HR Trends with Game Changers, Presented by SAP

The buzz: Emerging brands. If you think your company brand is the only one your organization needs to worry about, listen up! Two new branding flavors are stealing the business spotlight: employer and personal. Does your HR consider the notion of employer branding a passing fad? Are you ignoring the impact your personal brand (yes, you already have one) might wreak as our knowledge economy segues into a social economy? The experts speak. Chris Heuer, Alynd: “Reputation: be known for what you know, how are you known, how you craft the story, and how you live your life.” Kare Anderson, SayItBetter.com: “Speak to their positive intent, especially when they appear to have none.” Jenny Dearborn, SAP: “It’s this simple: You are a brand. You are in charge of your brand. There is no single path to success. And there is no one right way to create the brand called You. Except this: start today, or else.” (Tom Peters) Join us for Ways to Sway: Secrets of Influence and Personal Brand

The buzz: Build or buy? Does your company prefer to invest in a current employee’s training to promote them up the ladder, or bypass them for a more experienced, already trained outside superstar? Wharton’s Matthew Bidwell found that external hires are paid 18% more on average, but receive significantly lower performance reviews their first two years and are more likely to get laid off or fired than internal promoted staff. What’s up with this? The experts speak. Dr. Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte: “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.” (Bill Gates). Raluca Druta, TEC: “But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.” (Oscar Wilde). Laura L. Stegall, SAP: “We lament the speed of our society and the lack of depth and the nature of disposable information.” (David Ogden Stiers). Join us for Promote from Within or Hire External Superstars?

The buzz: HR around the world. American companies think they're the keepers of the best management practices. Consequently, they don't try to learn as much as they can from other places, according to Dr. Michael J. Marquardt, a professor at George Washington University. Whether you agree with him or not, U.S. HR leaders just might learn valuable lessons from the innovative and successful HR practices in other countries. The experts speak. Matt Healey, TBR: “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” (George Bernard Shaw) Patrick Heffernan, TBR: “Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it. (Bob Dylan) Thomas Otter, SAP: “Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?’” (Thomas J. Watson, IBM). Join us for HR Makes the World Go Round: Practices Outside the US.

The buzz: Burnout. In this era of hyper-connectivity and 24/7 global demands on your workforce, employee burnout is a key contributor to the lack of engagement and loss of productivity all too prevalent in the workplace. If always-on is the nemesis of commitment and productivity, it’s time to take a closer look at your company culture. Burnout is insidious; it can spread from employee to employee, department to department across your organization. Take heart. Your management team and individual employees can banish burnout. Ready to learn how? The experts speak. Allison Ellis, Portland State University: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” (World Health Organization) Stacey Perrin, SAP: “It’s better to burn out, than to fade away.” (lyrics from My My, Hey Hey – Out of the Blue, Neil Young, Def Leppard). Join us for How to Prevent Burnout in the Age of Always-On.

The buzz: Leaders. Employee engagement. Retention. Your employer brand. The leaders you hire or promote from inside will make or break your workforce strategies. The trends are ominous. Your organization needs to identify and develop the right kind of leaders. But how? The experts speak. Justin Locke, Author: “’Leadership Development’ is in direct conflict with the core management ideology of the Industrial Revolution, where obedience, uniformity, and the smooth running of the factory are more important than the people working in it… Many of us still work within that century-old cultural ideology… to move ahead, we must be conscious of where we are coming from.” Janet Wood, SAP: “I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.” (Virginia Rometty, IBM). Karie Willyerd, SAP: “Few workplaces have planned well for…what it will take to lead the next generation of employees.” Join us for Mission Critical: Identifying and Developing Leaders.

