Human Resources

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 dec 2015

To keep pace with the happenings in the world of business and management, books written by entrepreneurs, business leaders, experienced professionals, learned academics, theorists, practitioners, subject-matter experts etc, provide valuable insights, diverse perspectives, latest practices and examples of what it takes to succeed. Here is a top ten list of leadership and management books of 2015 - (1) 'Work Rules!' by Laszlo Bock: Explores recruitment and various other aspects of HR and management. (2) 'Power Score' by Geoff Smart, Randy Street and Alan Foster: Provides mantras for business success. PxWxR - Priorities, Who (right people), Relationships. (3) 'Hiring For Keeps' by Janet Webb: Explains in detail the 'right fit' for hiring. (4) 'Triggers' by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter: Explain the relationship between beliefs and behavioral change and how to avoid the resistance to change by using triggers, the stimuli that reshape thoughts and actions. (5) 'Transitions at the Top' by Dan Ciampa and David Dotlich: Explores the role of stakeholders within the organization in the success and failure of the new executive's transition. (6) 'The 27 Challenges Managers Face' by Bruce Tulgan: Describes how organizational emergencies can be tackled successfully with minimal damage by applying a proactive, structured and rigorous approach to accountability on a frequent basis as part of the organizational processes. (7) 'The Wallet Allocation Rule' by Timothy Keiningham, Lerzan Aksoy and Luke Williams: Explains the approach where companies should accept that customers frequent their competitors and not focus merely on customer loyalty. Understanding these other relationships can help them gain a bigger share of their spending. (8) 'Leadership BS' by Jeffrey Pfeffer: Describes the shortcomings of the leadership industry and claims that it misleads on many fronts. (9) 'Your Strategy Needs a Strategy' by Martin Reeves, Knut Haanaes and Janmejaya Sinha: Explains that strategy systems should adapt to specific situations and offer five approaches depending on the organization's environment. (10) 'I Know How She Does It' by Laura Vanderkam: Studied lives of working women and suggests how to make the best use of one's time. Other notable mentions - 'The Automatic Customer' by John Warrillow: Describes how to create a subscription business in any industry; 'Shadow Work' by Craig Lambert: Explores commitment to sustainability by large, reputed organizations. Read on...

The Globe and Mail: Top 10 leadership and management books of 2015
Author: Harvey Schachter

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 16 dec 2015

Public relations need to continuously evolve with the changing behavior of society, advancement in technologies, and new ways of communication and reaching out to public. The industry is undergoing shifts in business models, traditional firms are finding shrinking revenue streams and there is excessive competition along with the wave of consolidation. To navigate successfully in this environment, PR firms have to move ahead with the latest practices and technologies. John Hall, co-founder and CEO of Influence & Co., explores 7 digital PR trends that firms should keep into consideration in 2016 - (1) The traditional press release is no more: Utilize social media. Develop relationships with industry leaders and influencers. Attract journalists and other outlets through quality visuals in the messages. (2) Thought leadership will become a growing PR budget priority: To position as a leader in a particular space is not an easy task. Need to build original content around the brand. For thought leadership the content has to be valuable, educational and engaging. (3) Content amplification will become (even more) critical: First focus on the quality of content. Then amplification for the targeted audience will be easier. Distribution avenues will also expand. (4) Negative brand advocates will be prevented through content: Train the PR team to handle all types of situations and experiences. Learn from the book 'Hug Your Haters' by Jay Baer where he advocates a proactive approach to handle negative people. Moreover use content to educate and engage the team. Give them knowledge to effectively tackle clients and avoid negative brand advocacy. (5) Online reputation management will be necessary: Create and publish quality content to achieve better online reputation management and getting the message to the right audience. Credible online reputation will attract publishers and journalists to use your content. (6) True influence will win over number of followers: High quality smaller network wins over ineffective large following. Focus on developing a network and building influrnce among a targeted, valuable audience and social following. (7) Use of paid promotion and social ads will continue to rise: Content Marketing Institute's 2016 content benchmark report found that more than 50 percent of B2B marketing professionals use social ads and promoted posts to distribute content. The effectiveness ratings for each of these methods have increased since last year. Read on...

