Today Patersons Press Release hit the news wires announcing our newest partnership. Patersons offers a single global payroll solution across 120+ countries.  They employ a “hybrid” approach, meaning they have their own payroll in some countries and have entered into strong partnerships with best-of-breed, local payroll vendors in other countries.  They provide a single Web-based front-end for data management and they take responsibility for managing the interfaces back and forth between the HR front-end and each of the local country payroll engines.

Our expectation is that this solution will help our global clients meet their global payroll challenges:  Patersons provides the software (yes, it’s SaaS) and Jeitosa provides the project management, business process optimization, and technical support, such as conversions and other needed interfaces. We are looking forward to continuing to help our clients go global!

In this month’s Jeitocast Karen Beaman interviews Sandee Piece on the cultural differences around the world that impact effective working relationships on a global project. Sandee shares her experiences and learnings developed over many years of managing large global teams and provides some helpful tips and recommendations to ensure effective global collaboration. Three areas in particular, she feels are critical to successfully managing a global team:

• understanding of the team’s level of project management maturity,
• differing perceptions of time and meeting attendance, and
• managing team expectations and completion of assignments.

 

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Thank you to those of you who commented on my previous post on this topic. Continuing this theme with one last look back to some of the lasting impacts of the 2008-2009 recession on the HR function, I offer three additional perspectives:

4) We became more process-oriented.

With the reduction in funds for new capital investments, organizations started looking closer at what they already had in place and how they could improve on it. While the vast majority of companies have systems in place for core HR, Benefits, and Payroll, most started looking at what additional processes could be automated or self-service-enabled in order to gain efficiencies and effectiveness, but mostly to reduce costs. Moving from transaction-oriented, organizations today are becoming process-oriented, meaning they are taking a holistic view of business activity and integrating processes across functions, such as pay-for-performance, development and succession planning, and staffing and workforce planning. While we still have ways to go, there is a definite movement toward process-oriented HR.

5) We became more talent-focused.

Talent Management has been the fastest growing area in the HR space for the last several years. Organizations are finally executing on what they have long maintained, that people are the most important asset. Gartner’s Jim Holincheck at IHRIM’s Global Forum in Chicago this past year reported that Talent Management grew ~7% through Q2 of 2009 while core HRMS revenues grew just ~4.5%. Clearly the HRMS market has matured while talent management is still in its infancy, but there is a definitive movement toward a more talent-focused HR approach and there will be no turning back. With a talent-focused approach, HR moves another step closer to becoming that elusive HR business partner.

6) We became more business-centric.

The successful HR professional today, post-recession, is a hybrid developed out of varied experiences who realizes the need to be business-centric, metrics-minded, systems-savvy. While many HR professionals may be stuck in an administrative quagmire, unable to focus on more strategic issues due to a lack of tools and strategies to eliminate and automate much of the administrative backbone of HR, there are few who don’t realize the importance of business knowledge and financial acumen to be a successful strategic partner to the business. Business-centric means understanding the role that HR strategies and services play in driving business growth — sales, revenues, and profits.

Other ideas?  What do you think has changed forever for HR as a result of the last two tumultuous years? I’d love to hear from you!

The end of the year is a time to look back and reflect on what we accomplished (or didn’t!) and look forward to what will be different (we hope!) in the new year.  So here are three things that I think have changed for HR and HR systems during this rough, recessionary year — the worse economic year for business since the Great Depression. And I think these are lasting changes. While the recession will abate and the economy will slowly recover, I think these are some fundamental things that have changed for HR forever.

1) We got leaner.

Unemployment reached its highest level in 26 years (November 6, 2009 New York Times). And while it’s not front page news anymore, organizations are still continuing to “rationalize and rightsize.”  I think HR as a function was particularly hard-hit. Our continuing inability to justify the HR function as a value-added business partner has caught up with us.  There seem to be as many VPs and Directors of HR out of work as there are real estate agents without houses to sell. Yet being lean is a good thing. It teaches us to work smarter and be more efficient and effective in everything we do.

