Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #109

Covers employees' expectations for hybrid work, attributes of chief people officers, the impact of remote work on hiring, guidelines on remote work salaries, and diversity.

March 13, 2022

Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly—the weekly newsletter for human resources practitioners, bringing together insights about work, the workplace, and the workforce from various sources.

If you find value in this issue or any of its resources, please share them with your network by using the social media icons at the top of the newsletter.

Have a great week, and I look forward to sharing more ideas in next week’s Edge!

Brian 

Brian Heger is a human resources practitioner with a Fortune 150 organization and has responsibilities for Strategic Talent and Workforce Planning. To connect with Brian on Linkedin, click here.

THIS WEEK'S CONTENT

  • March Issue of HR Leaders Monthly | Gartner | A 38-page issue that includes six articles on various topics, ranging from employees’ perceptions and expectations for hybrid work, women in the workplace, building a better recruiting function, and performance management.

  • Leading the People Function: 5 Key Attributes of Chief People Officers — Whether Day One, 100 or 1,000 | Mercer | A 30-page paper covering five critical attributes that effective Chief People Officers (CPO) deploy — both as leaders of teams and as individuals. I include 4 bonus materials.

  • Remote Work Has Opened the Door to a New Approach to Hiring | Harvard Business Review | Discusses how "open talent” models — whose defining feature is project-based or temporary work that is staffed with workers who are not full-time employees— can help firms meet their talent needs.

  • Guide to Setting Remote Work Salaries | ChartHop |  Provides ideas firms can consider when determining their philosophy and practices related to location-based pay. Includes 3 questions to ask when considering a location-based pay model.

  • Workforce Diversity Data Disclosure | Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | Provides insights on how firms in the Russell 1000 have been sharing data around their workforce and board demographics.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

This 38-page March 2022 issue of Gartner's HR Leaders Monthly Magazine includes six articles on various work, workplace, and workforce topics. They range from employees’ perceptions and expectations for hybrid work, how the pandemic and the transition to hybrid have affected women, and three pandemic lessons for building a better recruiting function. Two articles focus on performance management (PM), one of which begins on page 12 about integrating wellbeing (WB) into PM. The author discusses how firms can use PM to help employees meet their WB needs, such as by documenting and being held accountable for WB goals. Since not all employees and managers feel comfortable talking about personal WB, there are a few examples of how firms are tackling this issue (e.g., training managers what to say or do and not to say or do when offering WB support). This article also emphasizes the importance of integrating personal contexts into performance assessments to understand how disruptions affect employees’ overall wellbeing. Two sources of disruption mentioned are 1) Work disruptions: disruptions to the business unit, team, project, or workflow (e.g., change in responsibilities, loss of key team members), 2) Personal disruptions: disruptions to the individual employee’s ability to work (e.g., new caregiving responsibilities, inadequate workspace. Figure 3 on page 17 applies these two types of disruptors on a Disruption Differentiation Matrix to help managers determine how they might message performance feedback. Many other ideas are discussed in this issue, including on p. 26 where there are 5 triggers for determining when to adjust performance goals.

This 30-page paper shares five critical attributes that effective Chief People Officers (CPO) deploy — both as leaders of teams and as individuals. The five areas are based on CPO suggestions from global organizations of all sizes. And while the five attributes are informative by themselves, two parts of the paper to highlight are 1) Page 4 has 10 questions CPOs can ask themselves to determine how to drive growth in themselves and their company. 2) Page 27 has a blueprint for how first-time CHROs might want to spend their first 100 days. Also, throughout the report, there are behavioral descriptors for how CHROs demonstrate the five key attributes. As bonus resources, here are four additional resources that I have shared at different points and which might help CPO’s of all experience levels. 1) Spencer Stuart’s, New CHRO Playbook: Getting Off to a Strong Start as a New Chief Human Resources Officer. This resource helps CHROs gain momentum in their new role through an eight-point plan. 2) Deloitte’s, The Workforce Takes Center Stage: The Board’s Evolving Role, which includes 14 questions that Boards are asking concerning the workforce. 3) Gartner’s, First 100 Days: A Guide for New-to-role Heads of HR, which covers nine steps for accelerating a successful transition of new CHROs and 4) Marc Effron and Jim Shanley’s article, The CHRO’s Team: What Matters Most, which offers three questions that CHROs can ask when determining if they have an all-star HR team.