Forbes: 7 PR Trends You Need To Know In 2016
Author: John Hall

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 dec 2015

According to the recent Morgan Stanley Research report, 'Can Demographics Reverse Three Multi-Decade Trends?', by Prof. Charles Goodhart of London School of Economics, Manoj Pradhan of Morgan Stanley, and Pratyancha Pardeshi of Morgan Stanley, the age of the abundant labor available to the global economy for the last few decades is coming to an end, spelling the end of the deflationary super-cycle and the era of zero interest rates. The demographic 'sweet-spot' was the result of plummeting birth rates and longer life spans from 1970 onwards. Moreover the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's entry into the global trading system made the conditions even sweeter. The working age cohort was 685 million in the developed world in 1990. The work pool of globalized market was more then doubled by China and eastern Europe together adding 820 million. Prof. Goodhart says, 'It was the biggest 'positive labour shock' the world has ever seen. It is what led to 25 years of wage stagnation.' But now the shift is expected to happen leading to scarcity of labor and rise in wages. The balance of power will shift towards workers and there would be a reversal in the rise of inequality that has been happening within economies. 'We are at a inflection point,' says Prof. Goodhart. The report explains that healthcare and ageing costs will drive fiscal expansion, while scarce labour will set off a bidding war for workers, all spiced by a state of latent social warfare between the generations. Prof. Goodhart comments, 'We are going back to an inflationary world.' In a recent speech, Andrew Haldane of The Bank of England, cautions that we may be stuck in a zero-interest trap for as far as the eye can see, with little left to fight the next downturn. Mr. Haldane said, 'Central banks may find themselves bumping up against the 'Zero Lower Bound' (ZLB) constraint on a recurrent basis.' The report made few assumptions. It discounts the role of automation and robots in offsetting the labor shortages. It also doubts the effects of demographic dividend of India and Africa, with increasing working age population, by citing lack of infrastructural support to repeat the 'China Phenomenon'. The report also debunks the claims made by French economist Thomas Piketty in his book 'Capital in the 21st Century', that the return on capital outpaces the growth of the economy over time, leading ineluctably to greater concentrations of wealth in an unfettered market system i.e. the rich will further gain from investments while the condition of the poor will continue to worsen. Read on...

The Telegraph: The world economy as we know it is about to be turned on its head
Author: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 03 dec 2015

According to Wikipedia, 'Employee Experience' is defined as 'What an employee received during their interaction with careers' elements (e.g. firms, supervisors, coworkers, customer, environment, etc.) that affect their cognition and affection and leads to their particular behaviors.' Professor Kaveh Abhari of University of Hawaii at Manoa conceptualized 'Employee Experience Management' (EEM) as 'An approach to deliver excellent experience to employees, which leads to the positive customer experience by emphasizing on their experiential needs.' Successful and future-focused organizations are both customer- and employee-centric, and they shift away from thinking of work as just a utility and emphasise on creating 'beautiful experiences', a term used by Pat Wadors (Chief Human Resource Officer of Linkedin). Jacob Morgan, entrepreneur and author of 'The Future of Work', defines three employee experience environments that all organizations must focus on - physical, cultural and technological. Here he explains the nature of physical environment and its impact on employee experience. Physical environment includes - Demographics; Workplace Perks; Workplace Layout; Workplace Creative. There is a strong correlation between employee well-being and employee productivity and performance, and physical workspace is one of the largest factor for well-being. Mr. Morgan's suggestions regarding the physical aspects of work environment include - (1) Focus on multiple ways of working: According to Gensler employees need spaces to focus, collaborate, learn, and socialize. Organizations need to shift away from having a single floor plan to integrating and incorporating multiple floor plans. (2) Make the space reflect the culture: Organizations should make efforts to build an environment that reflect their values and culture. (3) Look at how employees work: Engage with employees and ask what they value and care about at work and make investments in those areas. (4) Treat physical space like software: Just the way software is continuously iterated, upgraded and evolves, organizations should use the same process to bring necessary transformations in the work space. Read on...

Forbes: How The Physical Workspace Impacts The Employee Experience
Author: Jacob Morgan

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 nov 2015

Nonprofit organizations intend to bring social change and serve communities by involving themselves in the areas of education, healthcare, environment, poverty alleviation etc. Large number of these organizations are professionally managed and utilize business practices for efficiency and effectiveness to make better impact in the society. Elizabeth Gore, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Dell and Chair of the Global Entrepreneurs Council at United Nations Foundation, explains how working and volunteering in the nonprofit sector benefits individuals and is a viable career option - (1) Since nonprofit sector is an organized industry, individuals with an undergraduate degree in fields like business, engineering etc can pursue master's in nonprofit management and pubic policy. (2) Volunteering gets your foot on the door and provides global experience in a number of areas. (3) You don't have to build your own thing and your game changing charitable idea can be developed by utilizing the infrastructure of the existing nonprofit. It has better chance of success as there are networking opportunities in such an environment. (4) Most national nonprofits and humanitarian groups have an attractive pay structure and value talent. It would be sufficient to cover ones expenses. (5) As the nonprofit industry involves working with committed individuals, it helps in building long-term relationships and lasting friendships. Read on...

