In today's world of shrinking economies and diminishing labor pools, employee training can be one of your most valuable and critical talent management tools.

Say what?
Aren't training budgets typically one of the first things you slash during an economic downturn?

Wise companies think otherwise…

If you know how to get the most out of your employee training, it can be one of your most cost effective investments, contributing to increased productivity, performance, employee satisfaction and employee retention.

So how do you ensure a return on your training investment?

Make sure you're offering the right training.
Don't just guess at what courses to offer based on popular appeal, or a manager's opinion or plans. Create training plans and learning paths that address actual performance gaps and that support high-level company goals. Organizationally, you can identify the competencies and skills critical to your success, assess your employees' performance on these and create training programs that address the gaps. Individually, you can start with an employee's performance appraisal and identify opportunities for development based on past performance and current goals. Linking your learning management system to your performance appraisal software can make the job much easier.

Measure performance improvements.
It's easy for a training organization or company to promise they'll deliver training that "impacts performance", but how do you actually validate this? The only real way is to evaluate an employee's performance of specific competencies before and after training, in both the short and long term. Doing this can help you identify effective learning and development activities, and those with little impact so you can maximize your return on investment.

We touch on these ideas in more detail in our reference article Getting the Most out of Your Employee Training.

Will you be slashing your training budget or using it to leverage your talent?

If you ask 100 people about succession planning, you are likely to get 100 different responses about what it actually is and how their organization is handling it. But you will get the majority of the people to agree that it is important, and a growing concern for them. As more and more baby boomers are set to retire, organizations are planning ahead to ensure they have the skills and leadership required in the future.

Capital District Physicians Health Plan (CDPHP) located in Albany, NY is a health maintenance organization (HMO) that serves nearly 400,000 people throughout New York State. Up until a couple of years ago, the organization’s performance appraisal system provided limited data resulting in holes in the organization’s broader understanding of its employee performance, especially as it related to information required for succession planning. As a result, CDPHP did not have the information to accurately understand its workforce potential and its areas of retention risk, let alone groom possible successors from within and reduce risk.

To address these needs CDPHP implemented a talent pool based succession planning system, part of an integrated employee performance and talent management suite. The succession planning solution follows the proven best-practice talent pool model and enables CDPHP to identify the skills and competencies required to support the organization's three to five year strategic plans.

Since rolling out the system, they have identified their talent pools - three within their management level - and with those three talent pools, the organization has a leadership development program that focuses on the behaviors and traits that are linked to competencies within each talent pool. From there, they are fine tuning the pools and competencies and then assessing the gaps that exist for the 77 managers identified as having potential to move up in the organization. The plan is then to take that data and work on building specific development plans for each manager. Ultimately, this approach gives the organization the ability to cultivate the necessary skills and competencies in high-potential employees with talent pool focused career and development planning.

According to Susan Karavolas, director of human capital management at CDPHP, "We are able to identify talent needs that we may have as we continue to evolve. Now we have the power to address new areas as they emerge and successfully support our long-term vision."

Succession planning will continue to become even more of a priority in the coming months and years and organizations need to start planning today so they have the bench strength they need for the future of their companies. CDPHP's forward thinking will enable them to continue to grow and stay competitive for years to come.

If like most companies, you use feedback and ratings from your employee performance appraisals to drive decisions around compensation, promotions and training, then ensuring consistency in your employee reviews is critical. Even if you're not using performance evaluation data to make these decisions, employees need to perceive a sense of fairness in their reviews. A perceived lack of fairness quickly translates into employee dissatisfaction and disengagement.

But how do you achieve fairness across the board, or even within a particular role, when so much of the evaluation is subjective?

We explored some techniques for ensuring consistency in a recent reference article on our website.

Since managers are individuals, and bring different experience and expectations to their role, it's important to give them some guidance, and a framework to work within to eliminate some of their subjectivity from the equation. Multi-rater feedback, secondary manager or third-party reviews and detailed behavioral descriptions of competency demonstration are some of the tools that can help.

It's also a great idea to have your HR team compare ratings between departments, especially for individuals performing the same function. It's not hard to spot trends in ratings when you look at the bigger picture. In the same way you could tell how "tough" a teacher was by looking at their class average, you can get an idea of how consistent and fair your appraisals are by comparing scores between departments, and year over year. Your HR team can then intervene to ensure greater consistency and fairness.

