Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #113

Covers internal talent marketplace and talent sharing, reinventing recruiting practices, the metaverse, equity in a hybrid work, and a podcast on building a talent machine.

April 10, 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

  • Promoting An Internal Talent Marketplace Through Talent Sharing | Multiple Resources | Shares multiple resources on how firms can enable their internal talent marketplace through talent sharing and other tactics.

  • Advancing Recruiting’s Value Through Uncertain Times: Shaping the Workforce | Gartner | An 18-page paper on how recruiting and talent acquisition practices can be reinvented to attract, identify, and hire needed talent.

  • How the Metaverse Could Change Work | Harvard Business Review | Discusses how the metaverse—a network of 3-D virtual worlds where people can interact—will reshape the world of work in at least four major ways.

  • Equity in the Hybrid Office | MIT Sloan Management Review | Addresses how managers and their remote workers can partner to ensure equal opportunities for advancement and professional development for remote workers.

  • Podcast: How to Design and Build a Talent Machine | The Leading Edge | In this 35-minute discussion, Marc Effron talks with Thomas A. Stewart about the challenges facing firms today, and how many of these aren't necessarily new, but rather more noticeable and expensive to solve.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

Internal mobility is a vital component of a firm’s talent strategy. And one way organizations are enabling this strategy is through their internal talent marketplace (ITM). An ITM is: a) usually hosted on a technology-enabled platform, b) connects employees with opportunities, ranging from full-time roles and projects, to name a few; c) provides an effective way to deploy talent quickly, where and when needed, while supporting the career development of workers. But as noted in this infographic by i4cp, there are barriers to ITM, including talent hoarding—where managers want to keep their top performers and limit their ability to move anywhere else in the company. As organizations build their ITM capability, including increasing talent sharing across their firm, I am reposting a few resources that can serve as a reference. 1) Let Your Top Performers Move Around the Company. Kevin Oakes, CEO of i4cp, provides four ways firms can create a culture that encourages internal mobility and reduces talent hoarding. 2) Activating the Internal Talent Marketplace — a Deloitte Insights article that describes how firms can speed up the delivery of their ITM through an iterative design using the four “Ps” - Purpose, Plan, Program, Platform. 3) Book: The Inside Gig: How Sharing Untapped Talent Across Boundaries Unleashes Organizational Capacity. Edie Goldberg and Kelley Steven-Waiss share six core principles for implementing an ITM. What tactics does your organization use to promote internal talent sharing or, conversely, minimize talent hoarding?

Many organizations continue to face challenges in attracting and hiring talent to meet their business needs. As a result, they are increasingly reevaluating and reinventing their recruiting and talent acquisition practices. A few tactics I previously shared to address this issue include 1) Expanding selection criteria to identify hidden talent. 2) Activating the internal talent marketplace to deploy internal talent quickly—where and when needed, 3) Simplifying the application process to reduce candidate drop-out rate due to lengthy and complex application procedures. This 18-page Gartner paper builds on some of these previously shared ideas. Page 9 notes that business leaders typically define hiring needs by articulating the candidate profile they want to see in the role, relying on presumptions that desired skills are tied to certain qualifications or experiences. More often than not, hiring managers recycle the last job description and add new desired skills to the list, creating an impossible task for recruiters who must search the labor market for these “unicorn” candidates. However, effective recruiters shift the conversation away from desired hiring manager profiles and toward defining the essential skills needed to get the job done (see Figure 8). Figure 11 on page 12 illustrates how hiring processes often exclude viable talent from nontraditional talent pools, including those candidates that are “self taught” and have the skills to perform a line of work, but lack traditional credentials. Other ideas are discussed.  

The term metaverse has continued to gain increased attention over the past year. While there are various interpretations of the word, the metaverse is generally regarded as a network of 3-D virtual worlds where people can interact, do business, and forge social connections through their virtual “avatars. Think about it as a virtual reality version of today’s internet." Stated differently, the metaverse enables humans to interact in ways as if they are together in “real life”, regardless of their geographical location. The article discusses how the metaverse will reshape the world of work in at least four major ways: 1) new immersive forms of team collaboration; 2) the emergence of new digital, AI-enabled colleagues; 3) the acceleration of learning and skills acquisition through virtualization and gamified technologies; 4) and the eventual rise of a metaverse economy with completely new enterprises and work roles. While experts say the metaverse is still many years away, its emergence “provides an opportunity for enterprises to reset the balance in hybrid and remote work, to recapture the spontaneity, interactivity, and fun of team-based working and learning while maintaining the flexibility, productivity, and convenience of working from home.” 

As noted in this article, pre-pandemic remote workers were often viewed by leaders as less dedicated than their in-person counterparts.This view often resulted in remote workers being overlooked for their contributions, which could limit their advancement and professional development opportunities. However, the pandemic helped to remove the stigma associated with remote work in many organizations. And while many firms now support hybrid work and remote work, pre-pandemic barriers to equity for remote employees can begin to surface gradually if not carefully managed. This article submits that ensuring hybrid equity and equal access for remote workers will require a true partnership between leaders and employees--raising two questions. 1) What should managers do to facilitate the equitable treatment of in-person and remote employees? 2) What should remote employees do to meet their obligations and expectations within this new work context? The authors provide four suggestions to help answer these questions. They range from reassessing the value of visibility and building cultures of belonging. As a bonus article with additional ideas, I am resharing this previous post, How Inequity Is Showing Up in Virtual Work Environments, by Culture Amp Blog

In this 35-minute discussion, Marc Effron talks with Thomas A. Stewart about many of the talent challenges facing firms today. Marc notes how many of these talent challenges (e.g. Great Resignation) aren't necessarily new, but rather noticeable and more expensive to solve. As noted in the discussion, companies can raise the level of talent management if they look at talent acquisition and retention as if they were a production line. To develop a strong team, you must get clear on what you’re trying to build, who you want in the company, the raw materials you need (that is, what people you need to fill pivotal roles), and the ways in which you assemble it (that is, your hiring processes, training and development, and retention tools). Marc breaks down the critical components of a successful talent philosophy and talent strategy, why you should invest in your top employees, and how to de-risk your talent production process. The conversation begins at the two-minute point of the podcast.

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

Highlights how the CHRO role can pave a path to the role of CEO.

CHRO ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WEEK

This past week, 36 Chief Human Resources Officer announcements were posted on CHROs on the Go – a subscription that provides the easiest way to stay informed about CHRO hires, promotions, and resignations. This week's CHRO highlight is:

To learn how to gain access to all 36 detailed Chief Human Resources Officer announcements from this past week and +1600 archived announcements, visit CHROs on the Go .

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TWEET OF THE WEEK

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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OUR RESOURCE LINEUP

​​brianheger.com provides free access to +1,000 curated articles, research reports, podcasts, etc. that help practitioners drive better business results through strategic human resources and talent management.

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​Talent Edge Weekly is a free weekly newsletter that brings together the best talent and strategic human resources insights from various sources. It is published every Sunday at 6PM EST.