Cosmopolitan: 5 Surprising Things to Know About Jobs That Give Back
Authors: Elizabeth Gore, Danielle Kam

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 nov 2015

Successful companies provide exemplary customer service. Companies have huge amount of data regarding their customers that they can utilize to achieve better understanding and insights and serve their consumers in the best possible way. But the big question is, how many metrics can customer service professionals focus on to get the best results. Piyanka Jain, President and CEO of Aryng, explains 'There is a better way to drill into the treasure trove of data you have, to find the root causes of your most important metrics slipping - and you don't need to use any complicated systems to do it. 80% of the business problem faced by most front line managers can be solved by using simple business analytics methodologies - (1) Aggregate Analysis (2) Correlation Analysis (3) Trend Analysis (4) Sizing and Estimation. If you and your team can learn to master these four techniques, you can solve most of the business problems you will encounter in your day-to-day workflow. And it can be all done using simple tools like Excel, with the data you already have at hand.' She further povides three simple steps that are to be followed - (I) Determine your team's analytics aptitude (II) Learn how to ask intelligent questions and derive actionable insights from your data (III) Practice and learn to become more proficient with your business analytics. Ms. Jain has devised a framework, 'BADIR Process', that include steps that most analytics projects follow - Real 'B'usiness Question; Hypothesis-driven 'A'nalysis Plan; Collecting Relevant 'D'ata; Deriving 'I'nsights; Making Actionable 'R'ecommendations. If the 'BADIR' framework is utilized in a way as explained, the analysis will find the following biggest drivers of customer dissatisfaction - (1) Multiple calls needed to get an issue resolved. (2) Hold times greater than 150 seconds while the agent looks for the answer. (3) Unprofessional agents. The analysis would show that addressing these drivers would bring customer satisfaction (CSAT) up from 57% to 69%. These important driver metrics should become the part of the daily dashboard - (1) First Call Resolution (FCR) (2) Agent Hold Time (3) Professionalism Among Agents (graded on scale). Read on...

Harvard Business Review: Improving Customer Satisfaction with Simple Analytics
Author: Piyanka Jain

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 nov 2015

Anomalies in a business may arise due to exceptional situations and can be ignored by the management due to their minimal chance of repeat occurence in the similar form. But extraordinary and perfection seeking businesses don't just leave these anomalies as one of a kind happening. They often try to understand and explore them, do due diligence to find the reasons and causes, analyze them and gain insights. One such anomaly was observed by Yves Morieux and his colleagues from Boston Consulting Group while conducting interviews to probe why employees feel disengaged and dissatisfied at work, and to find out falling productivity in spite of organizations using tools and technologies to make workers efficient. They found a senior manager crying during the interview while mentioning the lack of recognition that he received at work. This anomaly promted Mr. Morieux and his team to dig deep into the case. Mr. Morieux says, 'Before we put the guilt on the abnormal psychology of people, we should first have a concrete understanding of what they want to be recognised for.' They found that similar sentiments were expressed by other people who were interviewed. The conclusion was that the workers were not recognized for their cooperation and collaboration with colleagues that was done for the betterment of the company and sometimes they were actively disadvantaged by it because it reduces the efficiency of their own performance. The cooperative efforts are ignored by performance evaluation systems and therefore their value is not recognized. Mr. Morieux explains, 'If there is anything on earth that you can't measure, it's cooperation. We discovered that the real value added by that person wasn't in his own silo, but in making his team cooperate with other silos like the back office, finances and IT, and this wasn't being captured because your evaluation is based on key performance indicators (KPIs) which don't measure cooperation.' Cooperation is the key to achieve superior results for the organization. But individual performance and productivity can get affected in the process of helping and supporting others. Based on his understanding of such situations, Mr. Morieux designed his strategy of 'Smart Simplicity'. It is built on six key rules that allow people to use their intuition, judgement and energy and to encourage cooperation. Three of the rules are about giving people more power, autonomy and knowledge, while the other three involve feedback and accountability, to make sure they use that autonomy in the best interests of the company. He suggests that organizations should address the root causes that prevent people from cooperating. They should utilize social sciences based on game theory instead of obsolete scientific management tools. Read on...

