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Content 
Equity
Skills News & Views
Volume
6, Issue 2, 30 January 2007
Registered as an electronic newspaper: ISSN 1684-5722
For archived editions, please visit http://www.equityskillsweb.com
------------------------------------
In
this edition:
1.
With Workforce Performance In The Spotlight, HR Is On The Hot Seat: Insights
From The Accenture High-Performance Workforce Study 2006
2.
Global City Regions: A Shift In Focus For How HR Views Its Work
3. Where Are You On The Talent Map?
4. Mentoring For Diversity
5. Book Reviews: The Employer Brand
6. Case Law & Legislation Review:
Automatically Unfair Dismissals
7.
Unsubscribe & Moving Soon
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1. With Workforce Performance In The
Spotlight, HR Is On The Hot Seat: Insights
From The Accenture High-Performance Workforce Study 2006
By
Ed Jensen who can be contacted at www.accenture.com
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In
2006, we find a global economy that is in dramatically better shape than
in the past few years. Regardless of industry, most companies have emerged
from the severe cost-cutting and bunker mentality that characterized the
period from 2002 to 2004 and are looking once again
to
grow their business. Along with this change in focus we once again see
among companies a renewed emphasis on the workforce—specifically, how to
reinvigorate, and in many cases rebuild, a corps of workers who were
rocked by the economic downturn but whose skills once again are in demand.
Of course, this challenge falls squarely on the shoulders of executives in
charge of talent management. And as many of these individuals have
discovered, divining the impact the aging workforce and other talent pool
dynamics will have on their company’s ability to achieve high
performance and market leadership is an extremely difficult proposition.
In
the 2006 Accenture High Performance Workforce Study, Accenture explored
this critical challenge, along with many other issues key to building and
sustaining a workforce that delivers a positive, measurable impact on an
organization’s bottom line—thus enabling the enterprise as a whole to
achieve high performance. As part of the study, Accenture surveyed 251
senior executives globally whose responses painted an interesting—and,
at times, concerning—picture of the state of talent management in
organizations around the world. In particular, the survey revealed that a
number of shortcomings in the HR function may be preventing companies from
creating and sustaining stronger overall workforces that are key to
competitive advantage, and highlighted some of the steps leading
organizations have taken to address these shortcomings.
HR
and Training Shortcomings Are Likely Behind the Workforce Challenges
For
example, we asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of the HR and
training support given to the top three workforces in their organization.
In a majority of participating companies, support of the top three
workforces was reported to be average to ineffective in a number of key
areas of talent management. Knowledge management and knowledge capture and
transfer appeared to be the areas in which most companies struggle, but
change management, leadership development and career development also were
problematic. Looking at the data another way, no more than 19 percent of
respondents said their support of their top
three workforces in any of the areas of talent management covered was
highly effective.
Why
did so few companies report high performance and superior skills among
their workforces? Additional analyses of our survey data pinpointed
shortcomings in human resource support as a major culprit.
To
read more click on:
http://www.workinfo.com/free/downloads/180.htm
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2.
Global City Regions: A Shift In Focus For How HR Views Its Work
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----------------
Editors
Note: I
was completely and pleasantly taken aback by the feedback and positive
comments from some subscribers about the ‘Ideapolis’ article reprinted
in the previous edition, so much so that it got me thinking about whether
there is any research findings relevant to
One
web page (untitled) was found about research sponsored by the Volkswagen
Foundation that has bearing on the huge transition facing HR in
This
comparative research project included a study of 4 City-Regions:
-----------------
The
character of our political environment is increasingly being defined as a
global one. According to this view, borders and geography matter less and
less while capital, information, entertainment, people, and services move
swiftly around the globe in “spaces of flows”. While the general
mechanisms and dynamics of globalization have been analysed rather
extensively in the field of international relations, the study of their
effects has concentrated mostly on the state level. However, research from
neighboring disciplines such as geography and sociology has recently
demonstrated how the dynamics of globalization tend to crystallize not
only in states, but in specific city regions as well. [1] Global flows
need to originate, to be channelled, and to arrive somewhere. Metropolitan
areas function as the centers, nodes, hubs, and gateways of global
business, culture, and social relations.
