Diversity is Not a Numbers Game
Enrique Washington
Published in Diversity Exec, November 2009

Building a diverse workforce is not an easy proposition; however, it is a much needed strategy in order to compete and be successful in the 21st-century global marketplace. In the past few decades, diversity, and now the term “inclusion,” has continued to gain momentum. Many factors labeled key drivers are swaying the pendulum. While there are many appropriate ways to integrate diversity and inclusion, when it impacts an individual employee’s success or compromises an organization’s guiding principles, it is not the right approach. Further, when organizations implement diversity programs to fill quotas or move talent through the organization without an objective process, the likelihood of adverse impact, such as poor hiring selections or even negative legal actions, increases. Not only is it bad for business, this also does not create the right image or purpose for diversity initiatives in the organization.

Organizations will want to adopt defensible recruitment and selection processes that link to well-developed success profiles. The benefits of having diversity as an integral part of a company’s workforce outweigh its absence, but to encourage receptivity and longevity, organizations must build a sound business case that reflects the company’s business strategy, integrate diversity into the heart of the organization and then create alignment between diversity and inclusion strategies and business outcomes. Finally, to demonstrate an organization’s initiatives produce expected results, create ways to measure efforts with well-defined metrics or a scorecard. Hiring people who are not qualified just to fill diversity quotas does not reflect the true value of diversity. [read the whole article HERE]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Recruiting for Hard-to-Fill Positions
Jeremy Barnaby
Published in Talent Management Magazine, October 2009

Finding the right people to fill certain roles can be challenging. Today we are experiencing record high unemployment rates. Yet, highly skilled people who match a company's vision are still difficult to come by. The most difficult jobs to fill are those that the organization has not sculpted to match strategic business goals, and there is no consensus on the skills, knowledge and abilities required to achieve them.

Businesses must conduct robust and timely environmental scans of the marketplace to find where highly sought-after talent resides. Search strategies should be filled with the latest Web-mining tools, target company lists and social media approaches. In the actual recruiting piece of the equation — when talent leaders entice the most interesting talent in the pool to be accurately assessed for true job fit — social and professional networking will greatly enhance the recruiter's tool kit.

Even more important to the hard-to-fill recruiting process is job makeup and defining what it means to be successful in a role today and tomorrow. Talent leaders can show their value more by scrutinizing existing assessment practices and increasing the predictive ability of landing a top performer. To increase the predictive validity of recruiting processes, focus on a structured interview, complete with questions, prompts, anticipated ranked responses and a scoring mechanism. Lastly, with all good hiring process one must be able to close the recruitment loop and bring in the new team member. Candidates must remember it fondly to increase the likelihood they will refer other "hard to find" people after they're hired. [read the whole article HERE]

WHAT'S TO COME? TALENT MANAGEMENT POST RECOVERY WEBINAR

On Wednesday, December 16th, Generator Group's Elaine Lees and Enrique Washington hosted a webinar discussing how companies are approaching 2010 to manage the workforce and its related financial costs. It offered great insight as well as real-time industry forecasts generated by the participants.

To access a recording of the webinar or to view the slides visit our website.

TALENT MANAGEMENT PROJECTS
Our Talent Management practice is currently involved in two major projects.

Generator Group is working with an outdoor consumer products company to help ensure strategy is tightly linked to their talent management. Generator Group presented an integrated talent management approach that could be “modularized” and implemented over time. So far, the project has focused on addressing current deficits in two of the modules – foundational competencies/job success profile development and performance management.

The second project is helping a major transportation agency assess if the current organizational capabilities of the Strategy and Planning Division will be sufficient to support the agency’s new vision. Generator Group will provide a workforce plan with recommendations from the enterprise, organization and individual points of view.