InnovationUncategorized

HR Superheroes Unite!

A Recap of 2015 HRO Today Forum Europe

By D. Zachary Misko

Strategic HR Award Winner:

• Thought Leadership – Graebel

HR Practices Award Winners:

Recruitment Team of the Year Unilever and Accenture
Excellence in Engagement Strategy WilsonHCG
Innovation in HR Technology MOL Group
Best Use of Social Media AB InBev and Cielo

HR Providers Award Winners:

Partnership in Recruiting Excellence Dialog and Cielo

Individual Award Winners:

HR Superstar Johnny Campbell, CEO, Social Talent
CHRO of the Year, For Profit Galina Vaisband, HR VP, Home Credit Bank Russia
CHRO of the Year, Lifetime Achievement Julie Sharp, Head of Group HR, Bank of Ireland
CHRO of the Year, Not for Profit Joanne Marshall, Director of HR & OD, University of Bradford
CHRO of the Year, Sustainable Workforce Sherif Hanna, Chief People & Compliance Officer, Mobinil

Finalists for this year’s awards in Europe included the following organizations: AB InBev, Accenture, Azkoyen Group, Bank of Ireland, Cielo, Dialog, emplo, Fiskars, Graebel, Home Credit Bank Russia, Israeli Civil Service Commission, Mobinil, MOL Group, Sandvik, Social Talent, TMF Group, TomTom, University of Bradford, Unilever, and WilsonHCG.

Over the last year, the SharedXpertise team and its members, while working with our board of advisors, have accomplished a lot and have much to celebrate. The awards program theme was “Be Inspired – Recognizing Excellence in HR!”, and the accomplishments of all nominees were truly inspiring. Congratulations to all of the winners!

Panel sessions and table topic discussions took place, and a great line-up of thought leaders and industry experts spoke throughout the two-day event. Johnny Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Social Talent, headlined as this year’s keynote speaker. Campbell enlightened the audience about the direct correlation between a great company culture and strong leadership to create employee engagement. By sharing examples from several Fortune 500 companies, Campbell elaborated on the power of clarifying purpose and how it leads to not only competitive advantage, but also unprecedented profitability and success.

Highlights from day one included a panel of our CHRO of the Year nominees and winners, moderated by SharedXpertise CEO Elliot Clark. Clark asked these leaders to discuss how the structure of their engagement strategy communicates and excites younger workers about their mission, how they have redefined technology platforms, and what processes and priorities they have instituted to make decisions. They also touched on the impact of the declining quality of university graduates worldwide and where and how they are finding the highly educated talent they need.

Ron Dunlap, COO of Graebel, reviewed how models are created to predict future outcomes and addressed the pros and cons of using big data to make critical decisions in an organization. HR thought leaders from five leading HR organizations also took the stage to discuss top-of-mind trends and practices can be shared to promote quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of HR operations, service delivery, and technology strategy. Leaders from the European Association for People Management (EAPM), the CIPD, AEDIPE, Great Place to Work, and the HRO Today Service and Technology Association identified and discussed the best practices of each regional association.

At the end of day one, the much anticipated list of Global RPO Bakers Dozen was announced. Alexander Mann Solutions ranked No. 1 in both the EU and APAC lists. Other companies named to the list were:

2015 EU Bakers Dozen list; 1. Alexander Mann Solutions, 2. Pontoon, 3. Cielo, 4. Futurestep, a Korn Ferry Company, 5. WilsonHCG, 6. Resource Solutions, 7. IBM 2015

APAC Bakers Dozen; 1. Alexander Mann Solutions, 2. Peoplescout/hrX, 3. Allegis Global Solutions, 4. Futurestep, a Korn Ferry Company, 5. Hudson RPO, 6. Decision Toolbox, 7. Career International.

The HRO Today Bakers Dozen Customer Satisfaction ratings survey for RPO identifies industry leaders based on customer survey feedback and dozens of data points. What sets these companies apart in RPO was further discussed in a panel of executives from these companies. In this panel, Clark challenged the panelists to discuss best practices in using big data to focus on recruiting, how to manage ever-changing workforce demographics and to utilize innovation.

To close the panel, each executive was asked to identify a superhero and ability that best relates their capabilities to the business. This created an opportunity for each provider to think on their feet and identify their hidden talent. Answers included challenging the market as “Mr. Invincible” and supporting their brand through thick and thin; utilizing the best intelligence and tools get the job done as Batman; being future-focused and using innovation to save the day as Iron Man; and the list wouldn’t be complete without one company describing its approachable and attractive outfit (of services) as Cat Woman.

The last day of the forum started with four tracks for helping delegates organize the information: talent acquisition, talent management, technology and analytics and outsourcing. Lucas van Wees, vice president commercial & global of KLM, shared his experience with the HR component of its recent merger, including steps taken by HR to continuous build and maintain a world-class airline group, the general framework and joint challenges HR faced during the M & A process, and best practices for consolidating and retaining key staff. Michelle Mendelsson, EMEA co-head of diversity & inclusion at Credit Suisse, shared tips for making job-sharing successful, and the challenges and hurdles overcome in successfully embedding ‘agile working’ into the culture of one of the world’s leading financial services providers.

Later, the iTalent competition rewarded leading HR and recruiting technology companies that are helping businesses recruit, retain employees, and bring innovative solutions to HR departments. There was an incredible number of qualied submissions this year. The goal of the iTalent competition is to recognize and reward best practices in HR technology, and HRO Today is proud to encourage those who are moving the economic needle in a positive direction.

The five finalists who competed for the winning spot were Fair Hiring Project, TempBuddy, Workshape.io, Clinch, and Talentsoft’s Hello Talent recruitment software for applicant tracking. Each had seven minutes to pitch their product to the judges. Hello Talent was named the winner of the 2015 iTalent Europe Competition.

Last year’s winner, Andrew Baber, managing director of Chequed.com Ltd, along with Russell Dalgleish, managing partner of Exolta Capital Partners; Kate Heath, global RPO lead at Lumesse; Max Blumberg, analytics and automation consultant and founder of Blumberg Partnership; and SharedXpertise’s CEO and publisher, Elliot Clark, made up the judging panel. Bill Boorman acted as master of ceremonies for this competition.

“Hello Talent is the result of years of excellence in creating top of the line HR products,” Dustin Robinson, product marketer who pitched for Hello Talent, said. “Our product allows hiring managers, recruiters, headhunters, and small businesses to source, aggregate, and share proles for job candidates for a collaborative recruiting process -it’s also free. We’re honored that the judges and senior HR audience at HRO Today Forum Europe chose Hello Talent as the winner of the competition.”

The caliber of all five finalists demonstrated the innovation that existing and emerging businesses bring to the HR marketplace. HR practitioners will benet from this out-of-the box thinking and in turn, harness the power of social media and big data to help HR practitioners improve access to and the efciency of the global workforce.

The forum closed with discussions led by Eric van Duin, HRIS Manager at PostNL, and Robert Manssour, managing partner at TopBI, who shared insights on how to improve actionable business intelligence and reduce absenteeism. Eamonn Eaton, head of group learning & engagement at Bank of Ireland, then led us through its process for outsourcing learning. He also shared how this model responded and thrived through growth, contraction, market, and organization stabilization and back to a growth market again.

Delegates left the event with many new ideas, best practices and connections – newly prepared to identify and realize their own superpowers in taking over and leading the HR functions within their companies, and to conquer all.

Tags: Innovation, Uncategorized

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