The very best thing you can say about Performance Management tools and systems is that they make a serious effort to have organizational progress come from the top. The focus is on organizational alignment rather than the perpetuation of internally focused initiatives. It is a solid step in the direction of building an HR function that is the heart of organizational alignment.

When focused on the performance of the business, HR can become a competitive weapon. When focused on the efficiency of internal process, HR is a boat anchor. It really, really doesn’t matter how fast or slow your overall HR processes are, how much they cost per employee or who is to blame for process inefficiencies. What matters is having the right people in the right place at the right time with the right skills and the right objectives. The actual deployment of people to work on the business problem is the only thing that matters.The rest is the land of pretend that HR is famous for occupying. In today’s organization, you are either part of the momentum or you are a drag on progress.

More than ever before, customers have gotten really smart about implementation costs. The total cost of ownership of a piece of software is driven by a combination of functionality, customer maturity, provider maturity and process sophistication. Customers are extremely wary of deals where the cost isn’t precisely controllable. So are sophisticated providers. That’s why there’s a burgeoning market for simple, single function tools. These products can be easily integrated into existing workflows without complex implementation processes. If they are simple enough, the can be installed without modifications to configuration or customization.

While the primary education and trade associations of the HR Industry have continued to focus on industrial era competencies, cutting edge technologies, outsourcing and massive data flows are changing the working reality for HR Pros. Today’s effective HR Department is considering the use of predictive analytics, increased vendor usage and the integration of more automation. That means that each member of the much smaller HR operation is responsible for getting much more done.

Influence Reconsidered Influence is part reach and part focus. Although some commentators suggest that influence is the ability to cause things to happen, the reality is more subtle. Power is the ability to make things happen. Influence is the capacity to increase the likelihood that something will happen. Can you see the distinction? Power is […]