Blog

7 New Capabilities of the Chief People Officer Within Venture-Backed Companies

Known for their rapid growth and innovation-driven ethos, companies backed by private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms have a new set of critical skills essential for their People leaders.  The Chief People Officer (CPO) role is highly suited to growing, venture-backed organizations.  The changing role of the CPO in VC and PE-backed firms reflects how the role is evolving across many industries.

This blog explores these new capabilities, highlighting how they are also shaping the future of the CPO role in today’s business world.

Interim Executives & Leadership: What You Need To Know

Organizations in 2023 are facing unprecedented challenges in securing suitable leadership. Recent insights from McKinsey and the U.S. Bureau of Labor show a profound talent scarcity at every level. Additionally, in a recent study 40% of C-level leaders said the stress from their work was so immense they would likely quit within the next 12 months.

These workplace changes—including high turnover and more leaders choosing to work as interims—require businesses to take a more adaptive approach to leadership recruiting.

This blog explores how hiring interim executives can allow organizations to navigate transitional periods, crises or business surges effectively by leveraging the expertise of temporary leaders.

3 Top Soft Skills for Total Rewards Leaders and HR

Per a recent article published by WorldAtWork, a prominent Total Rewards (TR) association, executives in TR, and in human resources (HR), have increasingly turned to soft skills in response to the challenges posed by the pandemic.

Writer and editor Erin Binney interviewed Tom Wilson, President and Managing Partner at Frederickson Partners, a Gallagher Company, on the three key soft skills that TR and HR leaders rely on in 2023.

Time to Fill and Time to Hire: What Happens When Key Roles Stay Un-filled?

In hiring leadership roles, what is known in HR as time to fill is critical. Every week, the “decay” of your open role – for as long as it remains un-filled — becomes a growing liability.

With 28 years of experience working alongside CEOs, Frederickson Partners has gathered firsthand insights into the repercussions of prolonged vacancies of leadership roles. In the high-stakes process of executive search, the delay isn’t just about lost finances—it’s also about lost opportunities, halted growth, and diminishing team spirit.

This article shares a video and infographic on the impact of “role decay,” capturing why time is your enemy after a role has been open too long.

Executive Search Firms for Healthcare: A Strategic Partnership

Healthcare organizations today face a myriad of challenges that impact their ability to thrive in a rapidly evolving industry. Along with the pressing issues of talent acquisition, employee burnout, and the need for continuous upskilling, they are under immense pressure to find visionary leaders who can steer them towards a successful future.

This article delves into these trends. Then through two recent case studies, it explores the pivotal role that specialist executive search firms can play in helping two organizations find and secure top leadership talent in order to successfully navigate today’s challenges.

Stay Interviews: What Are They, and What Are Best Practices for Using Them?

Stay interviews are a method used by companies to gain valuable insight from employees at different stages of their employment journey. The intent behind them is to enhance the overall employee experience by providing insights for organizational improvement.

Stay interviews are a powerful tool for organizations to identify and address concerns proactively, strengthen employee engagement and improve retention rates. This article explores the benefits of stay interviews, and why companies should prioritize them to support their employee retention efforts and reduce turnover.

Contingent vs. Retained Executive Search: What’s the Key Difference?

Selecting the right executive search firm to fill an open leadership role in your organization can feel like a daunting task. To ensure a smooth experience and successful partnership, it is critical to understand the services provided by a search firm. The two main types of firms are contingent and retained executive search firms.

What’s the key difference? To sum it up, a retained search firm will provide you with more time, focus, and expert processes that will help guarantee finding a candidate who matches your requirements to a “T.” A contingent search doesn’t require an up-front fee and may deliver candidates quickly, but lacks the in-depth research, assessment, help throughout the hiring process. and guarantee of finding the best executive.

Read the blog for a quick look at both, and what they offer.

Top Executive Search Firms: How to Choose?

Recruiting a new top leader is an important strategic undertaking for your organization. Whether you are recruiting for a CHRO, CFO, Chief Revenue Officer, VP of Sales or other pivotal leader role, here are key factors to consider in selecting an executive search firm to partner with.

While the top or “Big-5,” executive search firms–or “Shreks”–typically offer a wide range of services, are they necessarily the best fit for your leadership search? This article takes a deep dive into the benefits of working with a boutique or specialist firm to build out your leadership team.

