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  • >> Michael Morris: There’s 21,640 men and women who have dedicated their lives to keeping

  • the lights on in the 11 states that we do business...

  • [pause]

  • >>Jorgen Vig Knudstorp: Youve got to make sure you have a strong organization that’s

  • capable of making the decisions it needs to make...

  • [pause]

  • >>Vint Cerf: The other thing that Google has done remarkably well is to hire smart people...

  • >>V/O Human resources. Human capital. The people people. Have you saidif you want

  • a job done properly, do it yourselfmore than twice this year? HR have the solution.

  • More than a quicksand of red flags, law suits and pointless rules. Done right, HR is a game

  • changer...

  • Like every business discipline, HR has its thinkers. The people who change the definition

  • of what’s expected. When David Fairhurst joined McDonald’s, the fast food giant was

  • in the news for all the wrong reasons. McJobs, McLibel and McMorgan Spurlock.

  • >>David Fairhurst: I experienced that at most dinner parties that I went to where people,

  • good or bad, would have an opinion...

  • >>V/O: Most people had a very bad opinion about McJobs in particular, and the people

  • that were in them. David, however, saw something else.

  • >>David Fairhurst: That was at odds with the pride, the commitment and the training that

  • I saw when I came inside this organization.

  • Turning that around wasand is – a huge task. But while the rehabilitation of the

  • golden arches may not be complete, profits and perceptions are on the up. It started,

  • says David, by addressing the issue of what HR calls itself.

  • For years if not a decade HR’s been very self-indulgent around what it calls itself,

  • whether it deserves a seat at the table and quite frankly it needs to earn its seat at

  • the table and in my view needs to be less self-indulgent about looking at its name and

  • its purpose.

  • What HR should be talking about rather than what it calls itself is around, “How do

  • you truly understand what it is that your business needs? What’s the engine around

  • people that drives your business performance? How can you get more sales and profitability

  • from people?” Then secondly, “What is it that your people truly value about working

  • for you organization to really understand what it is that differentiates you as an employer?”

  • >>V/O: Bring those two things together, says David, and you create an energy that can be

  • released around your people. And when you do that, the HR department can talk about...

  • >>David Fairhurst: What is the future talent needs of our organization? How can we generate

  • better insight around people? How can we get rid of organizational silos that destroy progress

  • in an organization? How can we support change in business? How do we support leaders in

  • terms of integrity, values based leadership?”

  • V/O: This program may not yet be offering a completely balanced diet, but Misty Reich,

  • HR Director for KFC, agrees with David.

  • >>Misty Reich: First you need to understand what is it that

  • the business is trying to accomplish? What is the core strategy? And then from that point

  • do you start talking about how the people resources in that business can drive towards

  • that.

  • >>V/O: One of HR’s many key roles is to ensure continuity in an organisation: non-incremental

  • change to encourage progress, incremental change to encourage growth, fresh blood and

  • steady hands. It is a difficult balancing act, and one which toy manufacturer Mattel

  • focussed on intently following some acquisition-based culture shock.

  • >>Alan Kaye: Even Fisher Price, that had been an acquisition for earlier, had a veryits

  • own and distinct culture. We had just bought the American Goal Company in Madison, Wisconsin,

  • had its own and distinct culture. And it was very disjointed.

  • And it’s very hard to develop people in an environment like that. And I think that’s

  • what we were facing. So, early on, the key was, “How do we create, without destroying

  • the individual entrepreneurship that was going on in these locations?”

  • >>V/O: One part of the solution was a process Mattel call...

  • >>Alan Kaye: The quality of organization review.

  • >>V/O: Every year, the senior management from all divisions, with their heads of HR, present

  • to Alan and Mattel’s CEO.

  • >>Alan Kaye: How their organization is doing, what their organization issues are, who are

  • the key people, who are the people at the very senior levels, and who are behind them.

  • We have these extensive reviews going on, and as you can imagine, if that’s going

  • on at the senior-most level of the organization, it filters down. So, it’s going on through

  • the organization.

  • And then, we take that review, Mr. Eckert and myself, and we do this with the board,

  • probably twice a year, where we review the senior-most talent of the organization with

  • the board. So, they know who they are. They get to see them during presentations. So,

  • we really make this succession planning process that we have very, very much a piece of everything

  • we do here.

  • >>V/O: At McDonald’s, David Fairhurst believes succession planning is also integral to the

  • businessbut not in its current, most common form...

