Employers hoping to recruit and retain talented workers in an improving economy will need to work harder.
Specifically, they'll want to retool their learning and development programs, instill passion in the workplace and rethink how performance is assessed, Bersin by Deloitte predicted in its annual forecast.
"As organizations source, manage and develop people this year, they must act boldly, throw away old practices and build a compelling, passion-filled work environment," said Josh Bersin, principal, Bersin by Deloitte, a unit of Deloitte Consulting. "Many of the traditional HR practices – performance appraisal, for example – have to be re-engineered to attract and keep great people."
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Instilling a "continuous learning culture" will be key for companies in 2014, with a shift from short-term training to programs that include formal training coupled with coaching, support from experts, developmental assignments, developmental planning and management support.
While $130 billion was spent worldwide in 2012 on learning and development programs, only half of companies had a senior leader running the programs, Bersin noted.
The need to get a handle on learning and development programs was borne out by the experience of the Bank of New York Mellon. The bank did an inventory and discovered it had more than 9,000 courses in its training catalog, but fewer than 10 percent of them were being used. That lack of discipline and structure, Bersin by Deloitte said, was "surprisingly common."
Meanwhile, creating a workplace that engages employees and brings out their passion, Bersin by Deloitte said, is key to attracting workers. How a company is perceived, its "employment brand," is easy for prospective recruits to find on the internet.
Those recruits, as well as current employees, are interested in management style, opportunities within the company, the work environment, leadership and an employer's brand and mission. The forecast said all these elements should be thought of as a package that should be integrated as one "corporate talent system."
Since 2006, Bersin by Deloitte said companies have complained that their performance rating systems are too costly, create animosity and create busy work. Bersin predicts that companies will eliminate ratings systems and focus on "coaching, feedback, development and agile goal management."
Bersin by Deloitte said companies that thank employees for their work, create meaning and purpose, understand how to coach workers and offer new opportunities have voluntary turnover rates 31 percent lower than employers that do not do these tasks well.
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