Dell Wants Half of Employees Working Remotely by 2020 by Jeffrey Burt

Company officials say having employees telecommute or work remotely saves money, makes employees more productive and helps the environment. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in February generated a lot of attention when the company announced that employees could no longer work from home and had to come into the office. Mayer and other Yahoo officials said it was the right move for the company, arguing that Yahoo needed to improve communication and collaboration among employees, and that it was difficult to do without having the employees under the same roof.

The decision went against the trend toward telecommuting—particularly in the tech sector—and was furiously debated, with critics saying that telecommuting boosted worker productivity, made for more satisfied employees, was a good recruiting tool, saved companies money and helped the environment. It also reportedly has engendered some anger from Silicon Valley residents, who say Yahoo's decision and similar ones by other tech vendors like Hewlett-Packard are key contributors to a worsening traffic situation in the area, according to Business Insider. However, Dell is laying out a plan to get half of its workforce to work remotely at least part of the time by 2020, which officials said will reduce the vendor's expenses while helping out the environment. The effort around increased telecommuting is one of more than two dozen goals outlined in a recent report by the newly-private Dell—called the "2020 Legacy of Good" plan—that officials are aiming for over the next six-plus years to reduce the company's impact on the environment.

Other goals range from ensuring that 100 percent of Dell packaging is made from reusable or compostable materials, phasing out "environmentally sensitive materials" (such as mercury and berylium) as viable alternatives hit the market, getting 75 percent of employees involved in community service, and diverting 90 percent of all waste generated by Dell buildings away from landfills. Dell already offers flexible work schedules through its Connected Workplace program, through which 20 percent of employees telecommute, work remotely or have variable work times. Trisa Thompson, vice president of corporate responsibility at Dell, told Houston television station KVUE that having 20 percent of the company's 14,000 employees at Round Rock, Texas, saved Dell $14 million in 2012 and reduced CO2 emissions by 6,735 metric tons. Increasing the number of telecommuters and remote workers to 50 percent could result in more than 7,000 cars being taken off area roads, Thompson said." Technology now allows people to connect anytime, anywhere, to anyone in the world, from almost any device," the Dell report reads. "This is dramatically changing the way people work, facilitating 24x7 collaboration with colleagues who are dispersed across time zones, countries and continents.

Dell is a global technology leader, so our team members should be able to take advantage of the flexible work opportunities that our own products and services create."The company also has begun offering consulting services to customers looking to create similar flexible work schedules using Dell technology and expertise.

According to the market research firm Global Workplace Analytics, telecommuting and remote working is becoming increasingly popular, with 3.3 million people in the United States—not including the self-employed or unpaid volunteers—saying their home is their primary place of work. Regular telecommuting grew by 79.7 percent between 2005 and 2012, and should grow to 3.9 million workers by 2016, according to the firm.Sixty-four million U.S. employees—about half of all workers in the country—are in a job that is compatible to telecommuting and remote working at least part of the time, Global Workplace Analytics reported.According to a March report by Staples Advantage, the B2B unit of retail chain Staples, 93 percent of employees surveyed said telecommuting programs are benefitting both them and their companies, and 53 percent of business decision makers said telecommuting leads to more productive employees.

In addition, 37 percent of employers reported a drop in absenteeism, while 48 percent of remote workers surveyed said they are less stressed.However, there also were concerns: 59 percent of telecommuters don't use their company’s data backup system, putting sensitive information at risk, and 33 percent of employees said dealing with IT issues is one of the most difficult aspects of working from home

How to Find Great Candidates by Looking Past the Obvious – by Brandi Temple

When your business is growing fast -- faster than you could ever possibly imagine -- it's likely that you will consider bringing in an expert who has "been there and done that" to help your business go where you want it to go. But whether you are inventing something completely new, creating a new business model or merely shaking up the status quo (and aren't we entrepreneurs always trying to do that?), an expert from the trenches of business-as-usual may not be the perfect fit for your company.

It's not that you don't need an expert. Most growing businesses could benefit from a seasoned point of view. But you need a very special kind of expert, someone willing to help you build the business you want to build, not the one she thinks you should be building. That kind of expert is not so easy to find.

To avoid making costly mistakes (and I'm speaking from experience), here's what we try to do at my company, Lolly Wolly Doodle:

Don't start with the title.
Old-fashioned job titles can send you down a rabbit hole. Even if you're sure you need a vice president of operations, you should identify the top three things that you want accomplished by the person sitting in that job. Be as specific as possible. Then, when the VP of operations from the big-box store down the road walks in for an interview and shares her experience with you, listen for those three things.

Prepare three scenarios and ask how she would react to them. If she answers differently than you expect, don't discount the expert right away, but explain how your company reacts and listen carefully to how she responds. That will give you clues as to how her experience might align with your needs.

Get granular.
If you're interviewing a candidate from a traditional top-down company for your new and growing business, don't gloss over the specifics of his experience. Startups require someone who is hands-on and flexible and who has been close to the ground recently enough to understand not only how to manage people and develop processes, but also how to roll up his sleeves and do it themselves.

