The 2010 Corporate Recruiting Report is published. Stepping back from individual chapters for the first time in months and looking at the work as a whole, I am reminded again that corporate staffing has entered a new era.
This report repeatedly contrasts the components of the new, 21st century staffing model with its equivalents in the old 20th century model; and as the chapters fell into place I occasionally wondered whether I was making the “new model” argument too strongly. Now with a bit of perspective, I’m sure I haven’t.
The traditional responsibilities of corporate staffing have indeed remained constant, but there are now additional responsibilities coupled with new benchmarks; and research that documents the penalties for not raising the performance bar accordingly. The game is being played on a new field, under new conditions, with new equipment and new rules. And naturally, with new consequences, too.
Staffing success today requires:
- Much more detailed, in-depth knowledge of the job marketplace (technology, job seeker attitudes and behavior, globalization, competition, demographics)
- More comprehensive and rigorous efficiency (time, cost, structure, workload, technology, sourcing, outsourcing and marketing)
- Additional responsibility for candidate effectiveness (quality, fit, performance and retention)
- Expertise in brand and consumer marketing
- Technical competence
- Sophisticated workforce planning
- Direct links between staffing activities and business outcomes, and
- Fluency in the non-HR aspects of business.
Consequences
In the new model, the staffing load is much heavier, a reality which frightens many. On the other hand, the business consequences of good staffing have never been better documented, or more impressive. It comes down to this. Staffing is a very big deal because:
- Superior staffing = superior business performance, while
- Inferior staffing = inferior business performance.
Claudio Fernandez Araoz, a partner at Egon Zehnder International, writes eloquently about this in Great People Decisions (Wiley, 2007). His academic study of executive placements on behalf of his firm, coupled with decades of personal experience placing thousands of top executives, amply documents the paramount importance of consistently placing the right people in the right jobs. Not just good people, competent people, or pleasant, worthy and deserving people, but the right people.
Senior executive placements make engrossing copy because success and failure there can have such stunning ramifications. But the principle applies equally to all job categories and levels, to all industries, and to all geographies. Good staffing pays off all the time, everywhere.
Good News
I suggest that this is wonderful news for staffing because it ties the greater challenges and risks of the 21st century staffing model to some very juicy rewards. In business, he who moves the needle gets the respect, the power and the compensation. Salespeople move the needle, which is why they are often the best compensated employees in a company. So the big difference is, in the old model, staffing was not considered a needle-mover; in the new model, it is.
I’m excited about the future of staffing. The profession is gaining traction. Although performance varies widely, each of the major success criteria – efficiency, effectiveness, business alignment and marketing – now has significant traction in the marketplace. Efficiency has the most because it has been around the longest. Marketing has the least because it has evolved most recently, and is the least understood.
Progress has been gradual, more tidal than tsunami over the past decade, and I see that in many organizations staffing still follows the old model. But standing back from work in the trenches, I can see that the tide has turned.
Since most of the people who buy our report are HR practitioners and consultants, people directly responsible for day-to-day staffing activities, perhaps I am preaching largely to the choir. So why not preach “up” to the people they report to, and the people above them, who still believe the old model works just fine and are blocking change?
We’re doing that too, but selling those people will only provide more opportunities, not more progress. Staffing still has to understand the new model, apply it, and demonstrate its benefits. The higher-ups aren’t stupid. Once we get it, they’ll get it. Enlightened self-interest will work wonders.
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