7 Ways to Boost Your Diversity Recruiting Strategy

With rising pressure from social justice movements, greater media attention and growing public scrutiny, organizations are paying increased attention to workforce diversity. While business leaders are recognizing the importance of hiring diverse talent, they often limit their focus to numerical targets such as increasing the percentage of employees from diverse backgrounds. But they risk ignoring critical recruitment and selection factors that impact a candidate’s perception of the company and their desire to be a part of it.

A diversity recruiting strategy is a master plan for recruiting and building a truly diverse workforce. It involves prioritizing and achieving the firm’s goals for hiring diverse talent, and following best practices for inclusiveness throughout the hiring process.

Q&A Interview: How Talent Development Creates a Great Workplace

Melissa Luna (Missy) joined Achieve in late 2022 as Director of Talent and Organizational Development. Formerly called Freedom Financial Network, Achieve is a Fin technology company offering personalized financial solutions.

Missy spoke with our team about her role directing talent management at Achieve, providing insights and tips on how organizational design, career pathing, career development, mentor programs, talent acceleration and internal mobility programs support the company’s growth, and its core value of care.

Why Are Total Rewards Leaders a Critical Resource for CEOs in 2023?

Retaining top talent will be a key priority for executives in 2023, despite economic conditions. The transition to remote and hybrid work has highlighted new challenges in hiring, engaging, and retaining top talent. To address these challenges, companies need to hire for skills instead of roles, and they need to be strategic about how they attract and retain talent.

What’s the Difference Between Employment Agencies and Executive Search Firms?

Hiring the right employees can have a massive impact on the performance of your business. For example, according to research by McKinsey, gender-diverse and ethnically-diverse companies perform 15% and 35% better than non-diverse companies. And that’s just one way staffing choices can affect performance.

When it comes to staffing decisions, few choices are more important than picking the men and women you want in leadership positions, whether in C-level, vice president, director or any leader position. Having the right executives and managers can boost the productivity and engagement of entire departments. That’s why many companies turn to executive search consultants to find the right management team for them.

How to Make Your Company More Diverse: Boost Diversity In The C-Suite

How to make your company more diverse? Start with boosting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at the top. 

These days, it’s hard to imagine that for decades women professionals had only one office-based career choice: secretarial work. Relegated to the typing pools, they were unable to break free of the institutional shackles limiting their professional potential.

As increasing numbers of women started asking for more – better roles, promotions, consideration for the C-Suite – the media assigned a name to their cause: Shattering the Glass Ceiling. I grew up hearing this term and understanding the analogy, but I could never have imagined just how difficult a goal it would be to accomplish. Shattering the glass ceiling – or even fracturing it — is only slightly more challenging than physically picking up a 30-pound sledgehammer and actually breaking glass.

The Importance of Creating a Diverse Workplace

Diversity in the workplace is still a relatively new concept. Ethnically diverse and gender-diverse companies have only become commonplace within the past 60 years, meaning that many companies have yet to truly encompass these values. Gender and race equality movements have pushed for fair treatment in the work world, such as equal pay and the same opportunities for higher-level positions.

Benefits Of An HR Consultant For Startup Businesses

Starting a new business is a daunting task for anyone. Especially when you must think about the logistics and the bones of the business, it’s difficult to know where to start. For these reasons, hiring an HR consultant for your startup business is beneficial to its growth and development.

Outsourcing human resource staffing for your business will help to reduce the amount spent on human resources through inappropriate hiring or skills mismatch. In addition, startup HR consulting can provide your team with an avenue to accessing a broader pool of exciting and experienced employees.

Startup HR Consulting - Strategies for Success

One of the most important areas for a successful business is human resources (HR). This is particularly important if your business is a startup—then it is imperative that your start up HR plan be in place to ensure that your business is successful. Here is an HR startup checklist with four key start up HR positions that will get your business off on solid footing and prepare it for growth in the future.

6 Documents You Need To Start an HR Department

Building a startup HR department takes work. This checklist of six key documents helps you lay the groundwork. 

Around the end of June 2015, 2.7 million employees at businesses across America voluntarily left their jobs. This was an increase of 25% compared to statistics from two years before.

