BPO Attrition/Turnover 20-60%, Retention Initiatives and Recruiting Issues

A Behavioral Event Interviewing 2-Day Workshop which I held, conflicted with attending a CEO forum where the President of Asia Pacific, Mr. David Rizzo of TelePerformance, spoke. An article was written about the gist of his presentation which is at the end of this article.

It raises some troubling issues about the Outsourcing Industry and hiring in particular, and brings out a few questions about the industry and indirectly some of the same issues for other industries, assuming that the article accurately reflected his presentation.

He addresses the need to focus on retention initiatives while continuing to grow! Very commendable.

It is still surprising that he reports that retention rates range from 40-80 percent after at least 6-8 years of high growth in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Philippines. This means that attrition/turnover is the reciprocal, amounting to: 20-60%. The period of time covered was not reported. But, in the past, about 3 years ago, BPA/P ( The Philippine association for BPO's) had reported turnover from 20-100 percent per year, and that many times half of these numbers were due to people leaving and the other half, people being "asked to leave." Therefore, there has been some improvement (dropping the 100% turnover down to 80%), but not great.

Mr. Rizzo mentions the reasons for the present turnover is due to several reasons:
1) Overnight hours which people are not used to working,
2) Stress caused by customers who may be too challenging to handle because they are angry,
3) Employees find the work too technical,
and
4)  the Company is unable to meet the employee's expectations.

This is amazing given today's technology and methods for Pre-hiring:

Issue #1) Overnight hours which people are not used to working: there are video introductions that can help to address this issue and can be used as "knockouts"  to prevent further interviewing and hiring these kinds of people. Granted, recent graduates and some people may not know if they handle the hours, but it is likely that most know their limitations or the candidates can talk with someone they know in the industry. Also hiring people who have already worked in the industry, these people will know if they can handle the hours.

Issue #2) Stress caused by the customers: many companies use videos to simulate real-life situations and also tests, both verbal reply and written, to find out how a candidate will handle this kind of angry customer. Again these are "knockout" issues before going any further in the pre-hire process and give the candidate a good view about what the position will entail, as well as, if the candidate will like or want to work there.

Issue #3) Employees find the work too technical: there are many skill tests to find out what the candidate may know or at the very least by using assessments, if they have technical capabilities and interests.

Issue #4) The Company is unable to meet the employee's expectations: It would be helpful to better understand exactly what kind of expectations are not being met, since this article is not specific. Once the expectations are known(as they probably vary by company), these can be covered up-front in the Pre-Hire process.

Most of these issues can be uncovered or addressed through good programs of: application and ATS(Applicant Tracking Systems), assessment and skill testing, Behavioral and Critical Incident Interviewing and good benchmarking around each job, based on top performers. These steps will help to "weed out" those that will not make it longer term, all of which should significantly help in reducing turnover, especially in the ranges mentioned as being 20-60 percent.

In past years, the BPO industry identified that one of the major problems they had was not identifying leadership in their pre-hiring process, as there was a gap between hiring good agents and their being able to handle the front-line position. Now, many times companies try to identify 10% of their incoming candidates who also have a good job fit with the front-line manager benchmark also. This process allows them to develop succession planning and training for the next level potential managers early on in the employees' career and development. [Benchmarking around top and bottom performers, can be done and takes a matter of minutes, with the right tool.]

Obviously, good "on-boarding programs" can also help to address these issues by providing a good introduction to the company and the specific requirements of the job, so that new hirees can "opt out" on their own early, saving the company training costs and more investments that will happen in the ensuing months.

Lastly, Mr. Rizzo made the statement: “We are not going to let price pressures get in the way of investing in our people. After all, happy employees translate to happy customers”. This is true to a point, especially in growing "employee engagement." But the reality also arises, in that incurring too many costs CAN affect your competitiveness globally! Hiring Right is probably be the best solution, while providing facilities and benefits, are more like the icing on the cake.

It is hoped that the industry can really address these unsupportable turnover/attrition rates, because these rates lead to extremely high costs. When you consider the rule of thumb that turnover costs run from 3 months to 2.5 years worth of a person's salary, is the company sustainable long-term?

Only time will tell!

Contact center firms urged to invest more
By Louella D. Desiderio (The Philippine Star) Updated March 17, 2012

MANILA, Philippines - Contact centers in the country will have to invest more in programs focused on their employees to encourage them to stay in the company and provide better service to customers, a top executive of a contact center service provider said.