For hospitals and other healthcare facilities that are subject to Joint Commission regulation, on-time completion of performance appraisals is a key priority. Often healthcare organizations struggle with trying to have all appraisals completed at all, let alone on time. Rockford Health System has been able to actually achieve 100% on-time completion of performance evaluations for nearly 3,000 employees, and I wanted to share a bit of their story.

Rockford Health System is the largest health system serving northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Rockford was using a legacy paper-based process which was no longer providing the value, consistency or quality control they required. With the realities of a tight labor market – including a retiring workforce and increasing competition for specialists – it needed to look at its annual performance evaluation process as part of a complex skills retention and talent optimization strategy.

In response to this, Rockford selected a healthcare-specific employee performance and talent management offering to drive the change. Also, to deal with the realities of the hospital setting where healthcare workers engage with numerous colleagues in each shift, they opted to include multi-rater functionality.

The system was rolled out to nearly 3,000 employees, and one of the biggest changes was that Rockford achieved 100% on-time completion. "This is very important as it is a Joint Commission standard. With the new system we can track the progress of appraisals in real-time and identify what missing information is required,” says Heidi Elsbree, Director of Human Resources and Benefits, Rockford Health System.

In addition to on-time completion, employees and managers report high satisfaction levels with the new system. Elsbree also feels that having an effective performance management system in place that involves self-reviews is helping employees see a direct link between the performance appraisals they are completing and their jobs.

Rockford's experience tells us that achieving 100% on-time completion for healthcare organizations is a realistic and achievable goal, and by striving for this, they can do much, much more than just meet Joint Commission requirements.

I'd be interested in hearing from other healthcare organizations about how they are ensuring they are meeting Joint Commission requirements. Leave a comment below if you have something to share.

Summer's finally here! The great days of backyard BBQs, soaking in the sun, and kicking back with the kids are upon us... But most of us still have to work, at least a little bit. So, what's your focus for these long summer days at the office?

With many employees on vacation, this is the natural time to catch up on shelved projects or run popular training programs with smaller groups (e.g. those courses with longer waiting lists). Or, depending on your industry, it could be a time of extra vigilance around health and safety, for those who are working outdoors in the heat (and storms, with the way the weather's been going this year!)

It's also important to remember employer liability, just like during the winter festive season. Employee summer picnics, pool parties, and game days can all be a minefield of alcohol use, injuries, or inappropriate behavior. Don't let your policies slide just because the temperature is climbing.

Regardless of your focus, summer is a great time to get things in order for the fall, thinking ahead for the end of 2008 and what goals you want to achieve in the talent management arena. Some best practices to consider include:

• encourage managers to take time to recognize stellar employees
• schedule extra performance conversations with your top - and bottom - employees
• consider adding a strategic program for 2009. Does your organization need to focus on succession planning, goal alignment, or pay for performance? Now is the time to plan for how you will champion these programs in the boardroom
• review your reporting procedures - do you have all the reports in place that you need to quickly pull the information your execs may want to see by end of year?

It seems strange in July to be thinking ahead to next year already, but that's a big part of transitioning HR from a tactical function to a truly strategic role within the organization. Using your employee performance and talent management tool to free up your time to focus on the big picture - where you company is going, what challenges lie a couple of quarters out - is how your department will add real value to the bottom line.

And then when it's your turn to take vacation you can rest easy, enjoy your lounge chair, and get lost in a good book. Happy Sunning!

I'm back to the office after a few very busy days at SHRM in Chicago. Overall it was a productive show, with a ton of stuff happening!  I wanted to take this chance to share just a few pieces of news coming out of this year's show.

On the Halogen end of things, we announced a new partnership with HodesiQ that will enable our joint customers to integrate recruiting and on-boarding with employee performance and talent management. Customers like Educate and Gentiva are already using this solution. You can read more about this news here.

We also announced our HRIS Connect tool that links HRIS employee data with talent management functions. It is already being very well received by analysts such as Leighanne Levensaler at Bersin & Associates and David Creelman at Creelman Research. Our customer Ginn Reunion Resort is using HRIS Connect to ensure consistency between its systems and save time for all involved.

