The concept of Six Sigma is not merely a quality initiative for manufacturing or distribution organizations, but it is a business initiative for any strategic business process, including Human Capital Supply Chains. The real message of Six Sigma for HR goes beyond statistics. Six Sigma for HR is a total management commitment and philosophy of:
excellence,
customer focus,
continual process improvement and
the rule of measurement rather than gut feel.
This is the place where most HR professionals start to get an upset stomach, especially when you mention statistics. Six Sigma targets four main areas;
The best of intentions and the greatest ideas, such as Human Capital Supply Chains, do not get implemented without a solid strategy for change. The statistics are startling:
Change initiatives crucial to organizational success fail 70% of the time (Miller, 2002, p. 360).
Major corporate investments in technology are not used as intended or abandoned within six months 80% of the time (Miller, 2002, p. 360).
Of 100 companies that attempted to make fundamental changes in the way they did business, only a few were very successful (Kotter, 1995, p. 59).
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the loud buzz about Cloud Computing. Plugging into the Cloud promises to eliminate the need for lots of on-site hardware, installed software, and disruptive and expensive upgrades for Human Resource departments and Staffing firms. Just think, no more hardware to buy/replace, no more servers to maintain, no more IT staff to pay and no more backups to worry about. HR departments and staffing firms “do not want to manage IT, they want to manage their business”, explains Simon Piff, a practice director for enterprise infrastructure at www.IDC.com , the global IT market researcher. Cloud applications for HR and Staffing also can support fast, scalable, and incrementally priced growth.
VMS systems have been around for over a decade now and while a handful of companies have been working with them for that long, it seems that the number of hiring companies adopting them and the volume of orders and transactions over them are dramatically accelerating. I frequently talk with staffing firms, even small ones, who are on the receiving end of VMS and they commonly see 50+% of their orders from VMS. Leading VMS, Fieldglass, announces that they have passed the 100 client mark in their tenth year, with 33 new clients being added in 2009. Staffing Industry Analystspredicts that 81 percent of large companies will be using a VMS solution by 2011. That level of adoption means that hiring company’s use of VMS is just about to be ubiquitous.
In a recent Supply Chain research report distributed by TEC at www.technologyevaluation.com , they described the 3 main technologies used by manufacturing and distribution companies to automate their businesses and streamline their processes. They explain how these decision support systems worked together to guide and protect them through the up-swings and down-turns of the economy. These 3 “mission critical” systems included ERP (enterprise resource planning), SCM (supply chain management) and APS (advanced planning and scheduling).
The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. - Olympic Creed
I’ve been a huge Olympics junkie ever since the 1984 Los Angeles Games in my home state of California. I think maybe the Team USA site sums it up perfectly for me when talking about Olympic values and the Games:
Recently, we shared a guest post with Staffing Robot – a blog on healthcare staffing, technology and other topics – on leveraging Human Capital Supply Chains in healthcare staffing.
The Healthcare staffing industry has always had its ups and downs over the past few years and with revolutionary healthcare legislation on the horizon, it is hard to know how to plan for the future. Aside from the whole legislative uproar, we do know 3 important facts that the Healthcare staffing industry needs to prepare for, starting today:
As the Human Capital Supply Chain concepts starts to build momentum across the country, corporate excutive are starting to pay attention. I received a call from Ed Davis, Managing Director for Staffing at United Airlines extending an invitation to present at SHRM’s Chicago chapter Symposium on May 13th. The title of the presentation will be “Human Capital Supply Chains; Applying Supply Chain Management to your Staffing Organization”. Other presenters will include:
In the January 18, 2010 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, writers Peter Coy, Michelle Conlin, Moira Herbst and Carol Matlack penned an article titled “The Disposable Worker”. This negative article painted a picture of temporary workers as abused and undervalued by the corporations who work with them. These writers could not be further from the truth.
If you haven’t heard the phrases ‘Cloud Computing’ and ‘Saas’ (Software as a Service), then you may have been hiding under a rock.
Whether you are reading a blog, surfing the Net or leafing through an IT magazine, you’re bound to come across that terminology. Just by doing a Google search for some industry-related words, the numbers are impressive:
Tim Giehll, CEO of Bond Talent and eEmpACT, brings more than 30 years of experience as a staffing industry veteran, technology visionary and manufacturing expert to his role as co-author of Human Capital Supply Chains.
Sara Moss is co-founder and CEO of The Code Works Inc., a technology consulting company focused on the staffing and recruiting industry. Sara and her team develop actionable technology strategies to enable their client’s business goals.
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