For
at least three reasons, city regions constitute an increasingly important
political sphere of their own:
1.
As cities and city regions are affecting the lives of more and more
people, the issue of urbanization has led to a growing volume of research
devoted to urban development and governance.
2.
Faced with the burden of adjusting to globalization, many central state
governments respond, though not always voluntarily, with the devolution of
political tasks and authority to sub-state levels.
3.
Regions, and city regions in particular, are rapidly becoming centers of
economic activity, innovation, and growth, independent from the national
economic environment.
Click
on http://www2.oei.fu-berlin.de/city-regions/_project/project_description_txt.htm
to explore this issue and the implications it holds for you and your
organisation. The GDP figures quoted for
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3.
Where Are You On The Talent Map?
By
Bill Breen who can be contacted at www.fastcompany.com
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Want
to get a quick take on how your city or region is faring in the all-out
competition for talent? Start by determining the percentage of gays that
are in your population. The "gay index" is the leading predictor
of a city's ability to attract and retain knowledge workers, claims
Richard Florida, founder and director of the
This
is just one of several eye-opening insights from
In
the battle for talent,
1.
Virtual communities just aren't enough -- talent seeks out places with
real assets.
Lots
of Internet enthusiasts argue that the Web has made geography irrelevant,
that people are finding their communities in cyberspace. In fact, in a
talent-driven economy, place becomes even more important, because people
still need to have lives. One of my students put it this way: "My
work is a series of projects. My life is a series of moves. My parents had
institutions that they were connected to. What can I connect to? My
community."
"Community"
can have different meanings. For some people, it's a neighborhood. For
others, it's their network. But the bottom line is that people are finding
community in the real world: places where the streets feel alive at 2 AM
and where a dynamic music scene, all-night cafés, and extreme sports are
easily accessible. People want to feel the energy that fuels creativity
all around them.
Think
about the "Organization Man" of the 1950s. He worked for a
company for life, and his social behavior was defined by that vertical
organization. If he moved, the company put him in an executive
neighborhood. Now we're seeing the rise of plug-and-play communities,
places like
Geography
is as critical for companies as it is for people. The CEO of an ASP who
had just merged his company with an incubator in
Think
about the companies that have relocated to the talent meccas, such as
Gateway Inc., which moved its headquarters from
2.
To become talent magnets, cities must have something for everyone.
Cities
differ considerably in their ability to attract and retain great human
capital, and the companies that those people power. And it turns out that
talent hasn't spread evenly across the landscape. It has clustered in such
areas as
Talent
is flocking to three types of new-economy hot spots. First, there's the
traditional, high-tech industrial complex: Silicon Valley, Research
Triangle, and northern
So
we're seeing a trend back to urban locations that have high amenities. But
that's not the only trend. I would be remiss to say that every high-tech
company is going to move into a
3.
It's not just about stock options. Talent wants job options.
New-economy
workers think of their careers as portfolios of experiences. When they
size up a region, the first thing that they look for is a thick labor
market -- a wide variety of employment opportunities that will sustain a
career in the high-tech field.
These
workers say to themselves, I want a place where there are lots of
opportunities, because my experience will enable me to take on many
different jobs and projects. I might decide to have a long tenure at one
company, but my assumption going into the job is that my connection to
work is insecure and temporary -- partly because that's the nature of the
new economy, and partly because I have watched my family members get laid
off, and I know that corporations aren't loyal.
4.
Forget the country-club set.
Talent
seeks inclusivity. Cities used to think about creating places that had low
barriers to entry for firms so that those companies would relocate there.
In a talent-driven economy, a place makes itself competitive by creating
low barriers to entry for human capital. This is the type of place where
talented people -- whether they're Indian, Korean, gay, or alternative --
can plug in and be accepted and not be looked upon as weird. We hear it
all the time in our focus groups and in our interviews: Diversity is the
surest sign that communities and companies really get it.
That's
why there is such a high correlation between cities that are making it in
the new economy and those that have a significant gay population.
High-tech recruiters tell us that 8 out of 10 job candidates always ask a
prospective employer whether the company offers domestic-partner benefits
-- not because they need the benefit, but because it shows that the
company is a true meritocracy that supports talented people from all walks
of life.
