HRACI - Human Resource Association of Central Indiana. Part of SHRM

IndySHRM Best Practices Forum
Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Creating Strategic Job Families

We all know the rhetoric that a great workforce is made up of great people. In fact, most organizations have spent a ton of time, energy, and focus in managing high-potential employees and finding A talent. However, the approach of filling the organization with superstars misses a critical truth: it isn’t just that people make the organization perform better—the organization also makes people perform better.

By focusing on the strategy and direction of the organization, then on defining which positions are most critical to the strategy, and then on the talent, you can avoid underinvesting in positions that most directly impact the bottom line and overinvesting in salaries of A talent not connected to A positions. In this session, we will discuss how you can adopt a portfolio approach to workforce management, placing the very best talent in strategic positions, placing good performers in support positions, and eliminating people or jobs that don’t add value.

Learning Objectives:

Define the purpose and role of strategic job families.
Analyze a new approach to workforce management that can help you prioritize your talent acquisition efforts so that the right people—doing the right things—are in strategically critical jobs.
Review a step-by-step process for identifying strategic job families, including reviewing a sample job evaluation tool for selecting strategic positions.
Review approaches for differentiating strategic positions, such as disproportionately rewarding strategic positions.
Review some of the unique challenges in managing strategic positions.

About the Speaker:

Krista Skidmore has experience working with both publicly and privately held companies as well as the government sector. Krista assists nonprofits and businesses in defining and implementing their strategic plans. She also helps clients to build their human resource functions, to establish cultures focused on employee performance, and to develop managers into effective leaders. The impact Krista has had on organizations is immense. Her strong listening skills, solid understanding of business principles, ability to analyze complex situations, and openness to innovation have enabled her to serve as a trusted advisor to many. Metrics show that her recommendations have helped companies to save millions of dollars in costs and to witness record profits.

Krista has presented sessions on a variety of strategic human resources and organizational development topics. She has presented for local and regional conferences and events, including the iWOMAN conference, Indiana Chamber of Commerce, Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, and Indiana State Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conference, among others; she has also spoken at monthly association and industry meetings throughout Indiana.

Krista earned a JD from the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis and a bachelor's degree in human resource management and psychology from Anderson University. Krista is a board member of the Arts Council of Indianapolis and the Indiana Humanities Council and formerly served as president of the Central Indiana Chapter of the American Society for Training and Development.

This program has been approved for recertification credit hours toward PHR, SPHR and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute (HRCI). The use of this seal is not an endorsement by the HR Certification Institute of the quality of the program. It means that this program has met the HR Certification Institute’s criteria to be pre-approved for recertification credit.For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HRCI homepage at www.hrci.org.