Speaking at the Asia CEO Forum held on Thursday, David Rizzo, president for Asia Pacific of Teleperformance said that investing in retention activities need to be done by contact center firms that intend to continue to grow their business given the number of employees choosing to leave the industry and the high competition among firms in finding workers.

 “It is very critical to focus on retention initiatives to ensure not having to replace the employment pool while growing at the same time,” he said.

He said that employees in contact centers leave for reasons often related to the job.
He cited that some employees opt to leave the business due to the overnight work hours which they may not be used to or the stress caused by customers who may be challenging to handle.
He said that customers who receive an incorrect bill, for instance, may be hard to deal with particularly when they start complaining and taking their anger on the call center agent.
Some employees, he also said, leave the job because they find the work too technical or unable to meet their expectations.

He noted that in the industry, the employee retention rate ranges from 40 to 80 percent.

Given the limited supply of talent available in the market and the high competition among contact center firms for supply of workers, he said, investing in programs that keep employees satisfied with their job becomes even more important.

He said that contact center firms can for instance, provide spaces for recreation in the workplace such as gym, sports facilities and karaoke rooms, which their employees can use.
Contact center firms, he also said, can offer employees who cannot work overnight a daytime shift.
Career management programs, he said, may also be developed by contact centers for their employees.
He said that while investing more in employee-engagement programs may mean additional costs for the company, it is expected to yield results favorable to the company since its workforce is its main asset.

 “We are not going to let price pressures get in the way of investing in our people. After all, happy employees translate to happy customers,” he said.

Contact Center Firms Urged to Invest More - by Louella Desiderio 

New Demographics about older populations in the US: Old-Age and Divorce

Two recent articles in the Wall Street Journal address new information about demographics in the US, in particular, older populations and divorce. For those whose markets/products are affected, these may be of  particular interest.

This data DOES affect most companies, in one form or another. Anywhere from pools of employees, possible absences due to employees having to care for parents/grand parents, to employment benefits long term insurance, succession planning, visioning and social media, to just mention a few.

The link to each article is at the end of the two articles, if you desire to access the original ones.

Death Gets in the Way of Old-Age Gains

• By CARL BIALIK

A new research paper, and a census surprise, are calling into question some long-held beliefs about a morbid bit of math: how much mortality rates increase with age.
It's no surprise that the older a group of people get, the higher the percentage of them who will die in any given time period. Benjamin Gompertz, a 19th-century British mathematician, charted the increase in mortality rates as very regular. His Gompertz law of mortality says that each additional period brings a constant percentage increase in mortality rates.

In the 20th century, though, as the world population aged and demographers' data improved, Gompertz started to look fallible. Researchers have found that, starting around age 80, mortality keeps increasing, but more slowly. More 100-year-olds die before turning 101 than 80-year-olds do before their 81st birthday, but the difference was less than Gompertz predicted.

But Gompertz may be right after all. In a study published last year and publicized last month, two longtime researchers of aging and believers in the late-life mortality slowdown reported that they and others were wrong. Death rates among Americans born between 1875 and 1895 kept on climbing steadily as they aged, they found, all the way through age 106, when their numbers got too sparse to follow.

This is bad news for anyone who wants to reach the century mark, but could provide an odd measure of relief for pensions, retirement programs and medical insurers, whose costs rise as people live longer.
The result came as a surprise to the study's authors, Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova, a husband-and-wife team at the Center on Aging, part of the research center NORC at the University of Chicago. They married in 1975 after he proposed—with a promise he would discover how to halt aging if she would accept.

In their jointly written papers and books over the past three-plus decades, they have advanced what they call a reliability theory of aging. This suggests that the body, like a machine, amasses more flaws as it ages. Redundancies in design meant to keep it from failing become more heavily loaded with time, increasing the probability of breakdown, or death. Past a certain point, these layers of defense have fallen away and mortality approaches a constant rate.

Their model therefore predicted a slowdown in mortality increases with age, which their new study calls into question. "We are confronted with inconvenient truth for our theory, and we have to accept what the data say," the authors wrote in a response to questions, that, like most of their writing, was a collaborative effort. "Now we are trying to reconcile the reliability theory of aging with our new observations."

Their findings have created a stir among demographers and others who study the very oldest people. Some hail the findings as offering important insight into how people age, and in explaining an unexpected slowdown in the rise in the ranks of American centenarians.

