Indian HR

Daniel Margolis

Staffing agency Kelly Services places top talent in employment opportunities across the globe — all while developing its own internal talent.

As a staffing agency, Kelly Services operates in a space unique to its industry; its product is people. According to Nina Ramsey, senior vice president of human resources for Kelly Services, the overall company strategy as well as the company’s individual employee development plans are built around an understanding that Kelly deals in human capital.

“We ask people to connect their goals to the three strategic objectives of the company, which are all centered [on] people, profit and customers,” Ramsey said.

Kelly provides staffing services and employment opportunities globally. As with any international endeavor, it requires a fair amount of manpower to do so, boasting a workforce of 7,500 full-time employees. Ramsey spoke with Talent Management about the challenges involved in managing staff who manage staff.

TM: Describe Kelly Services’ approach to talent management.

Ramsey: As a company, strategically we made a commitment over the last couple of years toward creating a high engagement culture and [being] an employer of choice. We believe in a connection between employee engagement, customer engagement and then profitability — that whole equation. We know we need to focus on having the right leaders in place and additionally that we need to make it possible for people to grow and develop in their careers, not only for their current jobs but also for future roles. So our approach to talent management really touches every step of the employee’s life cycle while they’re with us, from the point in time that you’re sourcing and recruiting all the way to the point in time when they’re transitioning to other employment or to retirement, whatever the case might be.

TM: What processes or programs have you established to improve the performance of Kelly’s entire workforce?

Ramsey: First of all, we’ve built multiple competency models for all levels of the organization. Whether you’re an individual performer or you’re a leader of people, we have competency models that really cover all positions within the company. We developed an assessment methodology that we use for all our leadership roles. We have an extensive on-boarding program that was designed to establish an early connection to the employee as well as to reduce time to productivity. We’ve had great success with it because it’s allowed us to see an improvement in turnover for the people who go through this on-boarding program, and we’ve also seen a decrease in the time to productivity.

Right now, we’re in the process of developing career maps for every position in the organization so that people can see what their options are across the company — so not just in the group that they work with now, but in other groups down the road. We’re hoping to have a good number of those finished by the end of the year.

TM: How is performance management linked to Kelly’s strategic objectives?

Ramsey: Over the last few years, we’ve been sharing what the plan of the company is across the world through our intranet. And so our employees get a chance to see what the strategy of the company is in a concise fashion; we’ve got what we refer to as “the strategic plan on a page.” Department plans are linked to people, profit [and] customer strategy, and then we ask folks to fill out their performance plans to correspond with those three strategic objectives. And those plans are developed early in the year and reviewed at various points throughout the year — minimally at midyear, at which point we do an extensive check in on their development progress — as well as at the end of the year to evaluate overall performance for the year.

TM: What challenges impact talent management at Kelly?

Ramsey: From a technology standpoint, we’re a bit challenged in that we don’t have a single HRIM [human resource information management] tool across the world, and while we’re pleased with all of the capability that we have across the U.S., we are a global company, and we are finding it a challenge to connect all the dots across the world from an HRIM perspective. We are making progress in that manner, but we’re definitely challenged on the technology front from an HRIM standpoint.

The whole role of the leader as the most significant career coach the person will have in their journey — just establishing the role of the leader as coach — is new. So getting our leaders up to speed fast enough on what it means to be a career development coach is another challenge. We’ve had in the last couple of years, particularly with the economic challenges around the world, some limited resources in terms of rewarding developing people, and so that’s been a challenge. I don’t think we’re alone in that. Getting beyond the view that compensation is the answer to retention of top talent has been another challenge as well. Many of our leaders now understand and embrace that it’s more than just paying people enough, it’s everything you do for them from an environment standpoint and culture, as well as from a development perspective.

TM: How does Kelly work to change or create leadership and management behaviors that lead to optimal workforce performance?

Ramsey: We’re really privileged to have a talent leadership advisory board at Kelly that’s comprised of senior leaders across the company, so their prime focus is to ensure that we’re building the bench strength needed for the company.

We’ve created and launched a leadership blueprint for the company, and the blueprint is really an aspirational competency model for what it means to be a leader at Kelly today and our vision for what the leaders of the future will look like. That’s really the basis from which we’re developing selection tools [and] development opportunities and we’re making succession and transition moves for the company.

TM: How does Kelly develop organizational culture and employee attitudes to optimize workforce performance?

Ramsey: There’s been an intentional focus over the last few years on executive messaging around the strategic direction of the company and the expectations of leaders and the progress that we’re making against the strategy. We are committed to engagement surveying and action planning, and we’re open about the results and the actions that we’re taking. [We have] an increased focus on acknowledging and celebrating success where we see it happening around the company.

TM: How does Kelly use learning and development to manage talent?

Ramsey: Every employee is encouraged to have a professional development plan to begin with. In our performance management technology, we’ve got a skills assessment that’s mapped to the learning available to them. It has recommendations in it that balance out traditional ways in which one can learn via classroom and online to even on the job. We also [offer] more experience-based learning recommendations, providing development opportunities for people that we view as top talent to prepare them for future roles that we’ve identified they’d be capable of performing.

TM: What processes or programs have you established to attract, recruit and retain top talent?

Ramsey: The on-boarding program that we implemented has been one of our most extensive efforts with regard to engagement and retention. We’ve seen a decrease by 85 percent in turnover and a 27 percent improvement in productivity with the folks who have been through that program, so it’s been very encouraging. We also launched a pivotal talent initiative a little over a year ago where we’re beginning to look more carefully at revenue-generating roles, honing in on what the customers require of those roles; what skills and capabilities are needed to perform them; [and] what do we need to do to make sure that we have the right reward strategy in place for those roles.

TM: How do you measure workforce performance?

Ramsey: We do it through looking at individual accomplishments against one’s goals on their performance plans. We look at unit and organizational measures as well, largely either key projects that have been accomplished, whether the financial measures have been achieved, both on an individual unit or organizational level. We measure turnover and hold leaders accountable for [it, and] we measure engagement and hold leaders accountable for their engagement scores.

TM: How do you use assessments to manage Kelly’s talent?

Ramsey: Beginning a couple of years ago, we installed a leadership assessment approach for the company, and we’ve thus far looked at the top 200 folks primarily in our operational roles in the company. We’ve not gotten to all of the support staff yet, but [we have done it] in the operations area. That assessment process is comprised of some self-assessment, but also 360-degree assessment, looking at one’s current performance as well as potential. So we’ve done that across the organization, and the result of that has really told us where the common development needs are. We’re able to use that information as a basis for which we develop curriculum and implement programs around the world that will support those more common development needs.

TM: What’s next for your organization in terms of talent management and workforce performance development?

Ramsey: We intend to continue using the pivotal talent approach that we’re taking to look at revenue-generating roles and developing the right approach for selecting, developing and rewarding [talent]. We will be doing some targeted workforce planning to correspond with the strategy of the company. We’re going to do some targeted succession and development of folks that are working on key business initiatives, some folks that have been identified as top talent for successor roles. And we’re adding some additional leadership curriculum over the next several months to correspond with what we learned through our assessment pro