If you're looking for an expert in enterprise resource planning, ask each candidate how many systems he has implemented. What went right and wrong? What was his specific role? You may be in apparel, like Lolly Wolly Doodle, and the candidate may come from the grocery business, but you may find that his experience dovetails with your needs. You won't know unless you ask for specifics.

Don't compromise.
It's so easy to be dazzled by the promise of experience when you're determined to succeed. But tread carefully. A wrong hire can prove costly -- in time, in money and in business progress. Make sure the cultural fit is right. If you're gutsy and fast-paced, then your expert -- no matter whether he hails from a traditional role in corporate America or the startup in the office next door with the magnetic black walls and neon chalk -- better share your values and vision.

Know exactly what you need.
If we knew exactly what we needed, we might not have sought an expert in the first place, right? Well, not exactly. As someone who built a business from the ground up, I still feel the urge to do everything myself, but realistically I can't. So if you wind up hiring an expert who doesn't work out (and it's bound to happen at some point), reevaluate those top three things that you thought you needed in the first place.

The best way to revamp that list is to do the job yourself. If the person you hired was perfect on paper but didn't work out, it may be that you didn't fully know what you needed. You probably won't be able to do the job perfectly, which means you will quickly learn what skills you are seeking to fill your knowledge gaps. After all, isn't filling gaps in knowledge what working with an expert is all about?

The author is an Entrepreneur contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Brandi Temple is the founder and CEO of Lolly Wolly Doodle, a social shopping innovator and leader in personalized children’s apparel and accessories. A mother of four and a first-time entrepreneur, Temple founded the Lexington, N.C.-based company in 2008. All Lolly Wolly Doodle clothes are designed, manufactured or customized in the U.S., creating new American manufacturing jobs.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229962#ixzz2lkHtWano

How Google Is Using People Analytics to Completely Reinvent HR - By Dr. John Sullivan

If you haven’t seen it in the news, after its stock price broke the $800 barrier last month, Google moved into the No. 3 position among the most valuable firms in the world.

Google is clearly the youngest firm among the leaders; it has surprisingly been less than a decade since Google’s IPO.

Most companies on the top 20 market cap list could be accurately described as “old school,” because most can attribute their success to being nearly half a century old, having a long established product brand, or through great acquisitions. Google’s market success can instead be attributed to what can only be labeled as extraordinary people management practices that result from its use of “people analytics.”

A new kind of people management

The extraordinary marketplace success of Google (and Apple, which is No. 1 on the list) is beginning to force many business leaders to take notice and to come to the realization that there is now a new path to corporate greatness.

“New path” firms dominate by producing continuous innovation. And executives are beginning to learn that continuous innovation cannot occur until a firm makes a strategic shift toward a focus on great people management.

A strategic focus on people management is necessary because innovations come from people, and you simply can’t maximize innovations unless you are capable of recruiting and retaininginnovators. And even then, you must provide them with great managers and an environment that supports innovation.

Unfortunately, making that transition to an innovative firm is problematic because almost every current HR function operates under 20^th century principles of past practices, efficiency, risk avoidance, legal compliance, and hunch-based people management decisions. If you want serial innovation, you will need to reinvent traditional HR and the processes that drive innovation.

Shifting to data-based people management

The basic premise of the “people analytics” approach is that accurate people management decisions are the most important and impactful decisions that a firm can make. You simply can’t produce superior business results unless your managers are making accurate people management decisions.

Many do argue that product R&D, marketing, or resource allocation decisions are instead the most impactful decisions. However, each one of those business decisions is made by an employee. If you hire and retain mostly mediocre people and you provide them with little data, you can only assume that they will make mediocre decisions in each of these important business areas, as well as in people management decisions.

No one in finance, supply chain, marketing, etc. would ever propose a solution in their area without a plethora of charts, graphs, and data to support it, but HR is known to all too frequently rely instead on trust and relationships. People costs often approach 60 percent of corporate variable costs, so it makes sense to manage such a large cost item analytically.

Another major problem in HR is its traditional reliance on relationships. Relationships are the antithesis of analytical decision-making. The decision-making “currency” for most business decisions has long been data, but up until now, HR has relied on a different currency: that of building relationships.

In direct contrast, Google’s success has to be attributed in large part to the fact that it is the world’s only data-driven HR function. Google’s business success should convince executives at any firm that wants to grow dramatically that they must at least consider adopting the data and analytically based model used by Google. Its approach has resulted in Google producing amazing workforce productivity results that few can match (on average, each employee generates nearly $1 million in revenue and $200,000 in profit each year).

How does the Google approach reinvent HR?

HR at Google is dramatically different from the hundreds of other HR functions that I have researched and worked with. To start with, at Google it’s not called human resources; instead, the function is called “people operations.” The VP and HR leader Laszlo Bock has justifiably learned to demand data-based decisions everywhere.

People management decisions at Google are guided by the powerful “people analytics team.” Two key quotes from the team highlight their goals:

• “All people decisions at Google are based on data and analytics.”
• The goal is to … “bring the same level of rigor to people-decisions that we do to engineering decisions.”