There was lots of news coming out of this year's show from all the vendors in attendance and SHRM itself. SHRM's CEO Susan Meisinger is leaving SHRM, with the announcement of a successor forthcoming over the summer.

Workforce has in-depth coverage of the show here. One of the keynotes was Patrick Lencioni, a world-renowned speaker, author and consultant on topics of leadership and executive-team development, who discussed his book Three Signs of a Miserable Job. The third sign, is particularly relevant - a lack of measurement.  Workers have no idea whether or not they are doing a good or poor job. Definitely an argument there for employee performance and talent management if I've ever heard one!

John Hollon has a great piece on the Tao of SHRM about how unpredictable the show is with the show floor being overrun with attendees collecting swag and then how valuable the sessions are. Another great piece coming out of this show is a comment on SHRM's entertainment from Kris Dunn at the HR Capitalist and his suggestions were he to take over at SHRM's new CEO. 

We're looking forward to SHRM 2009 in New Orleans - and hey, maybe Kris Dunn will get his way and we'll be rocking out to AC/DC!

Traditionally, the healthcare arena wasn't one in which cultivating a high performance workforce had been a focus. Merit pay increases and spot bonuses just weren't part of the picture for most healthcare workers.

But increasingly, organizations are competing head to head for skilled talent - making retention and employee engagement key priorities. There are increased numbers of younger workers who expect and demand performance reviews and ongoing development opportunities. Couple that with enhanced Joint Commission compliance requirements and the boomer-driven need to plan for the future with succession, and you've got an industry-wide cultural transformation on your hands.

Some healthcare organizations are doing a great job of making this shift.

Beaumont Hospitals in Michigan is one that decided to implement pay for performance to raise the bar for overall performance, align rewards and individual performance to organizational performance, and promote organizational and personal growth and development. Recognizing that the transition to pay-for-performance would be a major paradigm shift affecting how the organization recognizes, measures and rewards performance, Beaumont strategically planned the implementation to take place gradually. The organization first implemented a new automated employee appraisal process, and only once that cycle had been fully completed, began to integrate a new compensation element. The next phase, which includes the full roll-out of a pay-for-performance approach, is beginning now. Appraisals will be completed shortly based on the new performance standards and pay increases will be implemented, based for the first time on these performance appraisals.

When setting itself up to implement a high performance workforce, King's Daughters Medical Center in Mississippi made sure that it selected a technology that had an easy integration between learning and talent management, not one that introduced more complexity. This allowed the organization to look at new synergies, which enable the organization to better address succession planning, training compliance, and so on.  This makes HR more strategic. It's about more than administrative tasks, it's an opportunity to ensure programs support, or even drive organizational objectives.

Rockford Health System, located in Rockford, Illinois, found that an important issue in selecting an employee appraisal solution was that it include self-reviews and a multi-rater or peer review function. Because healthcare workers can engage with numerous colleagues in each shift, this perspective provides important feedback in a review. The organization is now more aligned when numerous perspectives are collated. Through measuring and evaluating performance they are able to see if the organizational strategy is being properly supported, and ensure that employee performance management is an on-going event and not a one-time thing.

I'd be interested in hearing from readers working in the healthcare sector about how their organization is approaching this issue. Please leave comments!

Google the terms high-performance workforce, high-performance culture, or high-performance employee and you'll get links to a variety of blog posts and articles that tell you how to get there. In the end, most of them end up telling you that you need:

• An environment of trust
• Discipline
• A clear strategy
• Aligned goals throughout your organization
• Clear communication on performance results and goals
• Training and development plans for all employees
• A system of regular feedback for employees

Most of these articles also tell us that companies with a high-performance culture get better results and have happier customers. Probably happier employees too!

While the list seems fairly straightforward, engraining all these things in your culture can be a challenge. The question is - can we afford not to?

This issue is particularly critical for professional services firms, where their employees are their main asset.  In a business built on an individual's skills and qualifications, as well as their relationships, when an employee leaves, the firm also risk losing the clients that employee served. And replacing that employee is becoming increasingly challenging with the growing talent shortage. 

Two of our customers, both accounting firms, provide great examples of how professional services organizations can build a culture of performance. 