In 2004, the Census Bureau projected that there would be 114,000 people aged 100 or older by 2010 and 1.1 million centenarians by 2050. But the 2010 census counted just 53,364, a slender 5.8% increase from 2000. And now the Census Bureau is projecting there will be 592,000 Americans age 100 or older by 2050.

"Centenarian data have a long history of being affected by various data-quality issues," says Julie A. Meyer, an analyst in the Census Bureau's population division. She adds that the bureau's projections staff "is continuing to improve the accuracy of mortality estimates."

Robert Young, who administers the database of the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks the world's oldest people, says the new study "helped to explain why this error was made." He adds, "It seems that predictions of future centenarian counts are often unnecessarily rosy."
However, other researchers question the findings. Underlying the controversy is that many other studies have documented the plateau in death rates the new study rebuts. "There is actually a very deep controversy underlying the results presented," says Laurence Mueller, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine.

One aspect of how the latest study was conducted may help explain some of the discrepancy. Dr. Gavrilov and Dr. Gavrilova used a data set of deaths from the Social Security Administration that allowed them to track all Americans born between 1875 and 1895 who died before 2011—presumably, all of them. This presents two advantages over other data sets. One is that birth and death dates are derived from the same source, rather than potentially inconsistent data. Another is they can track monthly rather than annual changes in mortality, which can help correct for understated death rates.
It remains to be seen, though, if this pattern will apply to other sets of aging populations. Dr. Gavrilov and Dr. Gavrilova say they will be watching. "For people born after the 1940s, there is only one way to get mortality data above age 80 years," they write. "That is to wait."

The Gray Divorcés

The divorce rate for people 50 and over has doubled in the past two decades. Why baby boomers are breaking up late in life like no generation before.

By SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS

For years, 51-year-old Dawn and her husband of two decades, Tim, had buried their differences over finances, child-rearing and religion. But when the last of the Wisconsin couple's three daughters was finishing high school in 2009, those differences were all that Dawn could see. "I had gone back to school to advance my career as a paralegal, and his work had dwindled, so he was just basically hanging out with his buddies," she says. "We had nothing to talk about, and when we did, it was bickering."

They had stayed together all those years because of the kids, but now nothing was left. "He was so uncompassionate, and I had turned to my religion, and he would never go to church with me," she says. "I realized that I was alone in the marriage and would be better off with someone whose values and interests were more like mine." She seized the moment and left, filing for divorce.

 

While divorce is declining overall, the divorce rate among those 50-plus has doubled over the past two decades. Susan Gregory Thomas on Lunch Break discusses why gray divorce is on the rise.

For the new generation of empty-nesters, divorce is increasingly common. Among people ages 50 and older, the divorce rate has doubled over the past two decades, according to new research by sociologists Susan Brown and I-Fen Lin of Bowling Green State University, whose paper, "The Gray Divorce Revolution," Prof. Brown will present at Ohio State University this April. The paper draws on data from the 1990 U.S. Vital Statistics Report and the 2009 American Community Survey, administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, which asked all respondents if they'd divorced in the past 12 months.
Though overall national divorce rates have declined since spiking in the 1980s, "gray divorce" has risen to its highest level on record, according to Prof. Brown. In 1990, only one in 10 people who got divorced was 50 or older; by 2009, the number was roughly one in four. More than 600,000 people ages 50 and older got divorced in 2009.

What's more, a 2004 national survey conducted by AARP found that women are the ones initiating most of these breakups. Among divorces by people ages 40-69, women reported seeking the split 66% of the time. And cheating doesn't appear to be the driving force in gray divorce. The same AARP survey found that 27% of divorcés cited infidelity as one of their top three reasons for seeking a divorce—which is not out of line with estimates of infidelity as a factor in divorce in the general population.
So what is going on with these baby boomers? Are they finally seeking adventure, now that their kids are out of the house? Are the women exacting their revenge, at last, against the feminine mystique?

In 1990, 1 in 10 of all divorces were by people ages 50+. In 2009, 1 in 4 of all divorces were by people ages 50+.

The trend defies any simple explanation, but it springs at least in part from boomers' status as the first generation to enter into marriage with goals largely focused on self-fulfillment. As they look around their empty nests and toward decades more of healthy life, they are increasingly deciding that they've done their parental duty and now want out. These decisions are changing not just the portrait of aging people in the U.S., as boomers swell the ranks of the elderly, but also the meaning of the traditional vow to stay together until "death do us part."

