INSIDER

Wakeup Call!

The big take-away from Accenture’s recent study on workforce management trends is that a bad situation is getting worse.

“It is fairly negative,” said Ed Jensen, senior partner for the human resources practice at the global management consulting company, in an interview. “A few of the questions we’ve asked repeatedly, and we’re not seeing much improvement. In fact, some things are getting worse.”

Jensen cited survey data revealing that only 14% of respondents described the overall skill level of their organizations’ entire workforce as “industry leading.”

“That percentage has dropped,” he said. “It’s the third time we’ve asked that question, and responses have gone from 27% to 17% and now 14%.”

The high-performance workforce study is conducted approximately every 18 months to measure workforce management trends among executives in large corporations in the United States, Europe and Australia. The study has been conducted five times. This year’s research canvassed more than 250 senior executives.

The situation is even worse when you consider that most executives tend to overstate in public their own organization’s capabilities. So if anything, the results might be overstating the positive.

Jensen said that researchers did some correlating from individual responses, however, leading them to believe that companies rating themselves as high are in fact more likely to have better results in such areas as acquiring customers and customer loyalty.

In “a vast struggle” brought about by fierce global competition—especially in such industries as airline, automotive, information technology, retail—Jensen said that those companies demonstrating industry-leading skills share several traits. They are aligning training and other HR practices more closely to business objectives, conducting training that is most relevant to the company’s strategic goals. Such companies are also doing a better job of measuring the results of training activities—not just about learner satisfaction with training, but rather asking supervisors whether the training has impacted job performance.

“People practices are a differentiator,” said Jensen. “You can see it in the relationship between management and the workforce—is it a partnership? Or is there discord?” There also needs to be a partnership between business and human resources, “a cultural acknowledgement that [workforce performance] is important and worthy of time, attention, and money.”

Currently, according to the research, just one in ten respondents reported being very satisfied with the performance of his or her HR and training functions. Potential reasons cited in the results include the following:

•   A lack of connection to business drivers: Only 36% of respondents said their companies tailor HR and training support to each function’s needs and contributions to the organization.

•   Failure to measure the business impact of HR and training efforts: More than 40% do not evaluate the impact of their HR and training efforts against profitability, and half do not evaluate those efforts against revenues and sales.

•   Ineffective knowledge capture and sharing: Four in 10 (42%) described capturing and sharing knowledge as a challenge or a severe challenge for their companies. The most commonly cited impediments to better knowledge capture and sharing were: a lack of a common business culture across different locations (cited by 38%); no knowledge support infrastructure with dedicated people (37%); and the fact that knowledge sharing is typically not rewarded in the organization (32%).

•   Talent time bomb: Nearly two-thirds (60%) of respondents reported that, over the next five years, they expect to begin feeling the impact of the aging workforce and the impending retirement of baby boomers. Of those, 28% said they are feeling the impact now. Almost one-half (43%) of participants described talent sourcing as a challenge or a severe challenge, primarily because of a smaller or shrinking talent pool from which to choose.

•   Lack of functional leaders’ involvement in people issues: Only a small percentage of respondents said the heads of customer service, finance, sales and strategic planning at their companies are highly involved in human capital management initiatives (reported by 29%, 31%, 34% and 37%, respectively).

www.accenture.com

George Miller
Site Editor
gmiller@questex.com