Case Study

2018 TalentAcquisition Leaderof the YearJeff Bettinger, Global Head TalentManagement and OrganizationalDevelopment at Alcon, a NovartisCompany

Alcon, the eye care division of multinational pharmaceutical giant Novartis,employs more than 20,000 people in 74 countries around the world.

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Jeff Bettinger, current Vice President, Global HeadTalent Management and Organizational Developmentand, and previously Senior Director of TalentAcquisition, led a team of more than 50 people in thehiring of more than 3,000 associates a year acrossmanufacturing, sales, research and development, andall corporate functions.

The success of Jeff’s initiatives in demonstrating talentacquisition’s strategic value to the business and hisability to motivate and inspire his team – and the Alconorganization – around talent led to his recognition asTalent Acquisition Leader of the Year at the 2018 HROToday North America Forum in National Harbor,Maryland.

When Jeff came onboard at Alcon, talent acquisitionwas not performing to business expectations. Thegroup was known as being reactive, responding tohiring challenges only when things escalated.

In spite of this, the executive leadership team and thebusiness as a whole understood what a vital role talentacquisition plays in HR’s success and were looking tomake a change. The team needed a new leader, but noone was raising their hand. No one externally seemedto understand the uncertain environment in whichAlcon operated or the need to reengineer the way thecompany engaged candidates.

Jeff raised his hand to be the Head of TalentAcquisition for Alcon. He quickly saw an opportunityto improve bottom line results. His first priority was todouble the training and engineering forces used to

train the doctors. Alcon’s customers wanted moreattention and assistance with Alcon’s portfolio ofsurgical products. Jeff immediately recognized thisand put on multiple hiring blitzes, creating a candidatepool of potential trainers so that these key talentswould never again be understaffed.

His second priority was to gain the trust andconfidence of the business and he realized that hecould only do this with a major change to the structureof the talent acquisition function. With significantpressure from the business he had to switch RPOproviders, a bit like changing engines in-flight giventhe level of uncertainty about the company’s futureand considering that the function wasunderperforming for the business.

As Jeff changed RPO providers, he had to create anorganization that was high touch and unique to Alcon.He knew that a standard model would not work. Inpartnering with Korn Ferry. Jeff created a talentacquisition organization that was functionally alignedto the business and had unique dedicated resourcesfocusing on specialty areas such as D&I, Onboarding,Social Media, University Relations, Veterans, andCandidate Care. From changing RPO providers andrestructuring the fee model of the process toimplementing a talent pipeline strategy and hiringresources dedicated to university relations, diversityhiring and social media, Jeff has focused on data, factsand figures to spread his vision for a proactive talentacquisition function.

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With the positive results to point to, it can be difficultto grasp the personal and professional risk Jeffundertook when he moved into the talent acquisitionleadership role and when he put forth andimplemented his early initiatives. He had only beenwith the company for 7 months at the time of hisappointment. His ability to paint a clear picture for thefuture of Alcon talent acquisition in spite of theongoing uncertainty around the business as a whole,to realize that vision and to continue driving it forward,and to demonstrate the strategic value of talentacquisition through a positive impact on the bottomline are the marks of a great leader in any arena.

Since taking on leadership of Alcon’s talent acquisitionfunction, Jeff has looked to create an integratedrecruitment strategy – where efforts to driveoperational excellence, diversity hiring, universityrelations, and a social media presence are allintertwined – ultimately supporting the broaderbusiness strategy and culture.

The foundation of Alcon’s RPO partnership with KornFerry, the provider Jeff switched to early in his tenureas talent acquisition leader, is a shared commitmenttransparency, immersion and continuous improvement.

With a background in organizational development,talent management, and learning, coupled with Jeff’stalent acquisition experience he redesigned theorganizational support model for the functions. A

dedicated delivery team, led by a project director, wasbuilt out onsite at Alcon headquarters in Fort Worth.The team includes a social media, diversity andinclusion manager; a compliance manager; and a dataand analytics manager, roles that are not typicallyfound on a RPO team. Beyond this, Jeff built anonboarding team to specialize in day one productivityand deeper cultural integration. It was Jeff’s decisionto include these roles as he recognized the value ofleveraging social platforms and diversity recruitmentto reach candidates and the important role dataanalytics plays in connecting recruitment initiatives tobottom line cost savings and top line growth.

With the ability to flex and scale quickly, thecentralization and streamlining of recruitmentprocesses, and opportunity to leverage Korn Ferry'sbest of breed recruitment technologies, Jeff has beenable to realize over $5m in cost savings through theRPO model currently in place. Agency usage hasdeclined from over 70% to just 5%. Time to fill hasbeen reduced by 17 days – from 77 to 60 days -closing a revenue gap valued at over $19m per year.Aging requisitions, those that have been open formore than 120 days, have been reduced from 33% ofall requisitions to just 1%.

