be a sissy; Be productive / results-oriented
3. Show interest in their success & personal well-being
2. Empower your team and don’t micromanage
1. Be a good coach – hold regular one-on-one’s &
provide personalized constructive feedback
“We were able to improve “75 percent of our worst-performing
managers” Source: L. Bock

105. 105
Retention must be a data-driven approach
Identify “why” employees have left
1.Identify general causes of turnover – develop a
process for identifying the general causes of
turnover in the past (summarizing all exit
interviews)
2.Identify the turnover causes for key individuals
that left – develop a process for accurately
identifying the specific causes why a targeted
individual actually left (use post-exit interview
with the ex-employee or “buy” offer letters)

106. 106
Data-driven retention
Identify “why” individual current employees stay
 “Why do you stay?” stay interviews,
Also ask “What factors would cause you to
begin to consider leaving?”
 Why did you quit your last 2 jobs? (Ask during
onboarding)

107. 107
Use “stay interviews” to keep the best
Factors that cause the average employee to stay
1. Exciting work and challenge
2. Career growth, learning and development
3. Working with great people
4. Fair pay
5. Supportive management/good boss
6. Being recognized, valued and respected
7. Benefits
8. Meaningful work and making a difference
9. Pride in the organization, its mission and its products
10.Great work environment and culture
Source: B. Kaye and Jordan-Evans Love ‘em or Lose ‘em survey of 17000 employees

108. 108
Data-driven retention
How to identify “who” is at risk of leaving?
Develop a process for identifying “who” (which
individual employees) are most likely to leave
The process might include external approaches:
A search of the web for resumes
Blind recruiter calls… to see who responds
A dry search by a headhunter to see who is desirable
Run blind ads to identify who is applying
Suddenly speaking at conferences
They extensively update their LinkedIn profile

109. 109
High performance tool
Google uses predictive metrics to ID who might quit
 Employee reviews
 Promotion history
 Pay history
 Employee surveys
 Peer reviews (360 degree)
 Employee training
 Leadership meetings
They look for employees who “feel underused”

110. The retention actions of firms usually don’t match
the reasons why employees leave
Why employees leave
1.Better comp/benefits $
2.Coaching programs
3.Mentoring programs
4.Tuition reimbursement $
5.Stock options $
6.Profit-sharing $
7.Flexible hrs./schedule
8.Retention bonuses $
Only 2 of 6 causes are met
Most common offerings
110
1.Career advancement
2.Pay/benefits $
3.Lack of job fit
4.Management/environ
5.Flexible scheduling
6.Job security
1 of 6 is $
Sources: Gallup 2006 Sources: OI Partners 2012

111. Company best practice examples
111

112. 112Source: Workday Insights Retention Analytics
Influence managers with data
by distributing ranked reports (retention flight risk)

113. Personalized approaches improve retention
Mass career customization (Deloitte)
Every employee can dial up/down their job… as
career aspirations & personal needs change.
They can adjust:
• Work hours
• Travel demands
• Job responsibilities
Results:
Do most employees choose to dial down or dial up
their career? And what is the ratio?
Voluntary turnover rates of top performers
choosing this option were 2x lower
113
2/3 dial up

114. 114
Scheduling and flexibility impacts retention
Results Only Work Environment
•Pick your hours
•Pick where you work
•No in-person meetings required
The business impacts: Retention
ROWE individuals have ___ lower turnover
($13 million per year at $102k per employee)
When workers switch to ROWE, their
productivity jumps by 35%
45%

115. 115
A motivation survey tells you what motivates them
(besides $)
Ask key employees in a survey to rank their
motivators…
 The types of economic rewards that motivate
 The types of non-monetary rewards
 The types of choices in their job environment
 The types of recognition that will have the most
impact
This enables managers to customize recognition, &
promote employee satisfaction and retention

