As Infohrm’s 2007 survey of nearly 200 organizations around the world showed, only 14% of firms are prepared for the potential loss of skills, corporate knowledge, and leadership that will occur within the next five years. Organizations with integrated workforce planning processes can realize significant benefits, such as identifying early-warning signs of human capital risks, implementing more targeted recruitment strategies, and improving the allocation of finite HR resources. In this presentation, Peter Howes will share his extensive experience in workforce planning consulting, offering case studies and lessons learned from companies around the world and highlighting potential roadblocks to achieving success.

With over 30 years experience in human resource management, Infohrm founder and CEO Peter Howes has a distinguished global reputation as a consultant in HR metrics, analytics and workforce planning. Peter has extensive experience in developing HR information and measurement systems and processes, and over the past 10 years he has established the Infohrm Program, which has clients in Australia, North America, and Europe.

Helen’s career has been in HR, both as an operational HR manager dealing with the full range of day to day issues in a busy airport and in a property company, and in a variety of specialist professional roles ranging from manpower planning through resourcing to reward.

For the last 8 years her focus has been on how technology can support the HR function and, among other projects, was responsible for the introduction of ‘People Metrics’ into BAA.

This session will explore the journey BAA has travelled from its first encounter with Infohrm, the learning it has acquired on the way, and the use it now makes of ‘People Metrics’ (BAA’s internal branding of the Infohrm solution) both strategically and tactically.

Linda Nicholls is a corporate adviser and Director of a number of leading Australian companies and organizations. She has more than 30 years experience as a senior executive and company director in the insurance and financial services industries in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

She recently retired as Chairman of Australia Post after 9 years as Chairman and 18 years as Director. Linda is deputy Chairman of Healthscope and a Director of St George Bank, Insurance Manufacturers Australia, and the Sigma Pharmaceutical Group. She is a Member of the Council of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for bio-medical research and a Director of The Smith Family.

Linda runs her own corporate advisory practice specializing in business strategy in financial services and health care. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Most presentations of quantitative business data are poorly designed – painfully so, often to the point of misinformation. This problem, however, is rarely noticed. Despite the rapidly growing availability of data today, most remains under-utilized in ever expanding but stagnant databases. Even the best business information is useless if we fail to make sense of it and then tell its story clearly and accurately.

Stephen will provide conference delegates with simple and practical instruction in data presentation, focusing on the use of graphs to communicate quantitative information in ways that open peoples’ eyes and minds to the truth. Based on extensive experience and research, Stephen will illustrate the most common mistakes in data presentation and then showcase examples of clear and compelling communication.

Known for his two popular books – Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten, and Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data – Stephen is the world’s leading authority on business data visualization. In addition, he founded the consultancy Perceptual Edge, teaches in the MBA program at the University of California, Berkeley, and writes the monthly Visual Business Intelligence Newsletter.

HR leaders agree that workforce planning and workforce modeling are important, but why should organizations act now? How can members of the HR profession overcome the “So What?” factor so often heard when presenting the results of data analysis? In this presentation, Infohrm’s Jeff Higgins will leverage his vast experience in workforce analytics and financial analysis to tie together these questions with today’s realities and tomorrow’s possibilities.

Jeff is responsible for leading Infohrm’s Consulting and Member Services organizations in North America. Prior to joining Infohrm, Jeff served as the Executive Vice President of Workforce Planning at Countrywide Financial Corp and has held senior HR and finance roles at The Irvine Company, IndyMac Bancorp, Johnson & Johnson, and Baxter International. He has led numerous HR initiatives to drive human capital analytics that successfully turned HR data into predictive analytics, created substantial ROI, and driven company strategy. Notable projects include turnover/retention drivers, manager score carding, manager span of control analysis, high performer profiling, ROI of recruiting, and sales force optimization.

Jeff has presented his work at national and international HR analytics conferences, is a member of the Human Capital Institute National Advisory Council as well as a frequent expert panelist on HCI presentations, and has been a member of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Saratoga Institute advisory council.

Nickolas holds responsibility for ensuring the enterprise workforce’s talent is optimized. In this role, he is accountable for the people planning process, workforce measurement and analysis, and the HR compliance function. Nick joined Ameriprise Financial (formerly American Express Financial Advisors) in 2001 as an HR Business Partner. Nick has over 18 years of experience in human resources management and line management experience in the Financial Services industry.

Penny holds responsibility for developing the workforce planning capability, defining the Human Capital strategy, and managing the Human Resources project portfolio and execution disciplines. Penny joined Ameriprise Financial in 2001 as the Vice President of Business Transformation. Penny has over 25 years of experience in leadership, change management, process reengineering, and project management, primarily in the Financial Services industry.

When presented with the spin-off from its corporate parent American Express, the Ameriprise Financial HR team launched a new workforce planning and analytics mission for the company. With a single source of data as the foundation for these initiatives, the company created an Human Capital Analytics Centre of Excellence (CoE) team to set organizational data standards, identify workforce issues through dialogue with business leaders, and analyze data.

Working with Infohrm, Ameriprise Financial has launched a workforce planning initiative that identifies key job families and business dynamics in order to help Ameriprise align its human capital with business needs for the future. This presentation will discuss how the HR and HRIT teams at Ameriprise built their workforce planning and analytics capabilities from a "clean sheet of paper”, closely aligning their mission with the organization’s overall strategic goals and gaining the support of the CEO and the Executive team.