Greetings!  For those of you whom I did not have the chance to meet at our IMPACT 2010 conference in Florida a few weeks ago, I am the newest member of the Bersin & Associates analyst team, and will be directing the company’s research in performance management and workforce planning.  Prior to joining Bersin, I worked for the Corporate Leadership Council as an analyst for about five years, where I developed expertise in a variety of talent management topics, including those I will be writing about in the coming year.  I am excited about the opportunity to focus on the important and foundational topic of performance management, as well as the evolving and increasingly critical area of workforce planning.

As I was considering what to write in this first blog entry, I perused a number of other HR blogs and articles, asking myself, what has changed about performance management and workforce planning in the last few years? 

A hot topic for a number of articles and blogs that caught my eye is the new book, “Get Rid of the Performance Review!” by UCLA’s Samuel Culbert.  While not necessarily a new idea (Josh and others have been talking about this for years), I was particularly struck by Culbert’s comment that, “We want people talking and learning the lessons of their experience, not defending their mistakes.”  I couldn’t agree more – but we need to ask, is the problem with the performance review itself or rather with the method of using it? 

As Josh pointed out on his blog, the “competitive evaluation” model of performance management that Culbert is suggesting we cast aside, where managers and employees are forced to rank and rate people, is already increasingly viewed as yesterday’s dirty laundry.  According to our research, 40% of organizations use the competitive evaluation model, while some 60% of organizations have moved to a “coaching and development” model of performance management (where leaders and managers are trained to assess people against competencies, identify strengths and weaknesses, and take actions to improve performance).  We know that this type of coaching generates a 50% greater return than performance assessment, and almost a 200% greater return than pay for performance processes.  A number of leading organizations (such as Aetna, Alcatel-Lucent, BAE Systems, Carlson Wagonlit, Cisco, Shell and Textron) have recognized that people who are developed and coached are highly engaged – and that the job of the manager is to identify the strengths in people and move them into the right jobs.

So the question is not about whether to continue performance reviews (we all know that for compliance and compensation reasons most organizations will be unwilling to eradicate them completely), but how to make the performance management process an ongoing, coaching and development-focused conversation between managers and employees.  To that end, later this year I will be undertaking research on the question of competitive versus coaching models of performance management and how to make the transition to the latter.  We have heard from you all that you need fresh ideas on how to make performance management and coaching more effective; we believe this research initiative will address many of your questions.  If there’s anything you especially hope to see in work, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.      

The other topic I’ll be writing about is workforce planning, a process that relies on the foundation of performance management (if we don’t know current performance levels, how can we make strategic workforce plans?), but has the potential to really move organizations from reactive recipients of market dynamics to forceful talent machines – the types of organizations that make people wonder, how’d they do that?  Given the challenges of the last 2 years, workforce planning has become more critical than ever.  According to our research, 57% of organizations are at the most basic level of workforce planning, headcount planning.  Another 22% of organizations are doing some basic work with skill gap analysis and what-if scenarios.  That means that nearly 80% of organizations are missing out on the benefits of high-impact strategic workforce planning.  Organizations need workforce plans that align with and even enhance the organization’s strategy, enabling it to have the right people in the right place at the right time.  While that sounds good in theory, the question is how to do it in practice?     

My colleague, Madeline Laurano, did some great work on this topic last year, where she, in partnership with the Newman Group, identified the Bersin & Associates Maturity Model for workforce planning (below) and processes and best practices for workforce planning.  In addition, we have a great case study from Rogers Communications, where they have aggregated HRMS and financial data to deliver specialized, state-of-the art workforce analytics and planning. 

In the coming year, I hope to take a deeper look at workforce planning, focusing on the best practices within the different maturity levels and how organizations can progress through them.  We plan to dissect the different steps within the workforce planning process, providing a roadmap to how to create the most valuable process your resources will allow.  Ideally, we would also like to profile companies that are really succeeding in this area.  Again, if you have any ideas or suggestions for this research, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Figure 1:  Bersin & Associates Workforce Planning Maturity Model®

I am really looking forward to a year of discovery, insight, and impact.  I hope to connect with many of you as I commence and conduct this research.  If you have something you want to share or just want to introduce yourself, please send me an email at stacia.garr@bersin.com.