"Some of those marriages that in previous generations would have ended in death now end in divorce," says Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies marriage and divorce. In the past, many people simply didn't live long enough to reach the 40-year itch. "You can't divorce if you're dead," says Ms. Stevenson.

But that's not the whole story, given that the bulk of the increase in late-in-life divorce has come among people ages 50-64. As a generation, boomers have changed American notions of marriage—and in the process, they have sown the seeds of their own discontent.

Most sociologists argue that boomers entered marriage with expectations very different from those of previous generations. "In the 1970s, there was, for the first time, a focus on marriage needing to make individuals happy, rather than on how well each individual fulfilled their marital roles," says Prof. Brown, author of the gray marriage paper.

According to Prof. Brown, over the past century there have been three "phases" of American views of marriage. First, there was the "institutional" phase, in the decades before World War II, when marriage was seen largely as an economic union.

This was succeeded in the 1950s and '60s by the "companionate" phase, in which a successful marriage was defined by the degree to which each spouse could fulfill his or her role. Husbands were measured by their prowess as providers and wives by their skills in homemaking and motherhood.
In the 1970s, the boomers initiated what Prof. Brown calls the "individualized" phase, with an emphasis on the satisfaction of personal needs. "Individualized marriage is more egocentric... Before the 1970s, no one would have thought to separate out the self as being distinct from the roles of good wife and mother."

None of this is especially surprising for the "Me Generation," but today's gray divorces include a generational twist: For many boomers, it is not their first marital split. Fifty-three percent of the people over 50 now getting divorced have done so at least once before.

More than 600,000 people ages 50 and older got divorced in 2009.

In fact, more "complex marital biographies," as Prof. Brown puts it, seem to be one of the driving forces behind gray divorce. Having been married previously doubles the risk of divorce for those ages 50 to 64. For those ages 65 and up, the risk factor quadruples.

For boomers who have had trouble maintaining commitments in the past, hitting the empty-nest phase seems to trigger thoughts of mortality—and of vanishing possibilities for self-fulfillment.
"With the children out of the house, boomers in unhappy marriages often look at each other and think, 'I may have another 25 to 35 years to live. Do I want to spend it with this person?' " says Deirdre Bair, author of the book, "Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over," a chronicle of nearly 400 interviews with people splitting in midlife. "There is an overwhelming, urgent feeling among them of, 'I have to strike out now, or I'll never have the chance again,' " says Ms. Bair.
Many of those now opting for gray divorces, however, fail to foresee its complications in today's bleak economic landscape. This is especially true of women.

Though homes are often awarded to ex-wives, points out Pennsylvania divorce and family lawyer Elizabeth Bennett, this can be a burden instead of a blessing in a collapsed housing market. And when it comes to obligations to kids for things like continuing education, weddings and down payments on homes, according to Janice L. Green, a divorce and family law attorney in Texas, "it's always the mother who is willing to give up settlement money that should be on her side of the ledger."

Divorcing fathers have their own reasons to be concerned. According to a 2003 study from the University of North Florida, they are more likely to see a major decline in contact with at least one child, compared with stably married fathers, whereas divorced mothers tend to get closer to their children.
Still, many older divorcés say they're happy. According to the 2004 AARP survey, the vast majority of divorcés ages 40-79 (80%) consider themselves, on a scale from 1 to 10, to be on the top half of life's ladder. A majority of 56% even consider themselves to be on the uppermost rung (8-10). But "being alone" was nonetheless the top fear among both men and women, and those who had remarried reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction.

So would some of these late-in-life divorcés have been better off trying to preserve their troubled marriages? According to John Mordecai Gottman, founder of the Gottman Institute in Seattle and author of "What Predicts Divorce?," the behavioral precursors to late-life or empty nest divorce are no different from those for younger couples—criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. And, of course, the longer such behavior has persisted, the more deeply ingrained it becomes in a couple's personal dynamic.

In its work with older couples in crisis, Gottman Institute therapists recommend that spouses "turn toward" each other—that is, that they actively respond to bids for reconnection—rather than, say, snapping: "Excuse me, I'm trying to watch 'CSI' here!"

More

Gray Divorce: What Are the Risk Factors?
 