The buzz: HR Metrics. If you’re an HR professional, metrics such as cost per hire, training cost per employee, turnover rate, and lag between posting and filling a position will show the executive team that you’re doing your job, but not much more. “Vanity metrics” are not the same as applying workforce analytics tools to give your C-Suite leaders the data-driven, actionable insights they need to solve business problems. Current wisdom says to stop focusing on activity numbers and instead answer the critical question, “What is the value?” The experts speak. Greta Roberts, Talent Analytics: “Pretty HR dashboards and visualizations rarely provide strategic, actionable business insights. Kris Dunn, Kinetix: “Life is a game. Money is how we keep score (Ted Turner). Mick Collins, SAP: “A politician knows not only how to count votes, but how to make his vote count” (U.S. President Richard Nixon, 1969.) Join us for Stop with the Vanity Metrics: Measure What Matters.

The buzz: Recruiting. Acquiring top talent is tough, with today’s job mobility mindset and competitive employee poaching. Another challenge: your Employer Brand. Similar to customers relying on social network reviews of your products, potential recruits are combing the Web for insider info about your organization. Are your Talent leaders and employee ambassadors helping or hindering your brand? The experts speak. Tim Sackett, HRU Technical Resources: “I don’t know how this is going to end, I know how it’s going to begin” (Neo, The Matrix). Will Staney, Glassdoor: “I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success” (Tennessee Williams). Jessica Miller-Merrell, Xceptional HR: “To climb the ladder of success, you don't need more techniques and strategies, you need more friends (Jeffrey Gitmore). Join us for The Yelpification of Recruiting.

The buzz: Turnover? Oh no! Employee attrition is a fact of life staring your HR leaders in the eye, more often than ever due to escalating job mobility, social recruiting and talent poaching. You know that every employee will leave at some point. But it becomes painful for your organization when your prized top talent are the ones jumping ship without even a rumored whisper preceding their departure. The goal for your HR team is not to prevent all turnover, but to prevent the unplanned, unmanaged kind. How are today’s successful companies enticing their most valued human capital to stay? The experts speak. China Gorman, Great Place to Work: “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value” (Albert Einstein). Dr. Steven Hunt, SuccessFactors: “People don’t necessarily want to leave their company after two years, but you may need to create a compelling reason to stay.” Join us for Battling Attrition: How To Keep Good Employees?

The buzz: Work-life what? The term ‘work-life balance’ has become a cliché for a frustrating goal that few of us in the workforce ever reach, or reach very often. With boundaries between work and family more blurred than ever, stress, job burnout, and competition for our time all take a toll on our work productivity and our health. Take heart. Now there’s flexstyle, a more nuanced way of finding balance that reflects individual working styles. Is flexstyle the right fit for you and your employer? The experts speak. Brenda A. Lautsch, Simon Fraser University: “Flexibility isn’t the answer to everyone’s work-life balance problems.” Dr. Ellen Ernst Kossek, Purdue University: “Make technology work for you, not against you...redraw the lines between work and family.” Karie Willyerd, SAP: “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” (Refrigerator magnet) Join us for Work-Life Balance: What’s Your Flexstyle?

The buzz: Startups and HR. Heads-up, startup founders! If an HR department is the last thing on your mind because you “only” need someone to manage employees’ basic benefits and paychecks, think again. Why bother with HR so early, you ask? Because a core HR function, even in a startup, can take the burden of administration and compliance off your back and place it with human capital experts who know how to handle real HR issues and will free you up to focus your energy on your organization’s innovation mission. The experts speak. Mark Stelzner, IA-HR.com: “Have no fear of perfection – you'll never reach it. (Dali). Laurie Ruettimann, The Cynical Girl: “Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?” (Hunter S. Thompson). Natasha Loeffler-Little, SuccessFactors: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” (Albert Einstein). Join us for HR for Startups: More Important than You Think.