2) We got meaner.

This difficult economic year has taken its toll on the people left behind in the organization.  Called the “survivor syndrome“, the people left behind have a whole new set of challenges they have to deal with. In most cases, they have to pick up additional responsibilities because the work doesn’t simply doesn’t go away when people leave. In other cases, they may have lost a close friend or ally at work. As a result, I think organizations have gotten meaner. At a recent HR Breakfast Club meeting participants said that their companies no longer feel any obligation to provide training or development opportunities for their employees.  The feeling was that the employees should just be happy they have a job at all!  Being mean is NOT a good thing. Environments where everyone looks out for their own self create anarchy and breed situations such as Enron. While it is definitely a cold hard world out there, as the economy rebounds and as companies must again compete for top talent, I believe (hope!) that this change will soften. While I believe that people are ultimately responsible for driving their own careers, organizations have a responsibility to support and develop their workforce to help individuals achieve their greatest potential — which study after study has shown, contributes to company performance — that means growth and profitability.

3) We got greener.

The sustainability movement accelerated considerably in the last decade as people are now realizing that the earth doesn’t have an endless supply of raw materials and as organizations are now learning about the savings that can be accomplished through more effective re-use of materials (e.g., recycling paper and printer cartridges). process automation (e.g., eliminating paper forms), and implementation of self-service strategies (e.g., eliminating duplicate paper forms with multiple signatures/approvals).  The annual CedarCrestone Technology survey has consistently demonstrated that automation and self-service enablement can bring 25-75% savings, depending on the process. Becoming “greener” and providing more direct access through process automation is definitely a good thing!

So what lasting impacts do you think the recession has had or will have on HR, HR systems, and business in general? I look forward to hearing from you!

We have just completed the preliminary analysis of our second annual Going Global Readiness Survey. Over 100 global organizations responded to the survey with companies ranging from 500 employees to over 200,000 employees and covering a broad range of industries. Three-quarters of the organizations are North American multinationals and 14% are based in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

We haven’t finished all of the analysis yet, but there are few interesting highlights that I can share with you now:

Greatest Challenges: The greatest challenges that companies are facing when going global are:

• cultural differences (47% this year versus 53% last year),
• lack of resources (40% versus 45% last year),
• technology/systems issues (39% versus 51% last year),
• time zone differences (35% versus 32% last year),
• data quality issues (31% versus 26% last year),
• data privacy  (29% versus 42% last year), and
• international compliance (27% versus 26% last year).

Interestingly, the greatest challenge companies face in going global, they also cite as their greatest success: developing and appreciating global diversity. The good news, as with most things in life, the more you work at something, the better you get at it!

Strategic Planning: Top-performing organizations involve HR from the local business sites in the company’s strategic planning efforts: they are 20% more likely than the average and a third more likely than bottom-performing organizations to involve local HR in strategic planning efforts. Clearly the more you involve the right people in the company’s planning efforts:

• the broader your thinking is,
• the more buy-in you get,
• the less change management issues you have, and therefore
• the more successful execution of your strategy.

Service Delivery: Top-performing organizations in the Going Global Survey make greater use of key organizational constructs:

• Centers of Excellence (61%),
• Shared Services (44%),
• Offshoring (44%), and
• Outsourcing (44%).

They are 18% more likely to implement Shared Services and outsourcing strategies and 14% more likely to have a Center of Excellence in place. This finding also corroborates many other studies that show that top-performing organizations deploy a multi-sourcing approach, ensuring that the right work is performed in the right place, by the right people, at the right time. Segregating work in to transaction-oriented and strategic/ knowledge-based work helps organizations achieve economies of scale and allows the transition of HR into a more strategic business partner role.

Thank you to all of you who took the time to complete the survey for us. To read a preliminary copy of the full report, please click here. To participate in the survey, please click here. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue our analysis.