Insights on Corporate Talent, Learning, and HR Technology
It has been a crazy year so far, as inflation and recession worries abound. In this podcast I will try to demystify what’s going on and give you what I believe is your mandate as an HR leader or HR professional in the mess of information coming your way.
Additional Information
Despite the biting headlines about the stock market correction and possible economic slowdown, one thing is very clear. Jobs are being created.
This week’s BLS study shows that the US unemployment rate remains very low at 3.6% and is 2.2% lower than a year ago. In other words, companies are hiring.
EMSI believes there are ... Read more»
This week we launch our Irresistible Conference at the same time the stock market has plunged, interest and mortgage rates are rising, and economists are worried about a recession. It reminds me of our first Impact conference in 2008, which we launched the month the financial meltdown began.
Whether the economy goes down or ... Read more»
I am constantly inspired by the ingenuity of the business community. As more than 20 million Americans find themselves out of work, employers are going through a similar level of angst. One company needs to lay off or furlough thousands of restaurant, retail, or airline workers, while another needs to hire thousands of people ... Read more»
Each quarter for the last several years we have published TalentWatch®, a comprehensive look at talent trends in organizations around the world. 
This report, which is only available to research members, looks at several key topics:
In our Q2 TalentWatch® research report (TalentWatch is Bersin & Associates business research on employment, hiring, talent readiness, and investment trends, available to research members) we see definite signs that business leaders in most industries have now lowered their expectations and essentially “capitulated” on the 2009 recession. This means that companies have stopped looking ... Read more»
Here we are entering the worst recession in more than 30 years, reading about layoffs, downsizing, and restructuring in almost every industry. So why would I start our 2009 research with a discussion about the need to focus on recruiting? Well, contrary to what many may believe, even in times of job reductions recruiting must ... Read more»
Witness the number of companies undergoing a wrenching transformation (read “potential death”) in today’s economy: the US Auto industry (GM, Ford, Chrysler) , the US Newspaper industry (LA Times, NY Times), and many elements of the financial services industry.
A recent global survey of 1100 business leaders by Boston Consulting Group found that one of ... Read more»
As the US economy lost 240,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate rises to 6.5%, one of the questions I know many people ask is the direction of the “talent management” marketplace. Let me give you our thoughts on the trends taking place.
First, the urgency of “talent management” in corporate HR organizations has ... Read more»
Our soon to be published research on corporate L&D spending in 2008 shows a definite slowdown in spending on corporate training. (An 11% drop!) This is certainly not a surprise – in August our research panel shows that today’s corporate talent managers cite “a need to reduce costs” as their #1 business challenge (54% of ... Read more»
In the last few months we have read more and more about the global economic slowdown. Jim Cramer, the Wall Street pundit, wrote in today’s New York Magazine, that he has never seen things as dismal as they are on Wall Street. Today the State of California announced a 5.7% unemployment rate, an increase of ... Read more»
This week I had a call with five financial services clients to understand the impact of the economic slowdown on their learning, talent, and systems investments. How are HR, talent strategies, and enterprise learning investments being affected by the credit crunch and slowdown in the US financial system?
(The clients included companies in banking and ... Read more»
We are clearly entering some form of economic slowdown. Our most recent index of talent management executives (January of 2008) showed some significant changes from May of 2007: 21% greater interest in cost-reduction, 18% lower focus on product introductions, and a significant increase in focus on building new leadership (18% increase). So let’s assume your ... Read more»
As we look ahead to 2008, many pundits are trying to predict the direction of the US and world economy. Today we see that the US unemployment rate ticked up to 5% and the job creation rate (18,000 for December) was at its lowest level in four years. The unemployment rate is affected by many ... Read more»
