Last week’s HR Technology conference was a great opportunity to take a step back from our everyday work and focus on best practices, future technology, and new ways of looking at our business. The conference had a nice mix this year of practitioners and solution providers. I spoke with companies like Timken, Kraft, Scotiabank, and the State of Nebraska, as well as many small and large technology-based solution providers, some new in the HR space, and others long standing HR leaders.

Conference participants on both sides voiced similar challenges they were currently facing, including handling global change management, dealing with mobile workforces, and connecting their HR efforts to business needs.  There was also an undercurrent throughout the entire session concerning HR data and workforce planning. Time and again we heard that the top systems are now meeting the bulk of functionality needs, but lack the tools to analyze the data and share insights effectively with the business.
Our High-Impact HR research supports these comments, finding that the top two challenges facing HR functions today include measuring HR programs in financial terms, and delivering workforce metrics and analytics.

The best things in life are “free” --  even analytics?

In the wake of last year’s challenging economy, we’ve seen several solution providers developing unique ways to create product awareness and build a loyal base of followers. One way is to offer “Free” initial access to the technology, and then slowly entice buyers to spend more for advanced capabilities, services, or upgrades. My mother always told me that nothing in life was truly “free,” but these analytics offerings are worth a second look, as they are definitely bending the rules. 

The Learning market has had to contend with “free” technology options such as open-source for years.  However, the talent management space hasn’t experienced that same phenomenon, due to the sensitive nature of employee and business data, until recently – at HR Tech this year we saw two technology organizations that were launching “free” or “zero cost” options for workforce analytics tools.

eThority

eThority is one of the many workforce/HR analytics tools coming to the forefront this year in response to the overload of HR, talent, and business data HR functions are being asked to analyze and assess.  As a differentiator, they are offering their analytics and reporting tool for “Zero Cost License (ZCL)”, allowing up to 500 users access to their web-based platform technology (the ZCL format comes in SaaS as well as a downloadable internally installed platform as well). I was pleasantly surprised to see that what was offered in the initial ZCL package was pretty robust, including some levels of advanced analytics, customizable reporting, the ability to easily pull data from multiple locations and compare in several different ways, and user-friendly dashboard tools. If you’re looking for a user-friendly alternative to more complicated tools such as Crystal Reports, Cognos, or Business Objects – yet more advanced than excel or the tools integrated with your talent or HRIS systems, then this one may be worth a look.  

OrcaEyes

SonarVision, an OrcaEyes workforce intelligence solution, was also launched at HR Tech in its new on-demand format that starts with a “free” initial analysis.  More of a benchmarking platform for specific workforce planning questions (Operational, Financial, Aging Demographics and Diversity), OrcaEyes has partnered up with Crain Publishing to provide a free-on-line initial analysis. Their on-going payment model, based on individual consumption units, provides organizations an option to test drive the analysis and benchmarking capabilities of the tool without a large initial investment.  For many companies who haven’t had the chance to begin looking at their HR data in any structured or benchmarked format, this will provide an opportunity to view their options.

Merging worlds of Workforce Planning and Workforce Management

Our discussions with many HR leaders have recently focused on how they can leverage their workforce management tools and data more effectively in their workforce planning efforts. Organizations such as Aruspex, one of the few stand-alone workforce planning tools in the market today, are aggressively working towards bringing the traditional once a year workforce planning analysis together with the day to day reporting on workforce management tools.  Companies that used to analyze workforce planning data once a year, or once a quarter now request data pulls on a monthly basis with the ability to monitor plan progression and make alterations based on fast changing business needs.  Traditional workforce management tools, such as Kronos and CyberShift, are building better reporting capabilities, as well as more global and mobile capabilities.  All of these capabilities are designed to ensure that companies get more accurate and timely data entry, which can be used in more HR analytics and workforce planning updates. 

Contingent and Flexible workforces driving new partnerships and solutions

Workforce planning systems are also creating deep connections with recruiting software and recruiting service organizations. For example Aruspex recently created a close partnership with Taleo, and is holding discussions with companies such as ManPower to discuss more strategic flexible workforce planning models.  We heard both solution providers and customers discussing the current challenges they face in dealing with the growing demand of business leaders for a professional but contingent workforce. Organizations are being more cautious in hiring large groups of full time employees, especially throughout Europe and North America, and are hoping to leverage the large number of out-placed professional workers currently in the market. 

To support this demand for better contingent workforce forecasting, recruiting, tracking, on-boarding, and ultimately engaging these new-professional roles, customers are turning to their service providers and system providers for answers. Some are rising to the occasion.  PeopleSoft has been building on its contingent workforce capabilities for several versions; eThority is providing a tool that can analyze the quality of contract hires and performance of this population.  Companies like Iloverewards is providing a rewards platform connected to social-network environments like Facebook and Linkedin to provide incentives for channel-partners and contract resources that creates a venue to share “references” on a job well-done in an open professional forum. These incentives are worth their weight in gold on platforms such as LinkedIn for any employee but especially for contingent workforces. All of these solutions provide better tools for connecting and creating a relationship with a workforce that will play a major role in many companies ability to meet growing business demand while still managing long term risks.   

Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is a combination of both science (analytics) and art (planning). It is also one of the least defined HR disciplines, leading to confusion on its role and its importance to the HR function. Of the 720 companies we surveyed in our High-Impact HR research, only 36% of those companies conducted strategic or enterprise workforce planning, while High-impact HR organizations were twice as likely to incorporate sophisticated forecasting and workforce analytics into their processes. Simply put, if you haven’t begun to think about your strategy for workforce planning, you should.

• Where is my current workforce data being captured and managed? Is it being captured well?
• Who is looking at the implications of every-day business decisions on my annual workforce plan?
• What audiences should be included in a long term workforce plan, full-time employees, professional and skilled workers, contingent, or flexible workforces?
• How do I analyze, track, and trend my workforce data to obtain the best insights for long term planning?
• What tools should my organization use for workforce planning and data analysis? Does it provide a view that gives me answers versus data?
• How do I measure the success of my planning and management efforts?

Conclusion

HR Tech was a great place to begin looking at how the solution providers and other companies are handling these questions and providing options for your organization. If you’d like to see more updates from the conference, please see Madeline’s blog on her Talent Acquisition insights from the session, and Barb’s update on Talent Management and HRMS space, including key findings from the recently unveiled Talent Management Customer Satisfaction findings.

We’d also love to hear your thoughts on the growing importance of workforce planning and HR analytics for your organization? Is this the time to invest your resources? Is your organization finding value in these efforts – if so, How?  Please feel free to e-mail me directly at Stacey.harris@bersin.com with any question or comments on this topic.