The buzz: Technology at work. The debate rages on about how technology affects jobs and the people who do them. With each advancement, tech often creates highly skilled and low-skilled positions, and eliminates semi-skilled roles. Dumping people into the economy who cannot compete for jobs does not nurture a stable society. Who wins? Who loses? How is your company re-skilling the lost workforce? And where will it all end? The experts speak. Charles M. Firestone, Aspen Institute: “My father had one job in his career; I will have seven; my son will have seven at one time.” (Robin Chase, Zipcar) Bill Briggs, Deloitte Consulting: “’I’d rather light a candle than curse your darkness’ from Raising Arizona, is a great complement to William Gibson’s ‘The future is already here…it’s just not evenly distributed.’” Dr. Steven Hunt, Success Factors: “In a future filled with robots, we will still want people to hold our hands.” Join us for Technology for Good or Not: Destroying Jobs and Lives?

The buzz: Collaboration. Collaboration in the workplace is not just marketing-ese for team-enabling technology and social tools. Nor is it synonymous with popularity contests, like picking sides for summer camp teams. Done right and embedded into work life, collaboration can benefit your organization’s learning, performance and talent development. Are you there yet? The experts speak. Sarah Miller Caldicott, The Power Patterns of Innovation: “Many leaders believe collaboration and teamwork are the same thing. But they are actually different, and need to be nurtured in different ways. Without collaboration, innovation stalls.” Kevin Bennet, Mayo Clinic: “With collaboration, miracles do occur.” Mark Brandau, SAP: “Dirt used to be a badge of honor. Dirt used to look like work. But we've scrubbed the dirt off the face of work, and consequently we've created this suspicion of anything that's too dirty.” (Mike Rowe) Join us for Collaboration: Not a just fancy word for working together.

The buzz: M vs B. The “M” word (Millennials) is top-of-mind when we discuss workforce. But Boomers 60+ are a force to be reckoned with. What do boomers need to stay on top of their game and be happy at work? And how can your organization prepare for the huge skills gap coming when Boomers decide to retire? The experts speak. Richard Eisenberg, PBS Nextavenue.org: “60+ boomers who are still working full-time want to receive training that is so often restricted to younger employees regarding new technology tools and ways to be more productive and efficient… and want help transitioning into encore careers.” Donald Truxillo, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology: “Organizations should find ways to develop a climate that supports people of all ages to enhance organizational health.” Gabby Burlacu, Cloud Customer Office, SAP: “The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything” (Oscar Wilde). Join us for Enough about Millennials: What Do Boomers Want?

Today’s buzz: Work and health. Some call it work-life balance, others say work-life integration. Word-smithing aside, how can you stay calm, centered, productive and happy in our 24/7 global work environment of constant distractions, ambiguous hierarchies, need-it-now deadlines – all competing with your family and home life? Help may be closer than you think. The experts speak. Jeremy Hunter, PhD, The Executive Mind: “You cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first” (Peter F. Drucker). Marc Lesser, SIYLI.org: “There is scientific evidence that mindfulness practice can support leaders to cultivate more acceptance and openness, and reduce fear – necessary ingredients in supporting innovation.” Natalie Lotzmann, MD, SAP: “Financial reporting does not allow for the health and well-being of employees, the quality of their education or the inspiration of their work.” (Adapted from Robert F. Kennedy). Join us for Health and Balance at Work: Nurturing the Innovation Mindset.

The buzz: Cloud. The fast-growing cloud is bringing us into a New Age of Marketing where content, customers and conversation reign. Do you know what success looks like in the future for marketing organizations like yours to play well and win big in this arena? The experts speak. Doug Kern, nFusion: “In God we trust; all others must bring data.” (Edward Deming). Florian Brody, Brody and Partners: “As the moon is reflected on the water, the moon does not get wet nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass or even in one drop of water.” (Adapted from Eihei Dōgen). Jill Rowley, JillRowley.com: “If you suck offline, you're going to suck even more online.” Jamie Anderson, SAP: “The future of Marketing, it's the end of the marketing list as we know it! I hope.” Join us for Up-Skilling for Marketing in the Cloud: Are You Ready?

