Making the Right Human Capital Decisions

May 4, 2022 – Change hits, sometimes suddenly and without warning. Value shifts. Money moves quickly to keep up. Talent gets redeployed slowly, lagging behind both money and value. In an era of slow, incremental change, this chain of events might not be a problem. Not so in today’s world of rapid and almost constant disruption, according to CEO.works, a consulting firm known for delivering results through precise, value-driven business transformations with a talent edge. To keep up with these value shifts, senior leaders move financial capital at lightning speed from points of lower return to points of higher return. Obviously, they also need to assemble the right talent at these “value hotspots” if their companies are to win. The problem? The traditional tools of HR are fixated on the talent side of the equation to the exclusion of the value. They can’t connect talent to value fast enough or dynamically enough.

To address the issue in detail, CEO.works’ managing partner Hein Knaapen and co-founder Shefali Salwan have teamed up with Hunt Scanlon Media for a highly anticipated webinar tomorrow. The session will focus on “Connecting Talent to Value,” a process designed to rapidly deliver business value by mobilizing the roles and talent that have the greatest impact on returns. Mr. Knaapen and Ms. Salwan will share real-world examples of the talent to value process applied in a PE context, and in this webinar Mr. Knaapen will explore the impact of talent to value in Europe.

What are some of the biggest hiring issues today? “Creating a data-driven, rigorous hiring process that is both efficient and yields a good outcome,” said Mr. Knaapen. “But in general, we have moved beyond the hiring manager’s Rolodex to the search firm Rolodex. Sourcing an adequately large candidate pool that allows real choice, of being well-matched to the jobs to be done and the organizational fit continues to be a challenge. There is also a renewed focus on candidate experience, employer brand, and employee value proposition considering the shifts in the last year, including remote working and the great resignation/great reshuffle.”

“Jobs to be done are the unique set of three to five essential outcomes that must be produced by the talent in the role in order to deliver the value expected from the role,” said Ms. Salwan. “These outcomes link back to the company’s business strategy/value agenda. Ms. Salwan points to the critical components of a good jobs to be done are:

Identifying the pivotal work which must be completed to realize that specific outcome and chunk of value.
Outlining how that work is to be done and by when.
Select what metric will be used to determine whether the work has been done well.

“Against these jobs to be done, we look for talent’s readiness to deliver these by looking for evidence from their experience where they may have produced similar/adjacent work with successful outcomes,” Ms. Salwan said.

“One of the biggest impactful talent interventions we have seen is to complement the talent,” said Mr. Knaapen. “Just because the talent has one or two gaps in readiness, replacing that talent is the longest path to value. Instead, identify precise areas where another talent can complement that role in order to mitigate the identified talent risk. The ripple effect of such intervention would be to them carefully draft and align the decision rights between the two roles.”

Topics in the 5-step process include:

Illuminate the Value Agenda – What value is the company creating? What work has to be done to deliver all that value?
Identify the Critical Roles – Which roles will enable value? Which roles will execute the work?
Begin Connecting Roles & Talent – What are the jobs to be done for the role? What evidence is required to assess the role-talent match?
Sequence the Transformation – What risks are inherent in the design of the role and the talent match? What is the value-at-risk for the whole company?
Mobilize the Returns – Which talent interventions have the greatest positive impact on the value agenda? What will be the ripple effects of the role interventions we are considering?

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The Speakers

Hein Knaapen is managing partner of CEO.works in Europe, with over 35 years of experience in delivering transformative talent solutions in multinational companies. Prior to taking up a partnership with CEO.works, he worked in senior HR positions at Unilever before becoming CHRO at KPN Telecom in 2005. Mr. Knaapen then became CHRO at ING Bank, where he developed and implemented the company wide people strategy for over 53,000 employees, while also reducing the HR budget by 20 percent. His role within CEO.works is a particularly important one given the sudden value destruction that has occurred in many large corporates, family-held companies, and private equity firms due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shefali Salwan has 25 years of experience in cross-cultural and global talent management, leadership development and assessments, and diversity and inclusion. She has coached and advised C-suite leaders in multinational companies across five continents. Ms. Salwan’s conversations with C-suite leaders go beyond traditional HR concerns to cover creating value for the organization as a whole. Her involvement as an investor in various HR technology startups and as a board member for Knolskape, a developer of digital training platforms driven by machine learning, adds a unique dimension to her understanding of leading-edge human capital practices.