Well, so much for the weekly contribution to my blog but I did have an excellent 10 days is Whistler skiing with the family. Nothing makes me prouder than seeing my little guy, Riley (5) wiz by me on the Black Diamonds during his first year on skis. Other than paying for the trip, I think my days as a skiing role model for my kids are over. Looks like I will be turning to them for pointers on how to get down the slopes. The good news is I am still much better at the Après Ski.
Employee Advocacy: Recently we had the pleasure of working with Dr. Michael Lowenstein of Harris Interactive. He is working on a large HR research project on Customer and Employee Advocacy. According to Dr. Lowenstein, "Arguably, one of the most serious and financially significant challenges facing companies today derives from the combined effects of staff turnover and disengagement, which many academics and customer research professionals believe link directly to sub-optimal customer marketplace behavior. Both are driven by organizations´ and staffs´ levels of customer centricity.
Organizational customer centricity, identified as having a single, integrated view of customers and what is required to create and sustain their optimized behavior across the enterprise, cannot be created without carefully managing staff loyalty and engagement. High employee turnover, especially among customer-touching staff, and low levels of customer-related productivity and proaction tend to be nested within individual organizations´ greater passivity and lack of investment around concepts of ´Staff´ and ´Customer.´ C. Breetwor (2001) attributes this to a combination of salary, career opportunities, and the working environment; however, other research into employee loyalty and positivism by academic institutions and professional organizations suggest that more socially-related and powerful factors are in play."
His work seeks linkages between employment brand, cost of hire and quality of hire and the impact on revenue and profitability. We agreed with Michael that this could be a future opportunity for strategic HR professionals to really bring value to their organization.
Look for more of his work on our site. He will also be leading a team of Senior HR Executives at our national event, helping develop action plans and KPI´s on building employee advocacy within their organizations.
At our NY CEO event we had the opportunity to have Tony Schwartz present. Once again I believe, based on his work, (read "The Power of Full Engagement," co-authored by Tony and Jim Loehr) that energy may be the hot new metric and replace engagement. His concept of a non-renewable source sure hits a sweet spot as many of us are feeling overwhelmed with our growing responsibility and the hot economy. I think this chart summarizes his work best:
IHRIM momentum continues to grow. Measurement and Metrics finally gets validation: Although industry leaders DoubleStar and InfoHRM and some with impact - Apophecy in Europe (and now a US presence with Spectrum HR) have truly pioneered the industry, providing real-time dashboards and predictive modeling for firms. The industry is definitely ready to move from early adoption mode with over 100 established clients. AT IHRIM, many new firms serviced with product offerings focused on creating HCM data warehouses and the really big news is that industry leader Cognos enters the space. With Cognos in the market it will put additional pressure on the other big players (Business Objects, Hyperion, and SAS) to enter into the market. Of course they should all be very interested in this as it will significantly increase their number of licenses of their traditional software model and extend them throughout their client base.
We were very impressed with InfoHRM. Based in Australia (the country I believe with the best red wines in the world) they formed a strategic relationship with powerhouse Corporate Executive Board (CEB) to bring their product into the US. Although the one size fits all model is not truly a recurring subscription model, a number of CEB clients were unhappy with the "out of the box metrics, one size fits all products." With the relationship unwinding, the ultimate winner will be InfoHRM. They can now go back to CEB clients and truly give them the KPI and dashboards that are meaningful and customized to their business. InfoHRM is busy hiring 10-15 people in the US to meet these needs.
In addition, we see some of the best-of-breed point solutions introducing metrics solutions across their platforms. These include Kenexa, Deploy, Hewitt, and Aquire. On another note Clarity Matters, another best-of-breed metric vendor, was acquired by Kronos. Kronos formed a partnership with Clarity Matters about 18 months ago and is imbedded in most of the Kronos product lines.
New funding includes Search Engine/Applicant Tracking System Trovix (5.25M First Round), Verified Person (Background Testing), WorkMetro (Virtual Edge 2M Series C) and job search engine Simply Hired. Simply Hired has scored $13.5 million from Fox Interactive Media and Foundation Capital, bringing total capital raised in the Mountain View, Calif.-based startup to $17.7 million. Included with this funding is a relationship to power job boards on Fox´s interactive properties. That, coupled with the funding received by Jobster, Mkt10, and H3, is simply putting a lot of excitement back into the "Job Board Space." At the same time Monster revenue is skyrocketing, even though they are divesting of their traditional advertising business in Asia Pac.
Just when you though Kenexa could not get any hotter their stock continues to rise and CIBC world markets put a buy on it suggesting it is trading at $33.23. Comparing it to the software on demand model of Salesforce.com, CIBC thinks this is still under priced.
With Kenexa´s most recent acquisition of Denver-basedKnowledge Workers, Inc., they deepen their opportunities in the government vertical. This is a huge opportunity for them and one that is not well tapped by the traditional players.
Talx, the powerhouse in the WorkNumber and employment verification business, expands their business platform with PAN Testing. The $75M acquisition (3X sales) offers a consolidation in the assessment space. Their integrated platform combines proprietary assessments into a single interface and billing system enabling F1000 firms a wider depth of assessments, all in a trackable and integrated system. Their major accomplishment was the assessment of all the TSA employees.
