Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #110

Covers a work trend index report, 2022 talent trends, how to create a talent strategy, leadership in a post-pandemic environment, and a podcast about work without jobs.

March 20, 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

  • 2022 Work Trend Index Report: Great Expectations: Making Hybrid Work, Work | Microsoft | A newly released 44-page report that covers five trends business leaders need to know about hybrid work.

  • 2022 Talent Trends Report | Randstad Sourceright | A 54-page report that covers ten talent trends, ranging from refocusing recruiting on human potential to obsessing over your talent experience to create a game-changing employer brand.

  • How to Create A Talent Strategy | The Talent Strategy Group | Shares four steps for creating a talent strategy. I also share a link to my 2016 article, Linking Talent Strategy With Business Strategy.

  • Generative Leadership: The New Way of Leading | BCG | Provides an interconnected three-component framework (head, heart, and hands) for leadership in a post-pandemic environment.  

  • Podcast: Does the Future of Work Mean Work Without Jobs? (David Green Interview with Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau) | Digital HR Leaders Podcast | A 55-minute podcast where Ravin and John share ideas from their new book, Work Without Jobs: How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

As organizations shift more heavily from remote to hybrid work, this newly released 44-page report covers five trends business leaders need to know about hybrid work. The report is based on findings from a study of 31,000 people in 31 countries, along with an analysis of trillions of productivity signals in Microsoft 365 and labor trends on LinkedIn. The five themes include: 1) Employees have a new “worth it” equation. 2) Managers feel wedged between leadership and employee expectations. 3) Leaders need to make the office worth the commute, 4) Flexible work doesn’t have to mean “always on.” 5) Rebuilding social capital looks different in a hybrid world. Regarding #4, the report notes that one drawback of flexible work is digital overload and an “always on” mindset. Since March 2020, the weekly time spent in meetings for the average Teams user has increased 252 percent, and after-hours and weekend work has grown at 28 percent and 14 percent, respectively. It would be interesting to see if those working outside of regular business hours report burnout or positive benefits. For example, if someone has the flexibility to take time from standard business hours to attend a doctor’s appointment — but make up that work after business hours—this flexibility can help that person manage work and personal responsibilities more effectively. The challenge, however, is when flexibility yields benefits for one person (e.g., I can make up my work in the evening) but contributes to the burnout/digital overload of others (e.g., I am working in the evening messaging co-workers that have already finished their workday). The report notes how firms are creating new norms around flexible work to address the unintended consequences of flexibility. Page 24 includes a few good tips. Other ideas are discussed across the five hybrid work themes. 

This 2022 Talent Trends research report is based on a survey of over 900 C-suite and human capital leaders at international and regional organizations across 18 global markets. This 54-page report identifies ten talent trends, ranging from refocusing recruiting on human potential, ramping up your own talent marketplace to boost internal mobility, and obsessing over your talent experience to create a game-changing employer brand. As it relates to recruiting, the report raises the question: How can pulling back educational and other non-essential job requirements help us attract more diverse applicants? This question aligns with previous posts I’ve made on how firms often miss opportunities to consider “hidden workers” to meet firms' talent needs. These workers or job candidates have the skills or adjacent skills to effectively perform jobs or work tasks. Still, they go undetected since they don’t meet narrow requirements (e.g., academic degrees, industry experience, etc.) that may be less relevant to success in a line of work. This issue of hidden workers is described more deeply in a post I made on a 74-page report by Harvard Business School and Accenture, Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent. Another 30-page report by The Burning Glass Institute, The Emerging Degree Reset, outlines how many firms are moving away from degree requirements and toward skills-based hiring to unlock the value of hidden workers. Where are there opportunities for your firm to adjust non-essential work requirements to identify hidden workers? 

As I noted in my June 2016 article, Linking Talent Strategy With Business Strategy, if you ask one to articulate a company’s talent strategy, the answers are likely to be a list of talent processes, programs, and practices versus a talent strategy. And while these components enable a talent strategy, they are not a talent strategy by themselves. A talent strategy is a road map for how an organization plans to achieve 3-5 talent-related outcomes (usually over a multi-year period) deemed critical to executing the company’s business strategy. It also includes the tactics for achieving those outcomes, identifies key stakeholders, the time-frame for execution, and the measures for evaluating impact. This new article by The Talent Strategy Group provides four steps for creating a talent strategy, ranging from identifying your strategic drivers to identifying primary barriers and mitigation plans to address those barriers. One recommendation you can try at your next HR leadership team meeting is 1) have each team member write what they believe are the four key priorities of the firm’s talent strategy, 2) aggregate the individual responses to see where there are both consistencies and inconsistencies, 3) realign the team on the vital few priorities of the talent strategy, 4) discuss what the HR team is working on that is NOT related to those priorities, 5) identify opportunities for shifting resources from low to high priority areas of your talent strategy. A simple exercise like this can accelerate the delivery of business strategy through talent strategy execution.

The last two years of the pandemic have brought the toughest test in leadership for leaders worldwide. Yet, many leaders rose to the occasion. According to this BCG year-long research project, many of the tactics leaders effectively employed during the pandemic can form the basis for an approach to leading in a post-pandemic world. The authors refer to this approach as generative leadership, composed of three interconnected elements: head, heart, and hands. 1) Head: Leaders reimagine and reinvent their businesses. They think expansively about the future they want to create and focus on the right strategic priorities to reach it. 2) Heart: Leaders create an inspiring and enriching human experience for their people—including outside of work. They lead with purpose, and they work to inspire and empower people at all levels of the organization. 3) Hands: Leaders find ways to execute and innovate through supercharged teams that work with agility across boundaries. They align their people effectively around the work to be done. Exhibit 1 summarizes what these three elements look like in practice, and questions are provided to help leaders and leadership teams become more “generative.” Since leaders increasingly recognize the disproportionate impact of the “heart” component, I am resharing two bonus resources that enable it. 1) Gartner’s, CHRO Guide: Reinvent Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) for a Postpandemic Workforce, which provides tactics for fostering the “human side” of an EVP. 2) Accenture’s, Care to Do Better – Building Trust to Leave Your People and Your Business Net Better Off, which includes ideas on meeting six fundamental human needs through work. 

In this 55-minute podcast episode, David Green interviews Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau, who are releasing a new book—Work Without Jobs: How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System (due out on March 29, 2022). John and Ravin discuss how they see the future of work and jobs evolving, including the core principles behind their new work operating system: work without jobs. The thinking behind this system is that jobs have traditionally been the unit of analysis for organizing work. But as work becomes less predictable, more fluid, and affected by rapid disruption, firms can benefit from deconstructing work into various tasks rather than fixed and static jobs. Deconstructing work from the job level to the task level allows organizations to accomplish those tasks through an optimal mix of work delivery options (e.g., technology, consultants, part-time work, etc.) instead of bundling tasks into a job. As I mentioned in previous posts, this approach will require firms to rethink how they drive various talent practices anchored in jobs/roles, such as workforce planning and recruiting. John and Ravin share examples of firms like Unilever, Genentech, and DHL, which have already started to move towards this future system. Other ideas are discussed, and the heart of the discussion begins at the 6:30 minute mark. 

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

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 four bonus materials that can help CPOs of all experience levels.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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