What is a Performance and Talent Management System?

Performance and talent management systems have been acquiring importance of late as management systems that help track employee performance in a more comprehensive manner than human resources management systems (HRIS). Where a performance and talent management system differs from an HRIS is that while the latter takes the physical aspects of the employee records into consideration; a performance and talent management system goes beyond just the numbers and incorporates the qualitative aspects of tracking everything from recruitment to retirement.
A performance and talent management system is meant to help overcome the shortfalls of an HRIS. An HRIS is primarily meant to input physical values relating to the employee, such as time in and time out, payroll, deductions and such other items. A performance and talent management system is more of a strategic inputter for the enterprise. It helps to locate, invite and nurture talent, and then helps HR to measure and quantify these and arrive at reasonable decisions.
The four cornerstones of a performance and talent management systemSince a performance and talent management system is more detailed and of a slightly different nature from an HRIS; it is built on a few cornerstones of its own. These pillars of a performance and talent management system, which help to round up the product and make it what it is, can be summarized into the following:
RecruitmentThe first important feature of a performance and talent management system is the one relating to recruitment. The performance and talent management system should have software that tracks everything about the employee’s recruitment, starting from the time she was a candidate, to the time of onboarding. It usually has an interface that tracks everything from the ad calling for the position to be filled up to the actual joining. The recruitment feature of a performance and talent management system also offers the opportunity to upload ads on the social media and the web. It is thus an important feature that helps to streamline and document all stages of the recruitment.

Learning and developmentAnother important element of a performance and talent management system is the way it helps to keep track of the employee’s training programs. It helps to identity the training needs of each employee based on the feedback HR gets from the reporting manager. It then documents the training that took place after the program was planned and executed, and finally, also the extent to which the training met its purpose. A performance and talent management system should have a learning module that familiarizes it with the latest learning trends in the particular industry and should help it initiate training needs that are best suited for the employee and the organization. Performance managementOne of the other core features of a performance and talent management system is the one that helps management evaluate the performance of the employees. Employee performance is the most important criterion for judging an employee’s abilities, strengths and weaknesses. These days, the traditional annual appraisal methods are making way for specific task and goal-oriented assessments, because many organizations think that it makes sense to give a person a task to carry out and judge her abilities in relation to how she carried it out, rather than waiting for a whole year to do so. A performance and talent management system aligns perfectly well with this concept, as it keeps track of employee performance management during a defined training program or task, as well as in relation to a timeframe.
CompensationLike performance, the direction of compensation too, is changing to a more task related nature. A few organizations are no longer waiting for a whole year to add bonuses to employees who show exceptional qualities at work. They are quick at offering rewards more for specific tasks than over fixed durations of work. This is another area in which a performance and talent management system comes in handy, since it measures compensation on a task-to-task basis.

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How to choose a supply chain management solution

Any business that opts for a supply chain management solution has to have clarity on how to choose a supply chain management solution. This is because the supply chain management solution is expected to carry out a number of very important functions. Choosing the wrong or inappropriate one can backfire on the business and derail and impede, rather than ease its work.
Businesses have to take a few important factors into consideration when they have to choose a supply chain management solution. For the supply chain management solution to perform its function of facilitating the supply chain for the business, it needs to perform its functions smoothly without causing hiccups to the business. This is where the decision-making ability of the business owner comes into picture.
So, what factors need to be taken into consideration when a business has to choose a supply chain management solution? Try considering these:
1. Choose by industryThis is obviously a no brainer, but it is an important first consideration nevertheless in choosing a supply chain management solution. Many supply chain management solution providers sell the idea that these are one-size-fits-all solutions that work across a number of industries since the core functions are essentially the same.
This may be true to an extent, but while a number of functionalities are common across a few industries; it is important to get down to the one that is built for your business. A supply chain management solution that works best for retail, for example, may not be as effective for an automobile store. Getting down to the details and dissecting the functionality that the supply chain management solution performs for your particular industry is an important first step in choosing a supply chain management solution.

2. Define your needThis is the next important consideration when choosing a supply chain management solution. A number of supply chain management solutions are available in the market. Choose the one that suits your need the best. In order to do this, the business has to define its need to the fullest extent. It could take a few factors such as this into consideration:

3. Understand the integration function of the supply chain management solutionIntegration is, well, the very soul of a supply chain management solution. The business should have clarity on what functions need to be integrated into the supply chain management solution. The reason for which the integration function is built into a supply chain management solution is to facilitate synchronization of the whole chain. This makes it one of the core factors that determined how to choose a supply chain management solution.
4. Insist on the visibility featureVisibility is a great means for the business to have control over its sales, inventory, logistics, and a host of other functions. The supply chain management solution has to offer visibility on all these functions.