Google is replacing the 20^th century subjective decision-making approach in HR. Although it calls its approach “people analytics,” it can alternatively be called “data-based decision-making,” “algorithm based decision-making,” or “fact or evidence-based decision-making.”

Top 10 reasons for Google’s people analytics approach

The people analytics team reports directly to the VP and it has a representative in each major HR function. It produces many products, including employee surveys that are not anonymous, and dashboards. It also attempts to identify insightful correlations and to provide recommended actions. The goal is to substitute data and metrics for the use of opinions.

Almost everyone has by now heard about Google’s free food, 20% time, and wide range of fun activities but realize that each of these was implemented and are maintained based on data. Many of Google’s people analytics approaches are so unusual and powerful, I can only describe them as “breathtaking.”

Below I have listed my “Top 10” of Google’s past and current people management practices to highlight its data-driven approach:

1. Leadership characteristics and the role of managers –ts “project oxygen” research analyzed reams of internal data and determined that great managers are essential for top performance and retention. It further identified the eight characteristics of great leaders. The data proved that rather than superior technical knowledge, periodic one-on-one coaching which included expressing interest in the employee and frequent personalized feedback ranked as the No. 1 key to being a successful leader. Managers are rated twice a year by their employees on their performance on the eight factors.
2. The PiLab — Google’s PiLab is a unique subgroup that no other firm has. It conducts applied experiments within Google to determine the most effective approaches for managing people and maintaining a productive environment (including the type of reward that makes employees the happiest). The lab even improved employee health by reducing the calorie intake of its employees at their eating facilities by relying on scientific data and experiments (by simply reducing the size of the plates).
3. A retention algorithm — Google developed a mathematical algorithm to proactively and successfully predict which employees are most likely to become a retention problem. This approach allows management to act before it’s too late and it further allows retention solutions to be personalized.
4. Predictive modeling – People management is forward looking at Google. As a result, it develops predictive models and use “what if” analysis to continually improve their forecasts of upcoming people management problems and opportunities. It also uses analytics to produce more effective workforce planning, which is essential in a rapidly growing and changing firm.
5. Improving diversity – Unlike most firms, analytics are used at Google to solve diversity problems. As a result, the people analytics team conducted analysis to identify the root causes of weak diversity recruiting, retention, and promotions (especially among women engineers). The results that it produced in hiring, retention, and promotion were dramatic and measurable.
6. An effective hiring algorithm – One of the few firms to approach recruiting scientifically, Google developed an algorithm for predicting which candidates had the highest probability of succeeding after they are hired. Its research also determined that little value was added beyond four interviews, dramatically shortening time to hire. Google is also unique in its strategic approach to hiring because its hiring decisions are made by a group in order to prevent individual hiring managers from hiring people for their own short-term needs. Under “Project Janus,” it developed an algorithm for each large job family that analyzed rejected resumes to identify any top candidates who they might have missed. They found that they had only a 1.5% miss rate, and as a result they hired some of the revisited candidates.
7. Calculating the value of top performers – Google executives have calculated the performance differential between an exceptional technologist and an average one (as much as 300 times higher). Proving the value of top performers convinces executives to provide the resources necessary to hire, retain, and develop extraordinary talent. Google’s best-kept secret is that people operations professionals make the best “business case” of any firm in any industry, which is the primary reason why they receive such extraordinary executive support.
8. Workplace design drives collaboration – Google has an extraordinary focus on increasing collaboration between employees from different functions. It has found that increased innovation comes from a combination of three factors: discovery (i.e. learning), collaboration, and fun. It consciously designs its workplaces to maximize learning, fun, and collaboration (it even tracks the time spent by employees in the café lines to maximize collaboration). Managing “fun” may seem superfluous to some, but the data indicates that it is a major factor in attraction, retention, and collaboration.
9. Increasing discovery and learning – Rather than focusing on traditional classroom learning, the emphasis is on hands-on learning (the vast majority of people learn through on the job learning). Google has increased discovery and learning through project rotations, learning from failures, and even through inviting people like Al Gore and Lady Gaga to speak to their employees. Clearly self-directed continuous learning and the ability to adapt are key employee competencies at Google.
10. It doesn’t dictate; it convinces with data — The final key to Google’s people analytics team’s success occurs not during the analysis phase, but instead when it present its final proposals to executives and managers. Rather than demanding or forcing managers to accept its approach, it instead acts as internal consultants and influences people to change based on the powerful data and the action recommendations that they present. Because its  audiences are highly analytical (as most executives are), it uses data to change preset opinions and to influence.

Dr. John Sullivan is a well-known teacher, author, and HR thought leader. He is a frequent speaker and advisor to Fortune 500 and Silicon Valley firms. Formerly the chief talent officer for Agilent Technologies (the 43,000-employee HP spin-off), he is now a professor of management at San Francisco State University. An expert on recruiting and staffing, he was dubbed the "Michael Jordan of Hiring" by Fast Company magazine. Contact him at johns@sfsu.edu.