One of O'Sullivan Creel's strategic goals was to go paperless, and they saw an opportunity to improve their employee performance appraisal process, which employees felt was "cumbersome and lacked any connection with the success of the business." With the help of a web-based employee performance and talent management system, they were able to make productivity gains.  They also found that their new system actually helped them better understand the strengths and weaknesses of their workforce, so they could better manage promotions, raises and training. They've seen a significant increase in employee satisfaction and productivity, and built a high performance culture.

Clark Nuber was focused on remaining an employer of choice and they needed a way to help them manage employee achievement on a day-to-day basis, while maximizing billable time. But their unique reporting structure and need to collect feedback from many sources posed a challenge. Technology has proven to be a strategic enabler for the firm, with high-performing employees being able to keep things up-to-date and ensure they're on track to meet their goals. All employees get a complete and accurate picture of their performance thanks to the multi-rater feedback that's built into each review process. The solution is helping with retention and enabling them to take talent management to the next level.

Are your employees getting the direction, feedback and development they need to work at their full potential?

Recently, I tripped across a funny employee performance review for Albert Einstein, posted on Peter Norvig’s web page. I must say, reading it had me enjoy a few good laughs.

But I feel badly for poor Albert... I don’t think he was fairly assessed in this case. It sure doesn’t seem as though he was given all the tools needed to be a top performing employee?

Firstly, in the Job Description section, Dr. Haller chastises Albert for not sticking to his priorities, but then goes on to pass judgment on work that is technically not part of his job. The problem is, Haller never lists Albert's duties and responsibilities - indicating the relative priority of each.

The second problem is that Albert's performance appraisal doesn’t include any goals. I wonder - did they have a shared understanding of objectives for the year? There are criticisms about productivity and the timing of accomplishments, but no documentation about what the original expectations were.

The final issue with the employee performance appraisal is that Dr. Haller finishes the review with a comment about Albert’s wardrobe. How many times do we see these kinds of irrelevant and potentially hurtful comments in performance appraisals? What do his wardrobe coordination abilities have to do with his competence to process patent applications?

It seems to me this is a classic case of a very talented person who is not being managed for success.

Although this is clearly a satirical review meant to make us laugh, the sad thing is that many employees out there are still getting performance reviews that are not much better than this. The simple fact is that if we do a bad job of managing an employee's performance, we miss the opportunity to benefit from their knowledge and talents.

Do you have any poorly managed Einstein's working for you?

It's been a great couple of weeks for us in terms of customer momentum. We've recently announced two new customers – The Motley Fool and Brant Community Healthcare System.

What's really cool about these customers is what they're using Halogen technology to help them achieve – beyond the obvious:

Investment services company The Motley Fool needed an employee performance and talent management solution with a twist – it had to keep pace with the attitude and feel of the company's business and culture based on flexibility, respect and an absence of pretension. Employees are known as "Fools" and the culture is reflected in the organization's editorial style as well as the way employees are treated on a daily basis – with a sense of purpose and fun.

Angelique Keenley, Director of Human Resources at The Motley Fool told us that "Respecting and maintaining our corporate culture is a priority for all of our HR programs, so being able to adapt the solution so it fits with our language - using greetings and reminders like "Hey, Fool" and "Dude, you're late" - was a plus.

It's great to see customers being able to do exactly what they want with the technology.

In a totally different vein, Brant Community Healthcare System, a large Ontario-based healthcare provider, is using Halogen to help it manage accreditation with Accreditation Canada (formerly CCHSA). Accreditation is a growing area of healthcare HR that involves a detailed audit of a hospital or organization's human resources procedures, in particular employee appraisals and performance management, with the goal of increasing the quality of patient services and safety.

Why? Well, according to the website of the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA), while most organizations state that employees are their greatest assets, few would say that they find these assets easy to measure. In no other industry is it truer than health care. With human capital costs representing 65-85% of operating budgets, payroll expenses encompass most of the hospital's budget.

Without HR metrics, and actionable data about employee performance, no one can really assess what's working or not working with the people who make up the organization. HR's success at measuring people issues directly contribute to informed decision making by executives and contribute to a positive work environment. To do this, there is a need for the HR departments to measure and deliver meaningful data that is relevant.

There is an old adage that what can be measured can be managed. Without an accurate measuring stick organizations have no way to make genuine progress or improve processes.

Brant Community Healthcare System is one organization that is committed to accurately measuring its clinical and operational performance – and action plans for continual improvements.