Laura Pratt – Elevations Credit Union: Unlocking the power of competency models

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 67:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version

Laura Pratt, Manager of People for Elevations Credit Union shares experiences creating and deploying an integrated set of competency models to align different talent management practices across the company. She tells how what started out as a project focused primarily on integrating staffing, performance management, and succession planning has led to major changes in how employees see their careers and how managers make decisions about talent. By using competences to more accurately defining and measuring what “good” performance looks like, Elevations Credit Union is seeing significant improvements in engagement, development, and placement of organizational talent.

Learn about the challenges and benefits associated with creating a competency based organization. Listen to Laura Pratt, this week on People Performance Radio.

Kevin Wheeler – Future of Talent Institute: The rising creative class, workforce sustainability, and other emerging workforce challenges

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 64:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version

Kevin Wheeler, Chairman of the Future of Talent Institute provides an overview of demographic, technological, and cultural shifts impacting workforce productivity and performance. Drawing on extensive experience working with companies around the globe, Kevin discusses how companies are adapting to a workforce that is becoming more creative, autonomous, and heterogeneous.

What is the key to building and sustaining a highly adaptive, creative organization? What role does peer-pressure play in organizational productivity? What can leaders learn from honey bees about structuring an organization? Hear answers to these questions and much more by listening to Kevin Wheeler – this week on People Performance Radio.

Robert (Bob) Lewis, APT Inc: Why job descriptions matter and how to make them meaningful

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 61:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version

Robert (Bob) Lewis, Director of APT Inc. discusses the role job descriptions play for guiding employee performance and ensuring effective and legally compliant staffing and compensation practices. As jobs increasingly focus on intangible concepts like “service” and “knowledge work”, it can be difficult to capture and define specific job requirements. This ambiguity creates confusion and legal risk within companies. But there are ways to address this through appropriate job analytics methods.

Job descriptions can be a critical tool for ensuring employees are doing what is expected of them and are being treated appropriately. If knowing what your workforce is supposed to be doing is important to you, then you will enjoy hearing Dr. Bob Lewis – this week no People Performance Radio.

Jennifer Pierce & Sandra Murray-Leduc – Hudson’s Bay Company: Building retail talent in one of the world’s oldest, continually operating companies

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 60:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version

Jennifer Pierce, Vice President of Talent Management and Sandra Murray-Leduc, National Success and Performance Manager for Hudson’s Bay Company discuss talent management challenges and successes they have experienced working in one of the oldest continually operating companies in the world. Jennifer and Sandra discuss how Hudson’s Bay Company leverages its frontline workforce as a source of future leadership talent. They explain how the necessity to save costs led to decentralizing succession management in a way that actually led to larger and better quality pools of high potential leadership candidates.

Learn state of the art succession management ideas from a company with over 300 years of talent management experience by listening to Jennifer Pierce and Sandra Murray-Leduc – this week on People Performance Radio.

Susan Burns – Talent Synchronicity: Candidate relationship management

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 56:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version

Susan Burns, Chief Talent Strategist at Talent Synchronicity explains how staffing and recruiting functions are changing to create more adaptive and sustainable workforce strategies. The rate of change in business is rendering more static, position based workforce planning and staffing models obsolete. Susan discusses how this is changing the nature of recruiting from “filling positions” to “maintaining candidate relationships”. This includes relationships with both external candidates and existing employees who are looking to advance their careers.

Learn what someone who has long been on the forefront of employment branding and staffing is forecasting for the coming years. Start building your relationship with the future of talent management: this week on People Performance Radio.

Mike Hudy – Using technology to integrate employee selection and candidate recruitment

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 46:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version

Dr. Mike Hudy is a principal at Shaker Consulting, a company specializing in web-enabled employee recruitment and selection methods. Mike describes the Virtual Job Tryout (VJT), a staffing tool that has been called one of the most innovative selection systems on the market. Currently used by several well known national companies, the VJT allows candidates to experience a job before they are ever interviewed. It integrates job simulations with psychometric assessments to create a staffing process that candidates and recruiters have described as efficient, entertaining, and accurate.

If you are looking for a selection tool that goes beyond traditional personality measures, ability tests or screening questionnaires, then listen to Mike Hudy describe a new staffing method designed to simultaneously educate, entice and evaluate candidates all at the same time – this week on People Performance Radio.

Talya Bauer – Effectively on-boarding new employees

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 40:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version


Talya Bauer is the Cameron Professor of Management at Portland State University and the editor of the Journal of Management, one of the top research journals focused on studying effective management and leadership techniques. Professor Bauer shares insights from over 15 years of onboarding research studying how organizations can help new employees master the technical aspects of their jobs while also increasing their commitment toward the company as a whole. She provides a variety of examples of what leading edge companies do differently to increase the productivity and engagement of newly hired employees, and explains why these techniques work.

If you want to maximize the value of the people you hire then learn how from Professor Talya Bauer, a world expert in the topic of employee onboarding this week on People Performance Radio.

Charles Handler – Using assessments to improve hiring decisions

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 38:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version

Charles Handler, Ph.D., PHR is president and founder of Rocket-Hire, a company that helps organization leverage online staffing and assessment tools to improve their hiring processes. Charles discusses different types of online assessments and what is required to effectively leverage these powerful but often poorly understood tools. He shares critical questions to ask when exploring the use of assessment tools and calls out common problems companies encounter when deploying personality measures, ability tests, and other forms of assessments to improve hiring effectiveness.

The most important decision a company ever makes about an employee is the decision to hire them. Learn how to leverage advanced scientific tools to increase the accuracy of this decision by listening to Charles Handler, this week on People Performance Radio.

If you are looking for Employee Assessment books, don’t forget to check out our Thought Leader Bookstore.

Mel Kleiman – Maximizing the performance of hourly workforces

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 36:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version

Mel Kleiman is the President and Founder of Humetrics, a company that helps organizations maximize the productivity of hourly workforces. Mel notes that hourly employees represent over 60% of the workforce in the United States yet receive surprisingly little attention from the talent management community in general. He calls attention to problems that result when companies view hourly employees as “temporary workers” even though these employees often represent the face of the company to the customer. Mel shares examples showing how companies can achieve much higher levels of retention and productivity simply by treating hourly employees with the similar levels of respect and attention commonly given to salaried employees.

If you manage hourly employees or work with organizations that have significant hourly workforces then you will benefit from listening to Mel’s observations, recommendations, and insights regarding hourly workforce management this week on People Performance Radio.

Palle Ellemann – How to be a great company in any country or economy

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 35:

Listen to

Subscribe in iTunes or right click to download mp3 version

Palle Elleman (LinkedIn profile) is Managing Director of the Great Place to Work Institute Europe, a company that helps organizations increase employee engagement and productivity through assessing and improving the quality of the workplace. This is the company that does the research underlying the famous “Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For” list along with similar studies in more than 30 other countries. Palle shares insights gained from his experience studying employee engagement and satisfaction across dozens of countries, drawing on more than 10 years of empirical research data to back up his observations. He emphasizes the universal role trust, pride, and camaraderie play in creating great workplaces. But he also notes that how these are established can vary across countries and discusses how their relative importance may change as the economy shifts.

If you are interested in building a great workplace no matter where or when you work, then you will want to listen to the insights shared by Palle Ellement, this week on People Performance Radio.