As the pandemic winds down, sales guru Chris Croner Ph.D. cautions that two big trends are converging that should concern business leaders everywhere. First, a mass exodus of talent is coming as burned out, frustrated employees seeking for greener pastures and a better work-life balance. Second, as companies ratchet up their efforts to get back in the game full force, they are launching a talent war — and guess who is squarely in their line of sight?
According to Croner, competitors are also looking to poach your top-performing salespeople — those rare, revenue-generating superstars you can’t afford to lose.
Speaking at Bloomberg Deals Summit yesterday, Jeffrey C. Smith, managing member and Chief Executive Officer of Starboard Value LP, took part in an interview with deals editor Scott Deveau, making his case that software maker Box “(has its) eye off of the ball or doesn’t truly understand what’s happening or, to some degree, may be complicit.”
Portions of the transcript of the interview discussing Starboard’s take on Box’s KKR deal are below: (For backstory on recent events between Starboard and Box, go here)
Scott Deveau: “I took from the letter that you recently wrote to BOX that you had tried…
Content services software maker Box and activist investor Starboard Capital haven’t been sharing much respect and admiration for each other in the past month. That’s because Peter Feld, managing member, portfolio manager and the head of research of Starboard Value LP. believes that Box CEO Aaron Levie his team, and the company's board of directors aren’t serving shareholders well. On May 3, Feld sent a letter to Box indicating that:
“Unfortunately, (Box’s) execution has fallen well short of expectations, with last year’s annual billings growth below 10% for the first time in the Company’s public history, continued negative GAAP earnings…
With Andrew Rossington, Chief Product Officer, Teletrac Navman
We came to many interesting realizations during the pandemic. Consider that we now know that workers can be productive at home, corporate information can be accessed safely and securely from anywhere, and home deliveries can scale in a hurry. The latter wouldn’t be possible without the proliferation of telematics through sensor technology, mobile-based data collection and, more recently, artificial intelligence (AI). It would have been difficult to believe that we could have all of this machine generated data at our fingertips a decade ago. …
With as much as half of the US population vaccinated against Covid-19, employers are calling workers back to the office. And, many employees don’t want to go. Not only does commuting cost them time and money, but working from home allows them to spend more time with their families, on their hobbies and so on… Plus, the “stay at home” period of the pandemic has proven that they can be just as, if not more, productive working from home.
Enterprise recruiting software vendors make big claims. They also offer to intelligently automate things that humans normally do. Consider XOR software, for example. The maker of recruiting and HR communications tools promises to help employers recruit 33 percent faster, at 50 percent of the cost, and with a 99.3 percent candidate and employee happiness score. That should score some points with the CFO and Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), right? Consider, too, that XOR claims that their software can replace job applications by using bots to collect information through conversations with job candidates. …
If you haven’t heard of a data lakehouse yet, no worries, we’ve got your back. Although cloud data warehousing service provider Snowflake is credited with first using the term, enterprise software company Databricks looks to be focusing its future strategy on the data warehouse+ data lake fusion. Its claim is that a lakehouse “simplifies your data architecture by unifying all your data, analytics and AI on one platform.”
written with Sarah Nicastro, Field Service Evangelist, IFS and Future of Field Service
Service used to be a checkbox exercise, but now new technologies are enabling service to realize its potential as an ‘experience’. According to a survey conducted during the 2020 lockdown, more than two-thirds of companies disclosed that they now compete primarily on the basis of customer experience (CX). Brands like Amazon and Uber have led the way and now other businesses are seeing service no longer as a cost center, but as a means to grow profits and as a key brand differentiator. ,
To say 2020…
If you know iCIMS CEO Steve Lucas, you’ll probably agree that he wouldn’t take a job unless his employer-to-be is in a market that is about to explode with growth. But when the Great Pandemic hit in March of 2020 it could have looked like he fumbled because hiring came to near stop and company recruiters were laid off in droves. At the time around six in 10 CEOs said that their company has implemented a hiring freeze or deferred new hiring. That’s the finding from a June 2020 Fortune survey of CEOs in collaboration with Deloitte.
co-written with Kathleen Furore of Tribune Publishing
Employers best get ready for the Great Resignation in which a record number of employees are predicted to quit their jobs and move to new employers. Who can blame them? They’ve been stuck in their jobs, without choices, during what’s likely to be an 18-month worldwide pandemic.
Soon after the Great Resignation will come the Great Hire. Employers will be charged with figuring out how to recruit the best workers in a post-pandemic world. Experts say it won’t be easy now that employees have become used to the freedom of working from home…
Virginia Backaitis
Narrating the trek to the digital economy from ActBrilliant.com