BDLive: Recognition leads to a happy workforce
Author: Lesley Stones

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 03 nov 2015

Marketing technologies are changing the nature and dynamics of strategies that marketers use to reach, engage and serve their customers. Moreover these technologies continue to evolve and marketers have to keep pace with these advances to stay ahead of the game. The four key innovation areas in marketing technology in which all marketers should have deep understanding and continue to emphasise in their strategies are - (1) Use Advanced Analytics (2) Optimize the Mobile Experience in Real-time (3) Cut Down on Call Center Time to Value (4) Maximize the Voice of Customer (VOC). Marketers should be able to collect, analyze and act on omnichannel data throughout the whole customer funnel (customer journey & engagement process) for each of the mentioned areas to achieve success. This will finally help build better customer profiles, prioritize business actions, analyze macro trends, optimize customer engagement and customize offerings to get better outcomes. Read on...

MarTech Advisor: 4 Advanced Use Cases of Marketing Technology Innovation
Author: Rohit Roy

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 oct 2015

The Office of the Chief Scientist of Australia (chiefscientist.gov.au) recently released a report, 'Boosting High-Impact Entrepreneurship in Australia', prepared by Colin Kinner (Director of Spike Innovation). The study highlights entrepreneurship as the key to a high-growth, innovation-led economy, able to capitalise on Australia's investment in research and skills. According to Ian Chubb, Australia's Chief Scientist, 'Knowledge is the foundation of the high-growth industries of the future - but it must be knowledge efficiently acquired, skilfully managed and creatively applied.' He considers that entrepreneurship can be taught. He says, 'To be a more innovative country we need to encourage an entrepreneurial mindset at every level of education - starting in schools, continuing in higher study and enduring throughout working lives.' The report finds that Australia has one of the highest rates of business creation in the world, but few startups have the capacity to grow beyond the local level. The report lists the following core skills that today's high-impact entrepreneurs need - (1) Business model innovation (2) Product development (3) Sales (4) Financial management (5) Legal management (6) Intellectual property management (7) Platform economics (8) Capital raising (9) Employee Share Ownership Plans (10) Building and managing teams (11) Managing rapid international growth. Read on...

Business Insider: The 11 core skills needed to be a high-impact entrepreneur, according to the chief scientist
Author: Chris Pash

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 07 oct 2015

Transformation in healthcare industry is increasing the demand for 'out of the box' executives and leaders that can adapt to the pace of change and at the same time bring in new ideas and innovate. These executives have diverse experiences in different industries. They can be from industries that are creating better and advance ways of doing business for example technology organizations that are influencing business processes and models in many industries. Recruiting for some select positions like CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers), CHROs (Chief Human Resources Officers), CIOs (Chief Information Officers) etc from mainstream healthcare can sometime stifle innovation as these executives may bring traditional set of experiences and perspectives from within the healthcare industry. Moreover healthcare industry is known for slow adoption of latest technologies and processes due to regulatory and systemic issues. Hence the leaders and executives from other industries have a better chance to drive innovation. But healthcare recruiters have to be cautious while seeking candidates from outside the traditional healthcare industry. Kimberly Smith (FACHE), managing partner of the executive search firm Witt/Kieffer, provides some basic rules they should apply while recruiting for such positions - (1) Know where the need of innovation is and in which area the person will have most impact. (2) Understand whether the new roles are required or current leadership framework needs modification or not. (3) Perform thorough research for sources from where the candidates can be recruited. (4) Clearly define the roles, responsibilities, demands, deliverables and expectations from the new hire. (5) Be specific in defining the competencies, skills and experiences that are saught in the change and innovaiton agent. (6) Be sure of the readiness and need for out of the box candidate. Have diverse set of candidates. Explore how the person can be onboarded before extending an offer. (7) Have a clear onboarding plan for this candidate. Make sure how the nontraditional hire would be smoothly integrated and assimilated into the organizational structure and culture. Ms. Smith concludes, 'The act of looking outside the box to recruit requires forethought, a comprehensive evaluation process and a commitment to helping the executive to adjust. Going outside the box doesn't mean that hiring diligence should go out the window - in fact, just the opposite.' Read on...

Executive Insight: Recruiting "Out of the Box" Healthcare Executives
Author: Kimberly Smith

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