Much has been written about the challenges firms face in attracting and retaining workers. A narrative is also playing about how many workers have shifted their work preferences—with many placing a disproportionate value on flexible work arrangements. Simultaneously, thought leaders posit firms will increasingly deconstruct “jobs” into tasks and activities, so they have greater flexibility in delivering pieces of work through various work options, such as freelancers and project work. Within this picture sits an opportunity for firms to think creatively about addressing talent needs through a flexible work model. This article presents the notion of an “open talent” model — whose defining feature is project-based or temporary work that is staffed with workers who are not full-time employees. The article discusses reasons for using an open talent model, which jobs or tasks are most amenable to it, and how firms can decide when an open model makes sense. For example, the authors mention four situations where it makes sense to use an open talent model: 1) Insiders cannot be redeployed easily. 2) Outsiders are less expensive than hiring a new insider or paying overtime to existing ones, 3) Highly specialized skills are needed, and they are not available internally, and 4) Returns on exceptional solutions are high. The article has other ideas to help firms determine the work tasks that can be delivered through an open-source model. In turn, this helps unlock the capacity of many full-time workers to focus on work tasks that require a high level of firm-specific knowledge and skills.

Around this time last year, I conducted a poll of this newsletter’s readers on the topic of location-based pay. Given the rise of remote work during that time, I asked readers: If an employee relocates to a geographic location with a lower cost of living, should their salary be reduced accordingly? Based on 117 responses, 42% said that it would depend on the job, 37% said salary should not be adjusted, and 20% felt it should be adjusted (all numbers are rounded). I mentioned in a previous post how firms had taken different stances on this topic: while Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google base pay on geographic location, smaller companies, including Reddit and Zillow, have shifted to location-agnostic pay models. These mixed results reinforce the complex nature of this topic. But as firms think through the implications of these decisions on their ability to attract and retain workers while ensuring fairness, they must be deliberate about these decisions. This paper provides ideas firms can consider when determining their philosophy and practices around location-based pay. The authors recommend that firms first ask three questions when considering a location-based pay model. 1) Are enough employees working remotely to warrant location-based compensation? The authors note that if fewer than 25% could work remotely, a firm should maintain its current salary structure. 2) How would we adjust compensation when employees move? 3) How would we ensure pay disparities are strictly based on location or experience? These and other ideas in the paper can help firms critically evaluate these decisions and their potential implications.

With diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) a priority for many organizations, internal and external stakeholders of these firms are increasingly looking for signs of meaningful progress in DEI efforts. And although many firms have evolved their DEI initiatives from diversity to encompass inclusion and equity, disclosing workforce demographics is still a fundamental component of DEI. This article addresses if and how firms in the Russell 1000 have been sharing data around their workforce and board demographics. A few findings include: 1) As of September 2021, a slim majority of companies in the Russell 1000 (55%) disclose some type of racial and ethnic workforce data. However, this number shows a notable increase since January 2021, when only 32% of companies disclosed racial and ethnic data. 2) The disclosure of racial and ethnic workforce data is highly unstandardized. Some companies follow the U.S. Census Bureau’s groupings, which include five baseline racial identities (White; Black or African American; American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; or Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander) and two ethnic identities (Hispanic or Latino; or Not Hispanic or Latino). Others either further disaggregate or aggregate these groupings. 3) Companies in the Utilities industry are the most likely to disclose some racial and ethnic workforce data, with 82% (31 companies) in that industry sharing one of the three disclosure types. The article includes other insights, including a table showing which companies in its study have publicly reported their EEO-1 Report; a link to each of these firms’ reports is provided. As stakeholders expect greater transparency in workforce demographics data, firms can use these insights to guide their efforts. 

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

To access all resources from last week's full issue, click here.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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