  • >>David Fairhurst: The reality is that that is not dynamic enough to meet the ongoing

  • needs of the organization. What you need to be doing is to be thinking about strategic

  • workforce planning. So in other words what are the operational income drivers of your

  • organization over the next, say, three to five years working in a non-silo way with

  • your business intelligence, your business strategy people to figure out what’s going

  • to drive the profitability then very simply to map your talent capability against those

  • drivers of the business. So my call really is if youre going to meet the business

  • needs both now and in the future we need to be far more dynamic, fluid if you like and

  • non-siloed in the way in which we approach talent in organizations and that requires

  • I think a different attitude towards talent.

  • >>V/O: But with a word of warning, here’s Alan Kaye. Be careful what you wish for...

  • >>Alan Kaye: I would say that, early on, hiring in a maybe senior manager and above, we’d

  • probably hire-in from the outside about 75-percent of the talent coming from the outside of the

  • organization. There was almost a philosophy of, you know, you need new blood, you need

  • new ideas. Bring it in from the outside, versus develop from within.

  • We needed to turn that around. And we spent a lot of time with leadership development.

  • We spend a lot of time in succession planning, now, understanding who’s ready for the next

  • move, what do they need, and when? And weve really come full circle. Now, were about

  • – I’d say, were about 90-percent promotions are from within, 10-percent from the outside.

  • And, as an HR professional, I would say weve swung the pendulum a little too far.

  • >>V/O: That you should always invest in your people may sound like a no-brainer, but...

  • >>David Fairhurst: Well you get a lot of people over the years say, “If you invest in people

  • they leave the organization how do you get a return on your investment?”

  • >>V/O: When the truth of the matter is...

  • >>David Fairhurst: The more you give people transferrable skills the less likely they

  • are to transfer.

  • >>V/O: For a frankly brilliant example of what can be achieved when you strive for best

  • practice and are creative with your investment in people, we move from potato chips to silicon,

  • from Big Mac to Big Blue, fromoh, enough of that. IBM has combined leadership training

  • and social responsibility to incredible effect.

  • >>Stan Litow: In a tour of the IBM research facilities I saw a number of tools that from

  • my experience in the public sector and in the voluntary sector might be particularly

  • significant in addressing a variety of different social problems that were among the most difficult

  • for people to grapple with.

  • What was clear to me at IBM is that we had some unique capabilities, and again our innovation

  • and our technology, but then clearer and clearer to me it was our people, the talent within

  • our company, the people who had significant amount of engineering talent, business consulting

  • talent, software developers, researchers, and that was really a unique capability that

  • could be coupled with innovation and technology to bring about substantive change.

  • >>V/O: The result? The A corporate peace corps, or corporate service corps, to give it the

  • correct IBM title. And this is what great HR can do for your business...

  • >>Stan Litow: A corporate service corps, and yes we do characterize it as a corporate version

  • of the Peace Corps, is fundamentally about leadership and leadership development. We

  • have seen a shift in our business model to become a fully globally integrated enterprise,

  • and what that means is there’s a greater premium for people operating on a global stage.

  • You need a much greater cultural understanding.

  • You need to understand teaming skills in ways that are at a much higher level, and what

  • the corporate service corps offers to our best emerging leaders within the company,

  • this is 500 people selected in a very competitive way over each year, and theyre assigned

  • in teams of 8-10 in communities in Nigeria or Ghana or Tanzania or Vietnam or the Philippines

  • or Egypt or Romania, and they work as a team living together, working on a critical social

  • problem, usually connected to economic growth, job development, using their technical skills,

  • working as a team of people from the U.S., from Canada, from the UK, from China, from

  • India, from Africa, working together and solving a critical problem in their assignment.

  • So at the end of that process what weve identified is people have completely improved

  • their teaming skills, their cultural adaptability, their understanding of growth markets, their

  • understanding of the relationship between government, business, and the not-for-profit

  • sector. So it’s a way of building the most sophisticated level of leadership in the next

  • generation of your leader.

  • >>V/O: And that’s not even the best of it...

  • >>Stan Litow: Then there’s another advantage that perhaps you might not have thought about

  • going into it. An independent evaluation done by the Harvard Business School, 100 percent

  • of the participants in the corporate service corps indicated that participation in this

  • program increased their likelihood of completing their career at IBM.

  • Were talking about top talent, and if you talk within HR departments not just at IBM

  • but in most companies, your top performers who have been with a company for seven or

  • ten years are those that youre most at risk of losing if somehow they don’t feel

  • excited and motivated about their work, and nothing could be more exciting or motivating

  • to an IBM young emerging leader than participation in the corporate service corps.

  • >>V/O:And those are the MeetTheBoss tv first three of our top ten HR best practices. In

  • part two, why David Fairhurst kept referring to...

  • Organizational silos that destroy progress in an organization?

  • >>V/O:And the business changing power of practical HR metrics.

>> Michael Morris: There’s 21,640 men and women who have dedicated their lives to keeping

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