Overcoming the Obstacles to Building a Workplace Information Supply Chain

Thursday, May 24, 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time

There is an increasing demand for fact-based decision-making in managing the workforce.  But they continue to fail due to lack of vision, money, poor technology and organizational infrastructure.  The reasons for failure are many and include beliefs that:

•    The workforce is a cost all companies must bear and not a competitive advantage
•    That workforce analytics is dehumanizing
•    That analytics "boils the ocean" and will slow taking action & interfere with management
•    That workforce analytics is a set of headcount, overtime and turnover reports.
•    That systems can grow incrementally
•    That data integration across all the needed data sources is too complex and costly 
•    That workforce analytics and the data warehouses and distribution systems are too costly
•    That prepackaged solutions will speed up the implementation and lower costs.  

Overcoming these forces is critical; for the demand for these systems is real and driven by competition and technology. Understanding these two forces will allow you to overcome the prejudices, misunderstandings and poor implementation of workforce analytical systems.   First, having stripped their workforces to the bone companies need to increase services and productivity that requires frontline management to have access to reliable, timely and accurate information to engage their workers more effectively.  Understanding the competitive demand for this information defines the markets for its use and the business case for its manufacture and delivery. Second, technology is finally in place to capture the raw data from all the sources that are needed, transform that data into useful information and distribute it where and when it is needed embedded into daily operations. Understanding the how to harness the transaction systems, data warehouses and web services environment will provide the distribution channels required to meet the markets’ demand.


Carl Hoffmann
Carl C. Hoffmann, Ph.D. has been engaged for more than 30 years in helping companies around the world meet the challenges of formulating and implementing effective Human Resource strategies that support their business goals.

From 1978 until1999, when his company was purchased by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Dr. Hoffmann was CEO of a successful private consulting firm that focused on helping companies collect and analyze data to support strategic workforce decisions. He then joined PwC as a Partner, where he helped develop and lead the Integrated Analytics practice for the Americas and the global Workforce Analytics practice.

In 2002 when IBM acquired the PwC Management Consulting Group, Dr. Hoffmann became a Partner and Vice President of IBM’s Global Business Services group and created and led the global practice on workforce effectiveness.  In all of these roles he designed and ran a number of large workforce transformation projects for multinational companies.

Dr. Hoffmann is the founder of Human Capital Management and Performance LLC (HCM&P) www.hcmandp.com that works with corporate executives to make fact-based decisions that integrate workforce activities effectively with line operations to achieve business strategy.

Dr. Hoffmann is a frequent presenter and author of numerous publications.  He holds a PhD in demography with a concentration in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He is lead author of “Calculating Success,” the new book on organization and workforce analytics, published by Harvard Business Press in January 2012.

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