116. 116
An onboarding alert
Each new hire’s manager is sent a JIT on-boarding
email reminding them to do these 5 things
1.Have a discussion on their role and responsibilities
2.Match your new hire with a peer buddy
3.Help your new hire build a social network
4.Set up onboarding check-ins once a month for
their first six months on the job
5.Encourage an open dialogue
Result – 1 email causes a 25% increase in productivity
Source: Laszlo Bock

117. 117
And finally… measuring retention success
High business impact metrics for retention
1. Performance turnover (Top performers count more)
2. Regrettable turnover
3. High revenue impact turnover
4. Key position turnover
5. Key individual turnover
6. Preventable turnover
7. Where the turnover goes
8. Involuntary turnover

118. THE TOP 15 STRATEGIC
THINGS THAT TALENT
MANAGEMENT SHOULD
BE DOING (but isn’t)
© Dr John Sullivan 118
Topic # 4

119. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
1) Increase the productivity of your workforce
 Workforce productivity is merely comparing the
output of your entire workforce (the total value
of the products and services they produce) with the
cost of your workforce (total labor and HR costs)
 Many Talent Management departments
measure engagement (only a precursor to
productivity) but they don't measure productivity
 Increasing productivity requires you to identify the
barriers that restrict productivity
119

120. More productive
Make internal talent more productive
Retain
Retain key internal talent
Move
Redeploy internal talent
Borrow
Borrow contingent labor
HR has only 8 options for increasing productivity
Release
Weak & excess labor
Use substitutes
(Tech, contingent, outsource, cust.)
Buy
Recruit regular employees
Build
Develop internal talent

121. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
2) Increase employee innovation
 Fierce competition requires firms to accelerate
innovation in product and administrative areas
 Target the hiring / retention of innovators
 Identify and minimize the barriers that
innovators face
 HR must help shape the culture… so that there
is an expectation of continuous innovation
121

122. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
3) Reward great people management
 Most managers simply don't spend enough time
on talent management activities
 Managers are not directly measured or rewarded
based on how well they manage their talent.
(This is true even though HR “owns” all of the key
components related to measuring and rewarding
(performance management, performance appraisal,
competencies and reward systems))
 Develop a "people management scorecard" for
each manager and reward them based on their
performance against those standards 122

123. 123
Ex. - Quarterly people management scorecard
1.Team productivity & quality
2.Employee innovation impacts
3.Quality of hires
4.Retention of key employees
5.Development of leaders
6.Internal release of developed leaders
7.Employee satisfaction with feedback
8.Best practice sharing
Average combined rating on the 8 factors ______
Bot.10%
Belowaver.
Average
Top25%
Top5%
Name _________________ Dept._________
Quarter # ______
Key people mgmt performance factors

124. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
4) Identify and fix bad managers
 Research by Google has shown that in most cases,
an employee’s manager is the single highest
impact factor on employee hiring, retention,
innovation, productivity and the development
 Yet most organizations have no formal program
for identifying weak managers
 Actions would include surveys and performance
metrics to identify weak managers
 And to provide them with a list of proven tools
and approaches to improve a manager’s people
management performance 124

125. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
5) Convert Talent Management metrics into their
dollar impact
 Most traditional talent management metrics fail to
impress executives because they are not expressed
in "the language of business", which is dollars
 Executives care most about increasing revenue
 Don’t report turnover is 20%... instead say it is
costing us $12.3 million a year or 9% of corp.
revenue
125

126. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
6) Develop predictive metrics and alerts
 Historical metrics have little value
 Start with “real time metrics” that tell managers
what is happening today
 Then use “predictive analytics” to show trends (a
new hire’s career trajectory – retention in years,
highest job level, stays in the same function?)
 Use “why metrics” to find and fix the root causes
 Use “manager alerts” to warn in advance & JIT126

127. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
7) Calculate the risks of weak Talent Management
 Risk management is an increasingly important
 But unfortunately, few talent functions have put
anyone in charge of risk management
 Risk managers identify and quantify the risks
associated with potential talent problems (its
probability and likely costs)
• Losing key innovators to competitors
• Failing to have enough developed leaders
• A weak employer brand that doesn’t attract
• A bad hire or a poor performer
127

128. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
8) Improve internal best practice sharing
 Rather than developing new programs… HR can
have a higher impact faster and at lower cost by
identifying and sharing "hidden" best practices
 A superior approach is a proactive one that seeks
out these affected practices and posts, pushes
and shares in such a manner that managers easily
see their value and implement them
 Best practice sharing should be timed and usage
tracked throughout the firm
128

129. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
9) Speed up internal movement through proactive
internal placement
 Faster internal movement increases productivity,
retention and development fast
 Rather than waiting for the employee to move…
a more strategic approach is a proactive one
where recruiters periodically identify and then
help to correctly place employees that should be
moved both for their own and for the firm’s good
 Short-term projects and virtual projects and
rotations can also facilitate future movement
129

130. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
10) Measure / improve your employer brand
 During the economic downturn, the area of
employer branding has been frequently ignored
 The growth of glassdoor.com, blogs, Yelp, Twitter
and Facebook now make it much easier for
negative messages to be spread
 At the very least, the positive/negative aspects of
your employer brand should be measured,
monitored and improved
130

131. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
11) College recruiting must be reengineered
 College recruiting programs have been stagnant
for years, even though colleges, communications
and job seeking approaches have changed
dramatically
 Program features that need to be examined include
remote college recruiting, social media
approaches aimed at college students, mobile
platform approaches and marketing research to
better understand the needs of top grads
131

132. The top strategic actions in Talent Management
12) Directly increase corporate revenues by
focusing on revenue generating and rev. impact jobs
 Work with the COO to identify the jobs that
generate significant amounts of revenue or that
directly impact revenue generation
 TM must then prioritize its resources and people
so that they focus on hiring, retaining, developing
etc. the areas that have a high revenue impact
 Work with the CFO in order to prove the $
increase in revenues
132

133. WORKFORCE PLANNING
IS CRITICAL
© Dr John Sullivan 133
Topic # 5

134. Why your firm must excel at workforce planning
134

135. Can we all agree…we have failed in the past
CEO’s / CFO’s want smoother ups & fewer downs
135
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Any questions?

136. 136
Strategic workforce planning defined
An integrated…
forward looking
talent management plan, process & way of thinking
designed to predict labor needs (what, when, how much)…
and then cause action to meet them.
In order to mitigate people mgmt. problems…
and take advantage of talent opportunities
to improve the “talent pipeline”…
so that you have the needed “people capabilities”…
to meet business goals…
and to build a competitive advantage!

137. 137
Our turbulent environment has a name… V.U.C.A.
V for Volatility – major change will be frequent
and sudden
U for Uncertainty – there will be many surprises
and change will not follow a predictable pattern
C for Complexity – problems & opportunities will
be complex… with many different elements
A for Ambiguity – confusion from contradictory
information / data will make mis-reads likely
An “adaptive” firm and HR function are needed
in a VUCA world

138. 138
Adaptability / agility will be required in HR
A flexible HR approach is required – your HR
strategy/programs must be “scalable” and be able to
“shift” to meet the ups and downs of the business
environment
A flexible workforce – sudden bus. shifts and
project work require a larger % of well managed
contingent labor
Be prepared to add / cut talent capabilities – HR
must be able to add talent capabilities in one
business unit or region… while simultaneously
reducing labor costs in another
Rapid internal redeployment – you must have the
capability for rapidly and proactively moving
employees and teams to the most urgent bus. areas

139. 139
The traditional WP model
has five major components

140. 140
The five major components of WP
First you identify your firm’s future talent needs
1.Corporate labor needs (aka labor demand) –
You must forecast what you need to meet bus.
goals including… labor volume, skill sets,
performance level, the % of innovators needed and
where and when talent is needed
Next you need to deduct the talent that you expect to still have
2. Projected internal availability of labor – start
with your current employees and labor, minus…
projected turnover, retirements and skill
deficiency gaps
You now know your net talent need >

