Top HR challenges

For 2009 here are the top ranked list of the top HR challenges (in North American business)

1. Acquiring key talent/lack of available talent


2. Building leadership capability


3. Driving cultural and behavioral change in the organization


4. Retaining key talent


5. Increasing line manager capability to handle people-management responsibilities


6. Succession planning


7. Constraints on headcount (”making do with less”)


8. Increasing workforce productivity


9. Lack of consensus about the organization’s strategy/direction


10. Encouraging organizational innovation


11. Resourcing and managing HR issues in “new geographies” for the company


12. Managing human capital during and after an acquisition or merger


13. Implementing people changes resulting from changes due to operational performance


14. Workforce planning


15. Measuring the contribution of human capital to business performance


16. Reducing overall human capital costs


17. Coping with an aging workforce

Does your organization's issues compare with these, let me know at wgstevens2@gmail.com .

Base: Survey of 154 senior HR professionals in the U.S. and Canada

Source: “The State of HR Transformation,” North America, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, 2006

Discovered via Workforce Management (10 September 2007)

How Women Are Redefining Work and Success

Business Week report in their Work-Life Balance segment that, "Women are using their increased economic power to bring about more creative, manageable work schedules.

"The article features broadcasters Claire Shipman, of ABC News' Good Morning America, and Katty Kay, of BBC World News America, and how they each struggled prior to deciding to turn down promotions and plum assignments so they could tend to their families.

As the BW article notes, "It wasn't that they weren't ambitious, they just weren't interested in the grueling climb up the corporate ladder. They yearned for a path to success based on results, not hours clocked." They tell tell their story in their book Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success.

Shipman & Kay show the increasing impact of professional women on companies' bottom lines, and give practical advice on how to create "a more sane" work life.

In the BW piece their is an excerpt from the book that looks at the trade-offs many employees are willing to make to get a better work-life balance, and how companies are reacting.

This is a topic that will, hopefully, generate a lot of thoughtful inquiry and a rethinking of our long standing models or organization, management and work.

I thank Peter Roche for this addition to my blog.