Those boomers who can't manage to hold on to their marriages, though, will hardly be alone. Prof. Brown's paper predicts that the number of over-50 divorces in 2030, based on current trends, could easily top 800,000 per year. And all those new divorcés shouldn't have too much trouble finding a date. Indeed, over the past year, the number of dating-site users 50 or older has grown twice as rapidly as any other age group, according to comScore Inc., an online data-analysis and marketing company.
Dawn, the 51-year-old who divorced her husband of 20 years, found her current boyfriend of nine months on the over-50 dating site OurTime.com. He's a divorcé with no children, and Dawn describes him as "very religious and compassionate, the things I was lacking in my former husband." Her kids—19, 20 and 26—are less sure, she says. "You can't expect kids to be excited about a new person who isn't their dad…But I'm very happy."

Death Gets in the Way of Old-Age Gains  

The Gray Divorcés

CEO Survey Says that in the Next 3-5 Years, Talent Shortages, Limited Skilled Candidates are Major Impediments to Growth in Asia Pacific

In a recent Summit held for CEO's, specifically concerning Asia Pacific Economies (APEC), the results from 320 Industry Leaders who participated in the PwC survey, were revealing and in many ways consistent with earlier postings.

"Talent Shortages" was ranked 2nd in barriers to growth, however it is THE one area that can be tackled by corporations compared to the number 1 barrier(s) identified. The number 1 barriers to growth were: "Corruption" and "Inconsistent Regulations across the Region"(these barriers are beyond the ability of a corporation to effectively address).

The 2 major identified challenges to having the right talent in place are: "Competitors recruiting our best people" AND "Limited supply of skilled candidates." These were followed by: "Difficulty in deploying experienced talent globally" AND "Difficulty recruiting and retaining employees under the age of 30." "High Staff Turnover" in Fast Growing Economies will also be a major challenge that will need to be addressed.

In Mature Economies in Asia, a very major issue is: "Retirement of a significant portion
of the workforce." While not addressed in this survey, this also applies to North America (US and Canada) and Europe, with our aging and low growth populations.

So from this survey, it seems apparent that hiring those with good "job fit" to reduce turnover and increase retention, while also providing training to upgrade Leadership/Management skills in preparation for growth, will be critical. Long these lines, succession planning and strategic planning need to be exercised, expertly.

So how is your company positioned in addressing these issues? Have you planned for them and are contingencies developed?

A link to the entire study is: The 21st century workforce. Re-envisioned. Key findings from the APEC CEO Survey

Talent and Skills Shortages Number One Risk in Asia Pacific and 4 Other Risks

In the earlier post about Corporate Risks ( Global Risks to Consider and Recent Analysis by Lloyd's- Has Your Company Considered These? ) that need to be considered. It was identified that Lloyd's had ranked these Global Risks, but they also identified Regional Risks. The  image below came from the report that they assembled for 2011. It is very interesting that Talent and Skills is the Number One Risk for Asia Pacific, given the unemployment rate and educational levels in the region and the flood of youth coming up.

So, CEOs and Senior Managers need to seriously consider this, not only if they are planning to expand in the region, but also if new entries (start-ups) are being planned. It will require expert Succession Planning and Strategic Planning efforts to address this risk issue and the others identified, as well as Coaching, Mentoring, Training and Team Development for key corporate members to help fill this gap.

The BPO industry in the Philippines, identified several years ago, that while the industry could do a good job of hiring and filling entry level positions, when they promoted effective call agents, for example, these people did not have the managerial skills to handle a "Front-Line Manager" position. In many instances they were promoted to their level of "incompetence." So the bottle-neck to growth was not having identified and trained potential new managers soon enough to handle the high influx of new candidates for entry level positions.

Consequently, they changed their processes in Pre-Hire to identify 5-10% of the people considered for the entry level position(s), who had the right IQ and EQ to fit into their organizations, and who had good "job fit" with the Benchmarks/Job Pattern /Performance Modeling for not only the entry level position (significantly reducing turnover), but also for the Front-Line Manager position. They would "mark/follow" these people by observation and possible early training to assume the higher level position. This experience was possibly the early warning signs that Lloyd's seems to be now reflecting in their study, now.

For the Asia Pacific Region, Lloyd's identified the following 5 areas of major risks to be considered or addressed:
    1) Talent and Skills shortages
    2) Currency fluctuations
    3) Inflation
    4) Loss of Customers/Cancelled Orders
    5) Company Reputation Risk

As also highlighted in the area: CEO, Senior Manager, Leadership, Strategic Planning and Charisma , it is essential that CEOs, Senior Managers, and Corporate HR Managers identify at least 3-5% potential Leaders within each level of the organization (bench strength) in order to help address sustainability for the corporation. Without bench strength, just like for a sports team, while the top players are available and not injured, the team does well; but without the organizational depth and strength, it can result in high fluctuations in corporate performance over time.