141. 141
The five major components of WP
You must predict the external supply available to your firm
3. Gross external availability of labor (supply) –
forecast the supply of labor that is available to all
firms, including experienced and college sources
But remember… not everyone will want to work for your firm
4. So subtract… the % of the labor force that can’t
be attracted – remove the % of the gross available
workforce (with the needed skills) that will not
work for you… because of your… employer brand,
recruiting capability, headcount limits, location or
due to competitor actions
You now know the net available external labor supply

142. 142
The five major components of WP
You now must develop plans to close the talent gaps
5. Action steps to close the gaps - plans, processes
and tools to meet future labor needs (shortages or
surpluses)

143. 143
What are the most common HR errors that you
should avoid when designing your WP?

144. 144
HR failure factors
The 6 most critical design errors made by HR
1.Lack of integration within HR – there is no
coordination and integration between the HR
functions that must respond to forecasted
workforce problems and opportunities
2.Weak forecasts – the forecasts are inaccurate,
and overly positive
3.Straight line projections – most forecasts are
merely straight-line projections… with no
variations based on changing business and
economic events

145. 145
6 WP failure factors
4.Failure to identify barriers – HR assumes it’s
job is done with the forecast and the report… but it
must dedicate sufficient time and resources on
identifying resistance, roadblocks and HR
programs that might not work (i.e. PA, PM and training)
5.HR works in isolation – the process does not
involve managers, finance and strategic planning.
HR must also have an “executive “champion”
from a powerful business unit or function
6.No rewards – HR must offer rewards to
managers and HR for successful planning

146. 146
Succession planning
Developing leaders and effectively “placing” them

147. 147
Most firms don’t do succession planning well
Only 23% have formal succession plans (SHRM survey 2011)
Only 34% say senior management is committed
to succession planning
The #1 reason not to do Succession Planning is…
more immediate projects are taking precedence
A staggering 55% drop out of HiPo programs
(SHL Talent Management research)
Up to 33% of HiPo’s are looking externally (Talent
Management Magazine)

148. Succession planning
7 ways to identify Hi-Potential employees
1.Base them on the decision maker’s relationships
2.Select those with the most seniority
3.Let managers use their own appraisal criteria
4.A discussion and a vote among decision-makers
5.Let them self-select or others nominate them
6.Set fixed criteria/competencies that have proven
to predict success
7.Short-term stretch projects & rotations to assess148

149. Succession planning
Problems in identifying Hi-Pot’s and Hi-Per’s
 The definition of potential may change so often
that predicting it isn’t possible over the long term
 Measuring potential is an “iffy” process
 Managers are often not good at identifying
potential (they may look at people like themselves)
 High turnover of HiPo’s may make many of the
identified ones unavailable
 Incumbents fail to leave/ retire 149

150. Succession planning
Best practices in succession planning
Begin with a “back-fill” plan for sudden departures
Call it a progression plan (Movement not promotions)
It’s best to consider succession planning… as an
accelerated “stretch” assignment program
Use multiple sources to choose names
Make the plan transparent to create a “powerful
conversation”
Limit the time frame for development to 18
months
150

151. Succession planning best practices
Best practices to consider (Continued)
Expect 20% churn when the plan is updated
Check to make sure that your succession plan does
not mirror the organization chart
Track to see if your succession plan is actually
followed for promotions and during layoffs
Let employees refer… or self-nominate
Succession plans normally only cover 5-10%...
career path plans cover the rest 151

152. Succession planning best practices
Best practices to consider (Continued)
 Include “key and mission-critical jobs”, not just
executive jobs
 Start low in the organization and early (or the good
upcoming leaders might not be around to fully develop)
 Innovators may be as important as leaders
 Good plans identify “non-obvious” candidates (in
other SBU’s, diversity and international jobs)
 Allow a “take a chance” person
 Consider external candidates (WellPoint, Booz Allen)
End of succession planning 152

153. Any more questions?
153
Did I make you think?
These slides can be found at www.drjohnsullivan.com