The
surest sign that a company or city doesn't get it is when you visit, and
you're taken to a private club. It's like, "You just told me that
this is the kind of place where I don't want to live."
5.
In a world where time is the only nonrenewable resource, talent seeks out
places that conserve time.
People
look for the same things in a city that they look for in a company:
energy, amenities, and a sense of fun. They want to see roller bladers and
cyclists out on the streets. They want to have a place nearby where they
can go rock climbing. Now, when we ask them if they mountain bike or rock
climb, many times the answer is no. But they want those activities to be
available, because someday they might want to do them.
There's
another thing going on here that the data doesn't capture, but that's an
important component of a new-economy region: A place that has all of these
amenities is very efficient. You save time when you live there. A
high-amenity place is one where you can get anything you need
instantaneously. If you're pulling an all-nighter, you can get takeout at
2 AM. When your dry cleaning piles up, there's a place down the street
that will take care of it. If you need to blow off steam, there's a
rock-climbing wall nearby.
6.
Cities are building sports stadiums, but talent wants bike paths. Business
is not a spectator sport.
While
professional sports are seen more and more as a way to achieve "major
league" status and attract talent, our data suggests that there is
little relationship between these big-ticket venues and high-tech workers.
Many successful high-tech regions, notably
Knowledge
workers don't want to devote an entire Sunday to watching football. These
people are active. They want to participate. They don't want to stand on
the sidelines. A lot of cities believe that they'll make it in the new
economy if they get a professional sports team and build a downtown mall.
They couldn't be more wrong.
It's
almost like taking drugs away from an addict: No more stadiums. No more
convention centers. What cities need to do is really simple: Make it fun.
Create a music scene. Build bike lanes. Make sure that there are parks
where people can play Ultimate Frisbee. Think about the city's historic
assets -- the old buildings -- as cool spaces for hot companies.
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4.
Mentoring For Diversity
By
Prof. David Clutterbuck who can be contacted at www.clutterbuckassociates.co.uk
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Introduction
Formal
mentoring programmes to support equal opportunities objectives have become
an established element of the corporate development portfolio. In
particular, many companies have experimented with “glass ceiling”
programmes to support women in overcoming institutional and attitudinal
barriers to advancement into middle and senior management. In recent
years, however, a range of new diversity applications has emerged. Some
enable ethnic groups in multicultural organisations to take redefine the
balance between corporate culture and the cultural identities people bring
with them into the organisation. Some attempt to capitalise on the
inherent diversity of all employees, encouraging them to respect, value
and learn from other people’s different perspectives. And some have
found new ways to address the inequalities of power in organisational
structures, for example by reversing the hierarchy.
The
concept of mentoring for diversity is a relatively recent addition to the
management lexicology. It’s not surprising, therefore, that it can be
interpreted in a variety of ways, which reflect organisational or
individual biases in the way it has been applied. Some of the practical
programmes, which I have been involved with or observed, reflect the
diversity of mentoring for diversity:
•
At An Post, the Irish Post Office, women managers are taking part in an
intriguing experiment where mentors are drawn from more senior levels not
just within the postal service, but from large companies at either end of
the supply chain – both customers and suppliers. The aim is to provide
as many as possible different perspectives on the roles, to which the
women aspire.
•
At SAS, the Scandinavian air carrier, structured mentoring began with a
programme for women leaders and rapidly diversified to meet the needs of a
variety of other groups. People are encouraged to seek a mentor from a
different nationality or culture, a different gender or someone younger
than themselves. The vast majority (95%) of these relationships have found
that the inbuilt diversity gives the relationship an extra dynamism and
helps to sustain the interest of both parties.
•
At World Bank, some 2,000 mentoring pairs have been set up, almost all at
the instigation of groups of people from the same geographical regions. In
each case, they have recognised the value in both networking together and
creating close developmental relationships with people outside their
natural groups.