The question remains: How Well Positioned Is Your Company for the Upcoming Forecasted Risks within the Region - Presently and for the ensuing 5-10 years? The future and investments are yours to make to position the company for growth and profitability! To ignore these risks could be at the peril of the corporation and organization.


Risks - Then and now: what has changed?

Sales Characteristics for Success that are innate?

A recent article by Dr. Croner, indicates that most high performance sales people possess the following 3 innate personality traits which only about 20% of Sales people have. They are:

Need for Achievement
Competitiveness
Optimism

Personally, from experience, most people possess these, so it is doubtful that they are innate!

In an earlier blog article that was written based on Harvard Research, it was identified that "Challengers" created the most effective sales people, and these techniques can be learned. Obviously, some people may be more comfortable with these techniques than others, but if a person is committed, they can "flex" into the needs of the position, and over time they become engrained in the individual and drives success.

Existing Sales People in your organization present the greatest challenge because you have already employed them and the question then remains how do you, or can you, elevate them to be more effective? But the advantage is you have more information about them based around Thinking, and Behavioral traits and Interests, than you may have for people you may be looking to recruit or hire.

For an existing sales force, can you identify what generates a passion or a significant need which can drive the Need for Achievement within a person? It may take some effort, but from experience, most of the time it can be found. Then the objective is tapping into this internal "need" that this person has and structuring a compensation/benefit plan around this (these) needs.

Competitiveness can be created on some level. However, it is critical that this is created in a supportive manner and environment. Humans naturally are competitive, just look at the world problems which seem to revolved around the need to be heard or recognized.

Optimism, can also be addressed or taught. There are many methods which can be employed to change how a person views change and challenges, from meditation to structured courses.

So the objective is with existing Sales people, how to motivate the engage them to the point of wanting to grow and become more effective and professional. It may take effort, coaching/mentoring and involves some training costs, but it can be achieved. It favorably impacts company morale.

For Pre-Hire/Recruiting, there are effective assessments/tests and interview techniques to evaluate candidates by helping to minimize hiring the wrong people initially.  Obviously, the benchmarks need to be created around your Top Performers. Once these are set-up, then an in-depth interview(s) can help enormously in identifying people who should be successful.

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) can help in the process by "self-selecting" out people that will not have a good "job fit" based around initial knockout questions, and then around benchmarks/performance models. These ATS systems also need to be used to help identify effective marketing programs in attracting the best candidates not only initially, but those who will remain with your company(retention). These ATS systems can greatly save time and effort for your recruiting staff and generally can be easily cost justified around ROI's. This "tracking" information is critical for future hiring programs to attract the best talent.

The more tools and methodologies you use, the greater your success can be. Hire around "job fit" and you gain the slight edge in being a successful and sustainable organization!

BEI (Behavioral Event Interview) Training - Public Seminar Sept. 6, and Private training Sept. 22, 2011

On these two dates, I held Behavioral Event Interview training.

Interviewing has been around since 1911, or even well before then. However, from this date, it was the start of more structured interviews and then arose psychological studies about people to help develop more systematic interviews. Before and during WWII, psychology began to be used in many different applications, from production line layouts and employee encouragement, to actual theories about people. In the 1960's Theory X and then Theory Y were developed, culminating in Theory X&Y...the beginning of structured motivation in the workplace. Career ladders were more refined and developed during this time.

In the 1980's with advent of matrixed organizations and the rise of many more diversified conglomerates, the rise of Human Resource Departments had a need for more sophisticated methods, tools and employee training programs for advancement. By the 1990's it started becoming evident that people/employees could drastically affect the success of a corporation, and it was the start of a recognition that employees were truly a company asset and that there was need to better manage this portion of the company. Global management began to significantly emerge as a necessary component, within many companies. In selected instances, HR personnel held a position on the Board or in the C-Suite, at least they participated in ManCom and Strategic Planning meetings.

Behavior was identified as being a key to success and there was a need to better determine behavior in the workplace to predict success and to build more cooperative and effective teams. Therefore, BEI emerged to become the best interview method for pre-hire. Past behavior is a good indicator to present and future behavior and performance.

