Research firm Aberdeen is currently conducting a benchmark report on how best-in-class organizations incorporate and manage individual goals as part of the employee performance review process. The firm is looking for people to participate in the study – and as a thank you, participants will receive the resulting report for free! All information will be used in aggregate and kept confidential, so I’d encourage you to share your insights on goal management.

I’ll confess, I’m a list maker. I love to use checklists to manage my life. I use them for everything from shopping, to menu planning, to home maintenance chores, and especially for organizing and tracking my work.

But have you ever thought of using checklists as part of performance management?

As we mentioned last week, Kris Dunn, of HR Capitalist and Fistful of Talent blogs will be joining us at our 4th Annual Halogen User Conference, scheduled for October 14-15 in Ottawa, to share some social media lessons for HR.

In preparation for that, here’s a little bit of info on one very popular social media service – Twitter.

Many professional services firms struggle with creating accountability and consistency when it comes to talent management practices. One of the biggest reasons for this struggle is the very nature of work being executed within these firms. Accounting, engineering, marketing/PR, legal and other types of firms employ highly skilled professionals, and their bottom line is dependent upon the combined intellectual capital of these individuals. This makes employee engagement a top priority, which itself often is at odds with the culture of these firms, where billable work is the priority.

Our friends at Bersin & Associates have been really busy with new research reports – and surveys!

Of particular interest is their recently published High-Impact Succession Management: Best Practices, Models and Case Studies in Organizational Talent Mobility, a study that finds a majority of companies implement succession management practices at only the most senior executive levels. Fewer than 40% of respondents said their companies included mid-level managers and skilled professionals in succession planning initiatives and only 11% included first-line supervisors.