HR for Startups: More Important than You Think

The buzz: Emerging brands. If you think your company brand is the only one your organization needs to worry about, listen up! Two new branding flavors are stealing the business spotlight: employer and personal. Does your HR consider the notion of employer branding a passing fad? Are you ignoring the impact your personal brand (yes, you already have one) might wreak as our knowledge economy segues into a social economy? The experts speak. Chris Heuer, Alynd: “Reputation: be known for what you know, how are you known, how you craft the story, and how you live your life.” Kare Anderson, SayItBetter.com: “Speak to their positive intent, especially when they appear to have none.” Jenny Dearborn, SAP: “It’s this simple: You are a brand. You are in charge of your brand. There is no single path to success. And there is no one right way to create the brand called You. Except this: start today, or else.” (Tom Peters) Join us for Ways to Sway: Secrets of Influence and Personal Brand

The buzz: Build or buy? Does your company prefer to invest in a current employee’s training to promote them up the ladder, or bypass them for a more experienced, already trained outside superstar? Wharton’s Matthew Bidwell found that external hires are paid 18% more on average, but receive significantly lower performance reviews their first two years and are more likely to get laid off or fired than internal promoted staff. What’s up with this? The experts speak. Dr. Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte: “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.” (Bill Gates). Raluca Druta, TEC: “But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.” (Oscar Wilde). Laura L. Stegall, SAP: “We lament the speed of our society and the lack of depth and the nature of disposable information.” (David Ogden Stiers). Join us for Promote from Within or Hire External Superstars?

The buzz: HR around the world. American companies think they're the keepers of the best management practices. Consequently, they don't try to learn as much as they can from other places, according to Dr. Michael J. Marquardt, a professor at George Washington University. Whether you agree with him or not, U.S. HR leaders just might learn valuable lessons from the innovative and successful HR practices in other countries. The experts speak. Matt Healey, TBR: “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” (George Bernard Shaw) Patrick Heffernan, TBR: “Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it. (Bob Dylan) Thomas Otter, SAP: “Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?’” (Thomas J. Watson, IBM). Join us for HR Makes the World Go Round: Practices Outside the US.

The buzz: Burnout. In this era of hyper-connectivity and 24/7 global demands on your workforce, employee burnout is a key contributor to the lack of engagement and loss of productivity all too prevalent in the workplace. If always-on is the nemesis of commitment and productivity, it’s time to take a closer look at your company culture. Burnout is insidious; it can spread from employee to employee, department to department across your organization. Take heart. Your management team and individual employees can banish burnout. Ready to learn how? The experts speak. Allison Ellis, Portland State University: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” (World Health Organization) Stacey Perrin, SAP: “It’s better to burn out, than to fade away.” (lyrics from My My, Hey Hey – Out of the Blue, Neil Young, Def Leppard). Join us for How to Prevent Burnout in the Age of Always-On.

The buzz: Leaders. Employee engagement. Retention. Your employer brand. The leaders you hire or promote from inside will make or break your workforce strategies. The trends are ominous. Your organization needs to identify and develop the right kind of leaders. But how? The experts speak. Justin Locke, Author: “’Leadership Development’ is in direct conflict with the core management ideology of the Industrial Revolution, where obedience, uniformity, and the smooth running of the factory are more important than the people working in it… Many of us still work within that century-old cultural ideology… to move ahead, we must be conscious of where we are coming from.” Janet Wood, SAP: “I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.” (Virginia Rometty, IBM). Karie Willyerd, SAP: “Few workplaces have planned well for…what it will take to lead the next generation of employees.” Join us for Mission Critical: Identifying and Developing Leaders.

The buzz: HR Metrics. If you’re an HR professional, metrics such as cost per hire, training cost per employee, turnover rate, and lag between posting and filling a position will show the executive team that you’re doing your job, but not much more. “Vanity metrics” are not the same as applying workforce analytics tools to give your C-Suite leaders the data-driven, actionable insights they need to solve business problems. Current wisdom says to stop focusing on activity numbers and instead answer the critical question, “What is the value?” The experts speak. Greta Roberts, Talent Analytics: “Pretty HR dashboards and visualizations rarely provide strategic, actionable business insights. Kris Dunn, Kinetix: “Life is a game. Money is how we keep score (Ted Turner). Mick Collins, SAP: “A politician knows not only how to count votes, but how to make his vote count” (U.S. President Richard Nixon, 1969.) Join us for Stop with the Vanity Metrics: Measure What Matters.

The buzz: Recruiting. Acquiring top talent is tough, with today’s job mobility mindset and competitive employee poaching. Another challenge: your Employer Brand. Similar to customers relying on social network reviews of your products, potential recruits are combing the Web for insider info about your organization. Are your Talent leaders and employee ambassadors helping or hindering your brand? The experts speak. Tim Sackett, HRU Technical Resources: “I don’t know how this is going to end, I know how it’s going to begin” (Neo, The Matrix). Will Staney, Glassdoor: “I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success” (Tennessee Williams). Jessica Miller-Merrell, Xceptional HR: “To climb the ladder of success, you don't need more techniques and strategies, you need more friends (Jeffrey Gitmore). Join us for The Yelpification of Recruiting.

The buzz: Turnover? Oh no! Employee attrition is a fact of life staring your HR leaders in the eye, more often than ever due to escalating job mobility, social recruiting and talent poaching. You know that every employee will leave at some point. But it becomes painful for your organization when your prized top talent are the ones jumping ship without even a rumored whisper preceding their departure. The goal for your HR team is not to prevent all turnover, but to prevent the unplanned, unmanaged kind. How are today’s successful companies enticing their most valued human capital to stay? The experts speak. China Gorman, Great Place to Work: “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value” (Albert Einstein). Dr. Steven Hunt, SuccessFactors: “People don’t necessarily want to leave their company after two years, but you may need to create a compelling reason to stay.” Join us for Battling Attrition: How To Keep Good Employees?

The buzz: Work-life what? The term ‘work-life balance’ has become a cliché for a frustrating goal that few of us in the workforce ever reach, or reach very often. With boundaries between work and family more blurred than ever, stress, job burnout, and competition for our time all take a toll on our work productivity and our health. Take heart. Now there’s flexstyle, a more nuanced way of finding balance that reflects individual working styles. Is flexstyle the right fit for you and your employer? The experts speak. Brenda A. Lautsch, Simon Fraser University: “Flexibility isn’t the answer to everyone’s work-life balance problems.” Dr. Ellen Ernst Kossek, Purdue University: “Make technology work for you, not against you...redraw the lines between work and family.” Karie Willyerd, SAP: “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” (Refrigerator magnet) Join us for Work-Life Balance: What’s Your Flexstyle?

The buzz: Startups and HR. Heads-up, startup founders! If an HR department is the last thing on your mind because you “only” need someone to manage employees’ basic benefits and paychecks, think again. Why bother with HR so early, you ask? Because a core HR function, even in a startup, can take the burden of administration and compliance off your back and place it with human capital experts who know how to handle real HR issues and will free you up to focus your energy on your organization’s innovation mission. The experts speak. Mark Stelzner, IA-HR.com: “Have no fear of perfection – you'll never reach it. (Dali). Laurie Ruettimann, The Cynical Girl: “Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?” (Hunter S. Thompson). Natasha Loeffler-Little, SuccessFactors: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” (Albert Einstein). Join us for HR for Startups: More Important than You Think.