More recently, "Critical Incident" Interviewing, a sub-set of BEI, has significantly come to help in providing a win-win view of the candidate and for the candidate. It helps the candidate "experience" in one form or another, what the challenges she/he will face in the position, and for the interviewer to gain a much better understanding about the candidate in how they may perform in the position, based on similar past experiences the candidate may have had, or how they handle the simulated situation. This also helps in validating assessment data and predicting success.

As a result of BEI, turnover decreases, which reduces the cost of attrition which ranges from a minimum of 3 months of a new hired's salary and benefits, to as much as 2.5 years of longer employed individuals. These are good rules of thumb for Return On Investment (ROI) calculations.

Of course BEI can also be used for promotion selection and advancement, in certain cases. If your recruiting department or people do not use BEI, they should seriously consider taking training or learning the techniques, as this is a much more effective interview technique, compared to the traditional interview.

Please feel free to contact me for more information if interested.

Job Fit & Benchmarking and 360 Performance Reviews - Presentation at Strategic HR and Technology Summit - Sept. 21, 2011 -Diamond Hotel, Manila, Philippines

At the Strategic HR and Technology Summit (hosted by the All Events Group), I made a presentation entitled: "Technologically Advanced Assessments in Driving Sustainable Business Success Through Performance Modeling/Benchmarking and 360 Performance Reviews in the BPO Industry.

These two  issues are critical for success in companies. Why? Because Human Resource Management, and people in particular, is the driving difference for Sustainability:

1) Performance Modeling (also called Job Pattern or Benchmarking) helps to significantly reduce turnover (both for pre-hire and ongoing employment) and increase "Job Fit," which increases performance by individuals. This is accomplished by helping to "clone" top performers and having people in positions placed by "Job Fit" which leads to higher job satisfaction. The ability to generate online benchmarks and quickly revise top performer's Models, speeds the process in a dynamic market. This directly spills into Succession Planning and Coaching.

2) 360 Performance Reviews give metrics for Career Development and Leadership, leading to areas for training and development needs. Complete Online "assembled" and tabulated results ensures confidentiality of authorship for each rater, and the freedom from fear of retribution providing candid feedback, as well as speed in delivering reports and information. These are critical for promotion, coaching and leadership development. It has been well reported and documented that currently, and in the near future, there is a Leadership shortage/vacuum, so this tool is essential for any company who wants to be around in the coming years.

Technologically Advanced products included the discussion of the use of Avatars for multiple language guidance and instruction, and Artificial Intelligence in the use of ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) and HRIS systems. Since one of the major sponsors was the BPA/P association in the Philippines, we used as examples, speed of pre-hire evaluations and assessments, leading to job offers in a matter of hours rather than days and two different but similar applicant processes.

Whether for the BPO industry or other industries, the basics still apply. In BPO, because of the need for rapid scale-up and many times the large quantities of people needed, the BPO industry has refined the hiring process and is a good example of responding to needs and change in pre-hire and management.

If interested, the slides are available. Feel free to contact me at anytime for this information.

Analyze, Decide, Lead says Columbia's Business Dean

It is interesting that even Columbia's Business School is talking about "...weaving topics such as decision-making and ethics into classes across all disciplines." Assessments can help along these lines, and in pre-hire, ethics can be assessed, and of course a good background check will help validate the results.

Both good decision-making and ethics can help drive engagement  in an organization. The reverse can have detrimental effects on an organization's engagement from entry level, to Front-Line managers and to all management levels in an organization. This effects motivation, morale, and indirectly profitability and retention.It is the responsibility of HR and Senior Management to ensure that people with good ethics and with good common sense/decision-making abilities, are brought into the organization, as this helps to increase the asset value of the company, short and especially long term.

The question is, is your organization and HR focused on these issues, from Pre-Hire, On-Boarding, Training and Promotion? Don't you think that they should be? Shouldn't they be part of your Core Values? The decisions made today lead to the sustainability over time.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303365804576429974256934518.html

Objective of this blog

The objective of this blog is to provide CEOs, Senior Executives and Human Resource (HR) Managers, ideas and methods to increase: engagement, productivity, retention, and profitability for organizations and  their employees. These can apply most times to Non-Profit organizations also.

This blog is based on 35+ years with Fortune 100, and SME's (both public and private), as well as Turnaround and Change Management experience, actual present-day field observations and data, as well as current research, published and unpublished.