5. Customer relationship management (CRM)A supply chain management solution is incomplete if it does not come equipped with a strong CRM feature. The CRM is the determinant in helping to establish a good relationship with the customer. The CRM feature should enable the business to completely understand the nature of the orders and their status, plus, more importantly, help in customer query responses and other important customer-related features.

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Key issues in HR auditing

The importance of HR auditing can be gauged from the fact that it is about employees, an organization’s most valuable resource. It is through HR audits that an organization evaluates its strengths and weaknesses of its most important resource. HR audits have come a long way from the earlier times, when they were considered a set of checklists to be ticked. Today, HR audits in organizations consist of a whole gamut of sustainable and continuous audit activities that relate to critical areas such as governance, compliance and management in the organization.

Important benefits of HR auditing

HR auditing helps organizations:

o  Zero in on not only existing problems relating to HR, but also potential ones

o  Assess the efficacy of HR management practices

o  Understand the deficiencies of the HR internal control processes

o  Evaluate human capital and risks, both from the strategic and compliance-related perspectives

Rightly done HR audits enhance the value of an organization's human capital and its competitiveness and bring down its susceptibility to employment practices liabilities by advising the management on what corrective steps it needs to take to resolve HR internal control processes.

Most importantly, HR audits should take human capital related risks and opportunities from the standpoint of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), which leads to higher interaction between HR and management.  

Proper ways of carrying out HR auditing

Although most organizations understand the importance of HR auditing and its uses; it is important for them to get the exact ways of implementing it. Getting their HR auditing right is the stepping stone to many important useful and corrective steps.

Risk management is the single most important ingredient that has to go into HR auditing. The proper ways of carrying out HR auditing will be imparted at a two-day seminar from GlobalCompliancePanel, a leading provider of professional trainings for the areas of regulatory compliance.

The Director of this seminar is Ronald Adler, a president-CEO of Laurdan Associates, Inc., a veteran owned, human resource management consulting firm that specializes in HR audits, employment practices liability risk management, HR metrics and benchmarking, strategic HR-business issues and unemployment insurance. Ronald brings vast and deep experience in all the areas of HR including HR auditing.

Professionals who wish to benefit from this learning can register for this seminar by logging on to http://www.globalcompliancepanel.com/control/globalseminars/~product_id=900950SEMINAR?blogger_SEO .

The Director of this seminar will help organizations direct and focus their attention on their human resource management practices, policies, procedures, processes, and outcomes.

Asking the right questions

The foundation to sound HR auditing is to ask the right questions. Sharp, thoughtful, perceptive and insightful, they should prod management into getting into the depths of HR auditing. The ways by which to ingrain the habit of asking the right, meaningful questions will be the major learning this seminar will impart. Ronald will show the ways by which HR auditing needs to learn to throw up a structured and systematic series of questions about core areas such as key compliance, risk management, internal auditing, and human resource management issues to HR, which after all, is the real purpose of HR audits.

An understanding of how to ask these questions should be out of the realization that no two employees that HR auditing policies are focused on are alike. This way, Ronald will give clarity on the distinguishing nature of HR auditing.

HR auditing from the ERM perspective

A core aspect of HR auditing is that it should be inseparably linked to Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) for it to become effective and successful. To make this happen, HR auditing should take a broader and comprehensive view of human capital risks bring the interrelationships and interactions between HR and other functions relating to management and the organization in alignment with each other.

Ronald will explain these, as well as the ways by which HR auditing can help the organization identify and capitalize on potential opportunities and reduce risks.

HR professionals and others related to HR auditing, such as CFO's, Internal Auditors, External Auditors, Risk Managers, Compliance Officers and COOs can benefit from the lessons learnt at this seminar.

He will cover the following areas at this seminar:

o  Review an overview of employment related risk management and HR Audits

o  Assess human capital risks

o  Develop HR metrics

o  Explore the HR audit model

o  Assess strategic alignment

o  Assess HR management related documents

o  Assess HR management processes and practices

o  Review the practical applications of HR audits.