Josh Bersin

The concept of a job, as we know it, is starting to go away.

Over the last year I’ve been speaking with many corporate business and human resource leaders and hearing a common theme: we need our organizations to be more agile. We need to redesign organizations so we can learn faster, communicate better, ... Read more»

SAP, the world’s largest application software company, just announced the best revenue and earnings growth the company has made in many years. The company’s quarterly revenues grew by 12% to over $3.4 billion Euros and profits rose by 23% to $1.6 billion. And now that the company has announced its plans to acquire SuccessFactors for ... Read more»

Talent management makes money.

If you are trying to build a business case for a corporate talent management program, here is some astounding data:

Of the 700+ organizations we studied in 2010 and 2011, only 7% told us that they have a “strategic talent management” program. We defined talent management in four levels of ... Read more»

Are you a great instructional designer looking for an exciting new opportunity?

Would you like to help design cutting-edge, market leading instructional content for a global audience?

Are you looking for the opportunity to learn and apply new media and blended approaches to a new library of learning offerings?

If you answered yes to these ... Read more»

Wow.  After more than three years of decline in spending, corporate training budgets just jumped up 9.5% last year.  (Just released, 2012 Bersin & Associates Corporate Learning Factbook®).  Good news for corporate HR teams and business leaders in general.

This is a huge increase, bringing the average spending per employee to over $800, or ... Read more»

Late last year I attended two major talent and leadership conferences in Stockholm. At these events I had the opportunity to meet with various HR leaders at Electrolux, Ericsson, Logica, BT, Maersk, Grundfos, Unicredit, Bertelsman, and others. What I learned is something important that we are building into a broad research framework I plan to ... Read more»

We just completed a year-long research study on the customer experience with talent management software. Despite the sky-high market valuations for these companies and the growth rate of the market, these products are not fully meeting customer needs. In fact, among the 1,146 companies we surveyed, their average overall satisfaction is 3.65 on a scale ... Read more»

Today Salesforce.com announced plans to acquire Rypple, a small but growing provider of social performance management software. In addition, the company announced plans to build out a set of human capital management products called SuccessForce (quite a stab in the eye to SuccessFactors), built on the “social enterprise” which Marc Benioff (CEO of Salesforce.com) has ... Read more»

Today I had a chat with Paul Sparta, the founder of Plateau and one of the key product leaders at SuccessFactors and now SAP.  Paul, who’s current title is Chief Integration Officer, shared some important thoughts with me which I felt were worth publishing.

1.  As a result of the acquisition, the SuccessFactors ... Read more»

We all know that talent management is a hot topic in business today.  SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion demonstrates how important this market is to businesses around the world.

But ultimately it isn’t software that drives business results: it’s the practices of talent management that matters.  Our research shows that companies which ... Read more»

This weekend SAP announced plans to acquire SuccessFactors for approximately $3.4 billion (almost 10X 2011 revenues).

Just last week we delivered a webinar on trends in the Talent Management Systems market, and discussed the fact that this market is rapidly becoming commoditized and that the big vendors were starting to make a major impact.  Listen ... Read more»

This week I had the opportunity to speak about next-generation talent management at two events in Stockholm.  In this post I’d like to highlight some of the big talent challenges facing global businesses in the Nordic countries.

The Nordics are home to some of the world’s greatest businesses. We had Ericsson, Electrolux, Logica, A.P. Moeller ... Read more»

Today we released our first ever Talent Acquisition Factbook®, a comprehensive study of trends, benchmarks, and spending data in the US (and UK) recruiting market.  It points out the tectonic shifts taking place in recruiting right now, as the staffing industry shifts steadily toward the use of social networking, employment branding, and a variety ... Read more»

The talent management software marketplace is now more than ten years old, yet it is still a daunting task to select the right solution.  This market is both consolidating and expanding at the same time – and let me explain why.

History of the Space

Originally these systems were designed as forms automation systems, often ... Read more»

Today Ginni Rometty was announced as the new CEO of IBM, marking a significant transition at IBM and celebrating the company’s first female top executive.   This transition shows an example of world-class succession management.  It was predictable (IBM CEO’s leave their jobs at the age of 60) and shows the results of years of ... Read more»

While you may not be a baseball fan, you have to admit that this movie (and book) is really all about Human Resources. Billy Beane learned that by using data shrewdly he could build a high-performing team at a fraction the cost of his competitors. Isn’t this what strategic HR is all about?

I’ve had ... Read more»