For younger employees, finding a job is less about simply finding that paying job, but more about finding a job that fits their values. This makes talent acquisition management services and HR services for startups more important than ever before to new businesses.

5 Strategies To Become A Woman CEO

The percentage of female CEOs in Fortune 500 companies has reached 37%— meaning that despite good advances in gender diversity, only 37 women are leaders in these companies. Similarly, in corporate boards of directors there are virtually no all-women boards and only 28% of Fortune 100 board members are women. To become a female CEO and balance out the gender disparity at this level within a company, these strategies are a must. 

Tips for Targeting Top Talent

Competing for top talent acquisition has reached something of a fever pitch. Thanks to an ever-shrinking marketplace and rising globalization, jockeying for the best hires among technology businesses who are attempting to recruit from essentially the same talent pool. Particularly around the San Francisco Bay Area, a paucity of experienced technology professionals, and myriad employment options, those with the right stuff are looking for more than a great offer. As important to these professionals as their compensation packages are employers with positive cultures and working environments, and those that offer opportunities to learn new skills and cultivate interests and leadership skills.

Why Is Creating a Diverse Workplace Important in Management Positions?

It is now widely acknowledged that creating a diverse workplace is desirable for companies. According to McKinsey’s research, ethnically-diverse companies are 36% more likely to outperform their peers and gender-diverse companies are 25% more likely to do the same. While many companies may strive to simply get diversity points by diversifying their HR structure models and hiring more women and people of color, they really aren’t following through on truly creating a diverse company if they aren’t also offering these employees equal opportunities for involvement and advancement in the company. Diversity in a company’s management team is essential to the success of the company as a whole, its employees and its customers.

4 Common Assumptions About Millennials That Aren't Exactly True

It’s no secret that millennials have a negative connotation associated with their background. Many people think that millennials are lazy, careless, and feel as if they’re entitled. However, that isn’t always the case.

Why Do Companies Restructure? Consultants Reveal 3 Keys to a Successful Turnaround

Let’s be honest:
Restructuring. Turnaround. Experts.

These are the kinds of euphemistic words corporate leaders use to put a good spin on a bad situation. When employees hear words while restructuring consulting firms or turnaround consultant, what they really hear is layoffs, unemployment, and anxiety.

The Truth About 'Millennials Job Hopping" and What It Means

According to a 2016 Gallup poll, Millennials are the “Job Hopping Generation.” The poll states that Millennials are generally open to changing careers, with 6 in 10 open to a new job at any given time. This is believed to be more than any other generation.

But does that fact really hold up?

3 Questions to Ask If Employee Turnover is Too High

High employee turnover rates can cost your company a fortune, and yet so many managers will try to convince themselves it’s not really their fault. Even if that’s true, high turnover is too big a problem to ignore, and it affects managers of all experience levels.

5 Tips: How to Create a Diverse Workplace

A more diverse workplace is a more inclusive, productive, and well-rounded workplace. B6y increasing your company’s diversity, you will introduce a variety of perspectives and resist traditional barriers that marginalized communities face. Recent McKinsey data shows that companies with gender diversity are 25% more likely to outperform their competition. What’s more, ethnically-diverse companies are 3% more likely to outcompete their peers. Follow these restructuring tips to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace environment for your employees.

Backchannel References: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

These days, backchannel references have become the method-of-choice for venture-funded CEO’s to gather data on prospective employees—even before they’ve interviewed them. It’s not elegant, but it’s the Three F’s: Fast, Frank, and Free. Since traditional references are almost always guaranteed to be positive, CEO’s now heavily invest into the backchannel, reassuring themselves with positive endorsements only from their closest friends and confidantes, one or two degrees removed.

4 Tips for Working with Outplacement Services Companies

Let’s face it: the job market is unpredictable and tough these days. So much so that 57% of businesses state employee retention as one of their biggest issues. Employee turnover can cost a company anywhere from 30% to 150% of the departing employee’s salary.

3 Tips to Attract and Retain Millennials as Employees

Millennials are known for having an approach to the workplace that differs from the generation before them. Reports coming out this month detail a related phenomenon: a high percentage of millennials (25%) plan to leave their organization by the end of the year, and 53% see themselves as open to job prospects. About 57% of companies agree retention is an issue.