Changing Times

This post is a relatively long one but we felt that the items were worth your reading.

Changing Face of Relocation

A little discussed part of the stimulus package is the fact that if you have an position the law requires you to look to the unemployed workforce rather than immediately going to H-1B visa holders.

We are all part of the HR Field, in some way or another

I received an email this morning from one of the groups that I am a member of, and one of thier members (Anand Khare (anand.khare@gmail.com)) posted the following item which I thought might be of interest to all of you:

by Matthew D. Breitfelder and Daisy Wademan Dowling

Two recent Harvard MBAs who chose human resources as a career explain
why it's the next big thing. Read the Executive Summary

We have embarked on a career path that others don't quite understand.
When we chat about our jobs with Harvard Business School classmates,
six years after graduation, they often smile bemusedly and nearly
always ask the same question: "You're doing what?" Both of us are in
the field of human capital management, helping major companies select,
retain, and groom their cadre of rising stars. Translation: We work in
HR.

A career in human resources isn't the typical destination of a Harvard
MBA. We're supposed to be employed as strategy consultants or
investment bankers or, in the true spirit of the degree, general
managers. We once had jobs like those, but we don't now, and we know
what our classmates are thinking: "It's a work/life balance thing."
"They don't have the stomach for 'real' business." "If you can't do,
teach." And, of course, our favorite: "If they're so interested in
helping people, why don't they just go into social work?" Well, the
answer is simple—and we relish providing it. HR today sits smack-dab
in the middle of the most compelling competitive battleground in
business, where companies deploy and fight over that most valuable of
resources—workforce talent.

Don't laugh. We share your healthy skepticism. We, too, have become a
bit cynical hearing companies grandly proclaim, "People are our
greatest asset!" only to watch most of them show little true
commitment to developing and leveraging those people's abilities. We
are also aware of the less-than-flattering stereotypes of HR
professionals—you know, "administriviators"—and of the reality that
many traditional HR activities, such as benefits management, are
increasingly being outsourced.

But the staggering cost of finding and hiring top talent today—not to
mention the millions of dollars' worth of productivity that can be
left unrealized when a company's employees aren't engaged with their
jobs—highlights the need to devote more time and resources to
developing and managing this greatest asset. The stakes are becoming
ever higher as the human-capital-intensive services sector continues
to grow; as workers' mobility increases and moving laterally becomes
more attractive to some people than moving up; as baby boomers vacate
their corner offices, decreasing the supply of experienced managers;
and as the Millennial generation brings new expectations to the
workplace. In short, the long-held notion that HR would become a truly
strategic function is finally being realized.

We have therefore been puzzled that although almost every successful
CEO who visited our business school classes declared the importance of
attracting and developing talent—and many said that the 10% to 20% of
their time spent on this was the most rewarding part of their jobs—we
heard little about how to actually do it in practice.

Things are changing, though. As talent management becomes a
make-or-break corporate competency, the HR function is responding with
a shift from managing the monetary levers of human
resources—compensation, benefits, and other expenses—to increasing the
asset value of human capital, as measured by intangibles such as
employee engagement. A new kind of HR professional is emerging to
manage this transformed function, someone who deeply understands not
only talent-management processes but also an organization's strategy
and business model—someone who is responsible for, say, hiring and
training marketing managers but who also knows how to put together an
effective marketing plan.

Relocation is HR. Relocation is the key to being competitive.