Research Practices

Research powers everything we do.

Our Research Team takes a rigorous approach that is constantly evolving and up-to-date, providing your organization with personalized insights on current and future trends.

We publish more quality research – including at least two new releases each week – than any research and analyst firm in the industry.

Our elite group of analysts centers its research on understanding how business performance can be improved. This results in practical, actionable research that empowers executives to make the best strategic decisions about implementing effective strategies, efficient processes, and leading technologies across the following functions - Learning and Development, Talent Management, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Leadership Development, Talent Acquisition and Human Resources.

Our proprietary research methodology allows us to envision future-state human capital practices in the context of a complex, evolving and global business landscape. Based on more than 25 years of translating data into action, the success of our five-phase methodology lies in analytics-based benchmarks, models, frameworks, documents, tools and other pragmatic, actionable research assets. Together they accelerate business results and empower excellence in organizations.

Learning and Development

Learning represents a huge investment for most companies and is ideally tied directly to the business strategy. However, organizations struggle to develop clear, business-focused strategies that make the most of the learning budget. The changing demographic face of the workforce and a seemingly endless stream of new technologies make the challenge that much more complex.

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Talent Management

A talent management strategy is second only to a business strategy in importance at any organization. But, many organizations still lack a detailed strategy for talent decisions and actions. Their approach to attracting, developing, engaging, and retaining talent is disparate and targets only select talent processes.

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Diversity and Inclusion

Shared leadership can’t occur without real inclusion, meaning that everyone with the capabilities to lead in some capacity has the opportunity to succeed. Eight of 10 research respondents told us their organizations are inclusive and diverse, but their actions say otherwise. Less than one-third of organizations have active or effective programs to recruit and develop a diverse pipeline of talent. Fewer hold leaders accountable for diversity and inclusion. This does not mean punishing people for lack of inclusivity. It means incentivizing everyone to change the behaviors that block real inclusion. The intent is there, in most cases. Biases and habits often get in the way.

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Leadership Development

Regardless of economic conditions, new government regulations, global growth, or demographic changes, leadership development assumes a top priority on the agendas of all business leaders year over year over year. We suspect the focus on developing leaders won’t be going away anytime soon, if ever. In fact, the highest performing organizations — what we call Level 4 — are planning to accelerate leader development more so than ever before. Why? Because while the majority of organizations tout the business importance of leadership development, a mere 8% have yet taken the time to define their unique leadership requirements and design leader development in alignment with those requirements.

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Talent Acquisition

While a growing number of companies are embracing new technologies and setting more strategic goals for talent acquisition, our research reveals that many are still relying on outdated and ineffective processes. In order to drive business outcomes, organizations must rethink the way they identify, attract and hire talent.

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Human Resources

Human Resources is no longer "just" about tracking time, making schedules, and delivering payroll. It is at the very core of an organization's ability to enable workforce analytics and understand the key drivers of productivity and performance. Modern workforce management technology is helping organizations has become a strategic force to enable data driven business and talent decisions, and improve the employee experience.

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Our Research Methodology