Through a realignment of the talent acquisition teamand a right-sizing of the requisition load, Jeff has alsoworked to drive hiring manager satisfaction whichonce stood at 20%. The last eight quarters have seenHiring Manager satisfaction scores north of 85%.

One of the key pivot points the talent acquisitionfunction has taken under Jeff’s direction has been thereengineering of the Alcon Employee ValueProposition. Where the company used to try andencourage candidates to work on the neat productsand ground-breaking medicines Alcon was developing,Jeff realized the need to appeal to candidates on amore personal level. Rather than working on a product,he wanted to talk about working for a bigger cause –helping people see better. Alcon, through its productsand numerous philanthropy efforts, gives a quarter ofa billion people the gift of sight each year.

The company’s dedication to sight-saving missionsand ongoing partnerships with international non-profits, such as Orbis International, serve as atestament to its mission to discover new ways toenhance sight and improve people’s lives. Jeff hasworked to ensure these aspects of Alcon’s businessand culture are well-known to candidates.

Recognizing the value of diversity of thought to anyorganization, Jeff has prioritized diversity and veteranhiring. Prior to Jeff’s arrival, diversity metrics were notmeasured. In addition to bringing a dedicated resourceonboard to focus on diversity hiring, he has

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About Korn Ferry

Korn Ferry is a global organizationalconsulting firm. We help clients synchronizestrategy and talent to drive superiorperformance. We work with organizations todesign their structures, roles, andresponsibilities. We help them hire the rightpeople to bring their strategy to life. And weadvise them on how to reward, develop, andmotivate their people.

implemented a strategy to increase the number ofdiverse candidate slates. By shifting from advertising indiversity publications to a more focused and alignedeffort on diversity and inclusion, adding historicallyblack colleges and universities to the list of targeteducational institutions and partnering with industrygroups – like the National Black MBA Association,Prospanica, and the Society of Women Engineers -dedicated to driving diversity, Alcon is seeing ademographic shift in its candidate slates. The last threequarters have seen at least 80% of candidate slateswith one or more diverse candidates.

Before Jeff stepped into the talent acquisition leaderrole, there was no formal strategy around hiring vetsand the veteran saturation rate stood at less than 3%.Bringing a dedicated veteran hiring resource onboard,who is a veteran himself, the veteran hiring programworks with veteran hiring organizations, operates itsown Employee Resource Group, manages multiplecampus hiring events targeting ROTC members andparticipates in events like the Armed Forces Bowl andthe Veterans Day Parade in New York City to driveveteran hiring at Alcon. The veteran saturation ratenow stands at 5.6%. Through his team’s efforts Alcon’sparent company has just been granted the designationas a Military Friendly Employer.

Characteristic of Jeff’s tenure at Alcon has been hisability to infuse innovative thinking into theorganization. Historically, the organization had goneafter experienced talent and Jeff has worked to createa balance between reaching out to both experiencedand entry-level candidates. The result has been theimplementation of a university relations and internprogram and enhanced training programs for earlycareer hires. There are three university relationsresources on the talent acquisition team and this yearthe team reviewed 26,000 applications for 150internship opportunities. The interns came from 26schools in 7 countries. 40% of interns have convertedto full-time employees and the program continues togrow at the insistence of the business.

Key to driving diversity, veteran and university hiringhas been the implementation of a robust social mediastrategy. When Jeff stepped up to assume leadershipof the function, a great portion of the budget wasgoing to a single job board. He looked for ways toinvest differently and, thus, speak to differentaudiences. His team worked to establish a presence onLinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed and Facebook; much ofthe engagement with diversity groups and veteranhiring organizations is enabled by social media and theteam sees social media as a key driver of its internhiring program.

In 2017, Facebook followers increased 25% to 6,000

and content reached some 4.5 million people, anincrease of 50% over the previous year. LinkedInfollowers increased 13% to 193,000 and contentreached some 9.7 million people, an increase of 25%over the previous year. Social campaigns promotingopen roles reached 780,000 people, 7,2000 of whomclicked to apply. The investment in social media ispaying off with 15% of all hires coming through socialmedia efforts.

Jeff has consistently delivered results as head of talentacquisition for candidates, recruiters, hiring managersand business stakeholders. His ability to steward thefunction in a new direction, through carefully-laid plansand the ability to delegate, has set the team on apositive trajectory while spurring Jeff’s move to hiscurrent role as Vice President, Global Head TalentManagement and Organizational Development. In hiscurrent role, he has worked to continue driving thestrategic value of talent acquisition through theimplementation of talent mapping exercises, high-potential programs, and organizational alignmentinitiatives that are leading to greater employeeengagement and reduced voluntary turnover - whichis at a five-year low despite the competitive landscape.

Jeff’s ability to rally his colleagues, and ultimatelycandidates, around the vision for Alcon’s business andto drive successful outcomes in support of thebusiness’s operations made the decision to name himTalent Acquisition Leader of the Year an easy one.