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“THE TALENT DECADE”: USING DATA TO BUILD
BETTER HR SYSTEMS
New Conference Board of Canada research shows that Canadian
organizations are heavily investing dollars and energy into their
HR functions in the emerging “Talent Decade.” During this time,
strategic factors such as demographics, labour markets and pro-ductivity
are converging to elevate the importance of talent even
further. In this dynamic business environment, it is talent manage-ment
that will create sustainable competitive advantage.
During the Talent Decade, organizations will also need to en-sure
that their HR function is building effective talent systems and
measurement tools that support strategic business decisions and
strengthen workforce capacity.
Organizations that effectively exploit knowledge of data and an-alytics
will have the capability to drive better business decisions.
However, findings in Human Resources Trends and Metrics: HR
Function Benchmarking, Third Edition reveal that Canadian orga-nizations
are only starting to build this capability, and less than
a quarter of Canadian organizations use human capital perfor-mance
dashboards or scorecards.
“In the emerging Talent Decade, aligned and integrated HR pro-grams,
policies and systems that find, develop and deploy the right
talent will be the key differentiator between successful organiza-tions
and their less successful counterparts. An HR measurement
strategy is needed to demonstrate that the HR function is getting
this right. A comprehensive HR measurement strategy therefore
includes measuring the relationship between HR programs and
service delivery and improved organizational performance,” said
Ian Cullwick, vice-president, Leadership and Human Resources
Research at The Conference Board of Canada.
SMEs PREDICT A HIRING SPREE BUT NEED TO
PROTECT THEIR CULTURE AND VALUES AS
THEY GROW
Employers in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are
nearly five times more likely to employ more people in the next
quarter than larger businesses, according to figures from the UK’s
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
But growth needs to be handled carefully. Other new figures show
that having a clear purpose and values is key to the success of SMEs.
They guide how work gets done, influence the satisfaction and re-tention
of an organization’s people and ultimately steer a business
towards achieving its goals. However, with workforce growth there is a
risk that the organization’s purpose and values can become diluted and
even disappear over time. Small businesses need to do more to articu-late
these business fundamentals and maintain them through growth.
More than three quarters of small business decision makers
surveyed agree that their business success hinges on them stay-ing
true to their vision and values and say that this is something
they will need to actively focus on as they grow. However, almost
a fifth believe their colleagues would struggle to articulate what
their company’s vision and values actually are.
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HRPATODAY.CA ❚ SEPTEMBER 2014 ❚ 11
