This is the final day (half-day actually) of the KnowledgeAdvisors’ 7th Annual Analytics Symposium. The general sessions as well as breakouts yesterday and today continued to focus on ways companies are collecting data for better decision making. I’m pleased to see the focus of discussion move beyond the Kirkpatrick 4-levels of measurement (as in “Are you measuring levels 3 and 4?”), beyond Phillips’ level 5 ROI (as in “What was the ROI for that program?”), to collecting data to make better informed decisions and making analytics and fact-based decision making a integral element of strategy and competition. So, the questions are: what are your talent initiatives intended to accomplish; why are those outcomes important to business success; what decisions do you want to be able to make about your initiatives and when do you want to make them; therefore, what do you need to know about the initiatives and the circumstances of their implementation, what will your standard of evidence be, which data will you collect and how, and what type of analyses will you perform? Kirkpatrick’s 4-levels and Phillips’ ROI method can be useful frameworks for specific purposes, but alone they do not constitute a purposeful decision strategy.Two more things:

• As noted in my post yesterday, Josh Bersin has created a comprehensive framework for thinking about measurement and decision-making across the entire process of creating, implementing, and evaluating human capital initiatives. Josh’s Training Measurement Book does a fine job of explaining his framework and guidelines for using it.
• All of this discussions about measurement, analysis, and dedcision-making inevitably take you back to the fundamental need to manage talent strategically. That means creating human capital plans aligned in detail with:
  • with your business strategies
  • the processes that enable those strategies
  • the human capabilities needed to execute those processes successfully
  • the drivers of and gaps in those capabilities now, in the next 1 to 2 years, in the next 3 to 5 years
• Creating those written plans annually, including your measurement objectives and strategies, and reviewing them quarterly enable you to manage forward, quarter by quarter, toward that 1 - 2 year horizon as well as the 3 - 5 year horizon. They enable you to create a portfolio of short-term and long-term, operational and strategic human capital investments that you can then measure and adjust as your future becomes your present and as your internal and external environmental scans enable you to forecast new 1 -2 year and 3 - 5 year horizons.

These are the indispensable perspectives and competencies that Human Resources or Talent Management or Human Capital Management (whichever term your business uses) must have to fulfill its executive leadership role.State Parkway Partners can help you create such a capability in your organization. See the other sections of this website and the service offering presentations for more information.

This week I am attending KnmowledgeAdvisors’ 7th Annual Analytics Symposium. KnowledgeAdvisors is a great company focused both on its own and its clients’ business success and the advancment of human capital management as a business discipline. Wednesday’s opening Keynote was delivered by Cedric Coco from Lowe’s Companies. He posed and answered the question: How do we measure the value of, then optimize our company’s most strategic asset…our employees? Cedric described the Human Capital Business Model he and his team have built, and are continuing to develop. He begins with the view that people are the largest unmanaged asset in a company. “Unmanaged” doesn’t mean there are no managers: it does mean that companies do not have enough specific knowledge of the role people play in the company’s value proposition to effectively manage the recruitment, hiring, onboarding, engagement, development, and assessment of their people. The idea - which will be further developed today and tomorrow by Heather Maitre, Chris Hardy, Tom Davenport, Laurie Bassi, Dave Vance, Jac Fitz-enz, and Nick Bontis - is that people create value and those who invest in people create greater market value than those who don’t. The key, of course, is defining what precisely to invest in. So, Cedric’s team has done a lot of work and have determined: (a) that the factor that correlates very highly with specific business results like revenue, customer satisfaction, and lower costs is “employee engagement”; and (b) that there are very specific factors that constitute “engagement” in their company. They now know that if they invest in A, B, and C they can optimize engagement, and that engagement optimized to a specific measured level will produce a predictable level of revenue, customer satisfaction, and cost. This basic Human Capital Business Model is now the foundation of a very specific HR strategy, a focused creation of a specific employee experience, and an analytics strategy that will keep the company on top of changes in the factors that drive engagement and business results. Interestingly, Cedric and his team have also drilled down into the “employee experience” element in their strategy and, through lifecycle research, have defined what that experience should be like at each phase of the emploment lifecycle and how to measure it: acquisition, onboarding, engagement, and transition (to another role, to another company, or to retirement).It’s terrific to see such a disciplined approach to defining, developing, and rewarding the specific roles people play that drive specific business outcomes. As a bonus, Josh Bersin (Bersin & Associates) concluded the day with a view of trends and issues in the L&D and Talent Management worlds. The sad aspect of Josh’s research is how few companies have set goals for themselves to manage the acquisition, engagement, development, and retention of their most strategic asset…their employees. By the way, Josh published a book last year titled The Training Management Book. Josh has developed a framework for planning, managing, and measuring any intervention designed to improve the performance of people in a business. While it focuses specifically on training, you can immediately see how you can use the framework for other change initiatives. I highly recommend Josh’s book to all HR professionals.