””

Queen's University IRC

Recruitment and Retention

The Talent Management Revolution

The Talent Management Revolution

Talent management has emerged as a top priority for organizations over the last decade and has only been accelerated by the pandemic as employees were sent home, many displaced, and employers had to radically shift business operations. Human Resources (HR) led the charge in supporting business units to make this transition as seamless as possible – while stabilizing a very disrupted workforce. Not only has HR been thrust into the spotlight over these last few years, but progressive HR leaders have played a significant role in shining a spotlight on a much-needed talent management revolution.

Hot Skills in a Dynamic Canadian Market

Hot Skills in a Dynamic Canadian Labour Market

Understanding the impact of hot skills on one’s business model and organizational capabilities can be both a challenge and an opportunity and, if not done thoughtfully and carefully, can result in a number of HR and economic risks. Knowing what hot skills are in this day and age, how they should be managed and compensated, and the risks and implications of ineffective choices for both one’s hot skill employees and broader workforce have become a critically important HR strategy issue for many employers.

Identifying High Potential

Identifying High Potential

How do you spot potential? What differentiates a high potential employee from one who has reached a career plateau? Many organizations fall into the trap of relying on past performance as a measure of future potential. Current and past performance may be an indicator of potential, but the two are not synonymous. In fact, according to a study conducted by Gartner (previously CEB/SHL Talent Measurement) only one in seven high performers are actually high potentials. That means that over 85% of today’s top performers lack the critical attributes essential to success in future roles. 

3 Reasons HR Analytics Projects Can Lead to Frustration and Failure

A Cautionary Tale: 3 Reasons HR Analytics Projects Can Lead to Frustration and Failure

Nothing frustrates me more than to see the expertise, experience and time of HR professionals wasted. And in today’s working environment, I see frustration and failure all too frequently in Analytics projects. We have pored through oceans of data and done hours of spread sheeting and analysis, and in the end the leaders we have presented our analysis to have put it to one side or seemed confused or unimpressed by our efforts. Somehow we have missed the mark.

The Talent Gap – Is it Reality or Fiction?

The Talent Gap – Is it Reality or Fiction?

A simple Google search on the words “talent management” reveals almost 17 million hits, and if we look at studies in all countries over the last decade, every time CHRO’s & CEO’s are surveyed, two of the top three challenges they say they face are lack of talent and a shortage of leadership. It isn’t clear whether these two are linked (i.e. is talented leadership scarce; or is it that both leadership and specific talents at all organizational levels are in short supply.)

The Critical Role Of Orientation For New Employees To Your Organization’s Culture

The Critical Role of Orientation for New Employees to Your Organization’s Culture

First impressions count.  However in the workplace, organizations often fail to realize that this truism is a two way street.  As much as we form first impressions about the people we interview, hire and welcome into our organizations, the employee is on a parallel journey.  How did we interview them?  How did we invite them to join our organization and how did we welcome them when they arrived?

Network Mapping as a Tool for Uncovering Hidden Organizational Talent and Leadership

Network Mapping as a Tool for Uncovering Hidden Organizational Talent and Leadership

This article will focus on the practice of social network mapping within organizations to deliberately leverage and engage intra-organizational sets of informal connections that are less “hard-wired” than formal organizational working relationships. In particular, the article will highlight the applications of the tool to identify hidden talent and leadership within the organization to support succession planning initiatives and diagnose internal communication and decision making blockages.

Business Intelligence, Big Data and HR

Business Intelligence, Big Data, and HR

Our people are our most important asset, or so we hear, so data about those people – workers, or employees, if you prefer – should be central to our organization’s total data set!  To understand where HR data fits, you first have to understand your organization’s overall data management strategy.  How is data collected, organized, and managed?  And how do you analyze that data to obtain information?

Approaches and Tools for HR Managers

4 Trends in Recruiting Top Talent: Approaches and Tools for HR Managers

As the use of traditional methods of recruiting decline, human resource managers must develop new approaches and tools to recruit top talent.  Hiring managers are often faced with wage pressures (particularly within private companies) and a lack of qualified workers.  To effectively compete in the talent marketplace, organizations are leveraging a rich blend of methods in order to identify and recruit the best human capital that they can.

Insights Opinion Poll

Practitioner Perspectives on Talent Management: Opinion Poll Results

February 2012 marked the launch of the IRC's new research initiative, Opinion Polls, that address hot topics facing Canadian human resources (HR), labour relations (LR), and organizational development (OD) practitioners. The IRC's inaugural opinion poll addressed talent management, and the ways in which Canadian organizations recruit, retain, and develop their talent. This article summarizes some of our findings. All reporting is based on aggregated data.  

Will the Unionized Workplace Attract and Retain New Talent?

Do unionized organizations in British Columbia face a greater challenge attracting and retaining new post-secondary graduates? Does the often adversarial nature of the union-management relationship translate into a culture that is perceived as negative and inconsistent with Gen X-Y workplace values? To what extent does a perceived negative workplace culture affect their decision to join …

Will the Unionized Workplace Attract and Retain New Talent? Read More »

Managing the Contingent Work Force: Lessons for Success

Many employers are scaling down their regular fulltime, full-year work force and increasing their use of contingent workers to reduce labour costs and meet the fluctuating demands of the global marketplace. But if a contingent work force strategy is to succeed, employers must take steps to alleviate the well-documented negative impact of contingent work on worker health. If employers do not do so, their savings may be offset by a decrease in productivity and in work quality.

Contingent Work Force Strategy: Guidelines for Success

This overview offers guidelines for managing contingent employees, which may include non-regular part-time workers, temporary workers, independent contract workers, dependent contract workers, and employee leasing arrangements.

The information in these guidelines was extracted from the 1997 IRC Press Publication by Kelly Ann Daly entitled Managing the Contingent Workforce: Lessons for Success, which provides more detailed information on the topic.

Scroll to Top