•
At Procter and Gamble, a planned traditional glass ceiling approach – in
which powerful male executives would adopt more junior female managers, to
“groom” them for promotion – was abandoned in favour of
relationships where the executives became the mentees and the more junior
women became the mentors. The programme had as one of its objectives
overcoming a much higher labour turnover among women managers than among
men – a goal which has now been achieved. The executive mentees have
gained significant insights into diversity issues in general, and a
greater empathy with the issues female employees face. Given that most of
P&G’s customers are women, this empathy is inevitably reflected in
marketing policy.
•
At the Cabinet Office in the
Defining
Mentoring
Even
a brief skim through the academic and practitioner literature on mentoring
throws up dozens of definitions of mentoring. These divide broadly into
what can be called the
To
read more click on:
http://www.workinfo.com/free/downloads/180.htm
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5.
Book Reviews: The Employer Brand
By
Simon Barrow & Richard Moseley, Wiley, 2005
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Your
most important brand relationship is unlikely to be your choice of
breakfast cereal, car or even football team, but the brand you work for:
your employer brand.
How
people feel about their employer brand is increasingly significant to
business success or failure. Companies are realising the importance of
attracting and engaging the people they need to succeed and that creating
a positive brand experience for employees requires the same degree of
focus, care and coherence that has long characterised effective management
of the customer brand experience.
For
many companies, this means a radical shake-up of historical practices and
a challenge to traditional ideas.
Written
by the creator of the Employer Brand® concept and one of its most
experienced practitioners, this book provides an inspirational and
practical guide for professionals in HR, marketing and internal
communications, to discover how managing their employer brand more
effectively can improve company performance.
Starting
with a review of the pressures which have generated current interest in
employer branding, this book goes on to look at the historical roots of
brand management and the practical steps necessary to achieve employer
brand management success - including the business case, research,
positioning, implementation, management and measurement.
Case
studies of big-name employer brand stories include Tesco, Reuters,
Microsoft and Compass Group.
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6.
Case Law & Legislation Review: Automatically Unfair Dismissals
By
Gary Watkins who can be contacted at www.workinfo.com
and www.caselaw.co.za
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#
Janda v First National Bank
Case
No.
JS511/04
Judgment Date 1 September 2006
Jurisdiction
Judge D van Zyl,
Acting Judge
Subject:
Automatically
Unfair Dismissals
Issue:
The
Employee has an onus to prove the reason for the dismissal while the
Employer has an onus to prove that the dismissal was fair.
While the court may grant absolution of the instance it will not do
so when there is an onus on the Employer to the fairness of the dismissal.
Summary
of Facts: The
Employee was a security guard who had been charged with assaulting a
fellow employee and dismissed after a disciplinary hearing.
He claimed that the true reason for his dismissal had nothing to do
with the alleged assault. He
claimed he was dismissed because he was instrumental in lodging a
complaint with the Department of Labour arising out of the Employer’s
failure to pay security officers overtime pay in respect of work performed
by them on Public Holidays (except Christmas) and weekends.
He further alleged that had he been white, the Employer would not
have dismissed him as the Employer treated white employees better that
black employees.
Summary of Judgement: The court held that the test to be applied before granting absolution of the instance was whether there was such evidence, assuming it to be true, upon which a reasonable court might, not should, give judgment against the respondent. In order to establish this, the onus had to be determined first. Fairness relates to the reason for the dismissal. The court held that when an automatically unfair dismissal was alleged, the sole enquiry was to establish the true reason for the dismissal, and the only legal issue was whether the reason so identified was covered by one or other of the provisions of section 187. Section 192(2) of the LRA places the onus on the employer to show that the dismissal of an employee was for a permissible reason. Being an onus in its true sense, it remains on the employer throughout the course of the trial and cannot shift to the employee. The court held that it was not for the employee to prove the reason for his dismissal, but merely to produce evidence sufficient to raise the issue or, to put it another way, that raised some doubt about the reason for the dismissal. Once this evidential burden was discharged, the onus remained upon the employer to prove the reason for the dismissal. By reason of the fact that the overall onus remained with the Employer, the court held that it would be incorrect to accede to the application for absolution of the instance, either at this stage of the proceedings, or later. As a rule, absolution from the instance will not be granted where the onus rests on the defendant (the Employer in this matter) on one or more of the issues. The application for absolution was dismissed.
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(c) 2006 Registered electronic newspaper: 1SSN 1684-5714