This morning I have the opportunity to be in San Diego at the Strategic e-HR Conference produced by The Conference Board.  We are lucky enough to have many of our clients here and look forward to the interaction.  There are about 100 in attendance.

Leading off the conference is Rob Bernshteyn from SuccessFactors.

Rob leads off with "What impact will the recession have on HR and Business Performance".  Very interesting how this message is spreading as the media continues to spread the message about a recession.  Notice this link from CNN late last night...[Click here for article..|http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/05/news/economy/recession/index.htm?postversion=2008020512]

• Rob did a good job of painting a picture as to why Talent Management is a big part of business today; not only a HR function, but a business function.

• Good discussion about how strategic HR functions tie to business impact

• Topic of discussion:  Data...Where do I store my employee data and how can it be used

• How can I make e-HR strategic in our company?

• Retention

• Number of skill gaps bridged through training

• Conduct employee surveys to keep workforce engaged and a pulse on organization

• Issues with how HR has rolled out technology up to now

• Unable to support dynamic processes

• Inability to support approvals

• Hard to find data

• What are we doing today around e-HR?

• Organizations working heavily around a strategic, 3 year plan

• If HR doesn't do this, we will be left behind by rest of enterprise

• Technology today

• Goal alignment crucial

• Performance Management

• 360 degree feedback

• Compensation

• Using all transactions in non-intrusive way to build out analytics that matter

• HR makes the mistake of LABELING our people (High performer, etc)

• We all change on a daily basis

• How do we look at performance data over time

• Analytics drive this

• Every employee is a potential user

• Key point (The work we do at Knowledge Infusion very much aligned and pushing this thought as well)

• Tools and products must be designed for everyone in the company

• Must be easy to use to ensure adoption

• Success is about RESTRAINING themselves and deploy what makes sense in Round 1

• Dealing with change management (or as we call it, Deployment Excellence)

• When thinking about e-HR, think simplicity

• Discussion about Software as a Service

• Much talk about Old Model vs. SaaS

• Good education about what new model means

• Interesting discussion about how vendors are "Not profitable" including SuccessFactors until the customer is satisfied in SaaS model

• Discussion about how strategic HR customers outperform the stock market

• Discussion about how organizations create value using e-HR talent management software

• Good discussion about EMPLOYEE PROFILE and the value to the enterprise and all of talent management

Another infusion of knowledge...