The buzz: Purpose. Engaged employees are happier, which translates to greater productivity, creativity, and commitment to their company’s success. If this describes only a few of your people, what are you doing to attract and nurture more like them? You can start by unleashing employees' personal passions and creating work environments that recognize and reward purpose-driven staff. Done right, it will impact your employees, workplace culture, the bottom line. The experts speak. Jenn Lim, Delivering Happiness: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” (Maya Angelou). Aaron Hurst, Imperative: “Wherever you go, there you are (Buddhist saying). Alyse Wyler, SAP: “Just 40 hours a week equals 30% of our lives, so slacking in doing what you love isn’t an option. It’s all about finding your why” (Simon Sinek, The Power of Why). Join us for Purpose-Driven Employees: Sustainable Happiness and The Bottom Line.

The buzz: Culture. How do you start your business day? Peter Drucker says, Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Increasingly, companies today see workplace culture as fundamental to success. But if your organization’s culture is not serving your business goals, changing it and getting your employees to embrace the change can be a daunting uphill challenge. Would you like to know what works and doesn’t work for companies that have successfully climbed this steep slope? The experts speak. Jacob Morgan, Chess Media Group: “Work as we know it is dead. Sarah Cooke, Great Place to Work: “In most organizational change efforts, it is much easier to draw on the strengths of the culture than to overcome the constraints by changing the culture” (Prof. Edgar Schein, MIT Sloan School of Management). Deb Stambaugh, SAP: ““If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff will just take care of itself” (Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos). Join us for Driving Culture Change: Easier Said Than Done.

The buzz: Hiring. A talent war is raging in the S.F. Bay Area, where companies are taking a fresh look at what great talent looks like – including the value of a college degree, social currency, the innovation edge, and more. Their evolving hiring model could impact your hiring approach, wherever you’re based. And it could put a new spin on your own career. The experts speak. Michael Castellano, engajer, Inc: “You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over” (Richard Branson). Cheryl Fields Tyler, Blue Beyond Consulting: “People will work hard for money; they will give their lives for meaning” (Dave Pottruck). David Swanson, SAP: “It’s not about being different; it’s about making a difference. Today’s top early talent entering the market in the Bay Area want to make the world a better place and want to work for organizations who enable them to bring their dreams to life.“ Join us for Does a Degree Matter? Unique Talent Dynamics in the Bay Area.

Welcome to the Age of Sustainability. If your company has already committed to adopting sustainability strategies, or you’re being pressured to do so, are you enlisting Human Resources in this challenging effort? Just as support from senior management is critical, so too is the involvement of your HR leadership. Done right, sustainability can benefit your company culture, employee engagement, customers, business results, the world, and your very future as an organization. It’s all good. The experts speak. Andy Savitz, Sustainable Business Strategies: “Environmental, social and economic challenges are going to rock HR's world – from corporate culture and employee engagement, to basic elements of the employee lifecycle – from recruitment to retirement.” Barbara Wichmann, Artemia: “Action is the antidote to despair” (Joan Baez). Peter Graf, SAP: “Sustainability – HR = PR”. Join us for HR and Sustainability: Bridging the Gap.

The buzz: Job happiness. According to a JobVite survey, 51 percent of employed workers in the U.S. are actively seeking or open to finding new jobs. How are you keeping your talent productive, happy, motivated, positive and on-board, while continually asking them to do more for your business? The experts speak. Cindy Ventrice, Make Their Day! Employee Recognition That Works: “U.S. companies spend over $27 billion on recognition, yet according to Gallup 65% of employees report receiving no recognition the previous year.” Brenda Pohlman, Globoforce: “Recognition ties directly to feelings of being appreciated, job satisfaction, and whether or not employees love their jobs.” Sherri Goldberg, SAP: “Employees who report receiving recognition and praise within the last seven days show increased productivity, get higher scores from customers, and have better safety records. They're just more engaged at work.” (Tom Rath). Join us for Employee Retention: Reward and Recognition at Work.