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Despite the misfortune of so many dot-com's, the
New Economy is far from a short-lived fad. According to Albert A.
Vicere of Penn State's Smeal College of Business Administration,
"The most successful organizations in the decade ahead will
be those that adapt and adjust to the new world, and human resources
management is at the heart of the challenge."
In the New-Economy world, where organizations
compete on the basis of core competencies and relationships, Vicere
believes that human resources management practices will emerge as
a key source of competitive advantage.
"Until companies master the art of creating
knowledge-management systems, core competencies will continue to
reside in the minds of the people inside an organization. Core competencies,
by definition, are knowledge sets and technical skill sets. Relationships,
by definition, are owned by people within companies and not by the
companies themselves." This means that the new focus on core
competencies and relationships brings people management to center
stage. It also positions talent-pool management as a critical element
of business strategy.
Vicere also notes that the explosive growth of
the search firm business is just one symbol of this shift. As companies
seek out the best talent, competition is heating up, and raiding
other companies for talent is increasingly becoming a commonplace
event.
Vincere offers this eight-point plan for helping
HR in the New Economy:
1. Build your company brand. Building brand
requires that a company tell its story: how it provides challenging
work assignments, how great things can be achieved by good people,
how effective feedback and relevant rewards are the norm, and how
the organization is teeming with effective people, who are committed
to developing talent
2. Create a challenging work environment.
Dare to be creative when structuring the work environment including
being open to moving people across business units and functions,
and even across joint venture and alliance partners. Meanwhile make
sure project team members get the feedback they desire and the development
plans they need to move ahead.
3. Train leaders to lead. In the Old Economy
leaders were often, in reality, auditors. "They watched over
things, approved things, kept things running smoothly as before.
Today, doing business-as-usual is not enough," says Vincere.
"Leaders must facilitate, interpret, coach, teach, mentor,
and develop."
4. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Organizations must view people as a resource. They must see leadership
as a source of inspiration and they must make the organization itself
a cause that commands attention and commitment. All employees need
to be on the same page with message, an effort that requires constant
and clear communication.
5. Facilitate networks. The key to a company's
success is understanding three critical resources of an organization:
money, people, and information. If you allocate and reallocate resources
toward exciting opportunities and if you seek out the best minds
in the organization, regardless of where they reside, and if you
put those minds to work on challenging opportunities, and you then
share the knowledge workers possess across the organization; then
the organization (and its workers) prosper.
6. Make shareholder value real. New-economy
workers want to be challenged, pushed, developed, and rewarded.
What they don't want is for someone else to be rewarded. Therefore,
don't talk about shareholder value creation. Instead, make them
shareholders and watch them instantly grasp the impact of the value
their contributions make (and create). Ultimately, the company will
reap the rewards of both employee's knowledge and their commitment.
7. Think "tools and flexibility."
New-economy workers grew up in the New Economy, which means e-mail,
beepers, cell phones, chat rooms, text messages and software 24/7.
Think "bandwidth" when creating assignments and work environments.
8. Be real. Remember, words don't matter and
come a dime a dozen. What matters is what people focus on and
what gets rewarded is what they accomplish. Companies must rethink
and refocus their HR systems to accommodate the basic nature of
the New Economy and new-economy workers.
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