Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #115

Covers 5 trends to build a more human organization, using virtual reality to onboard employees, HR strategy template, frameworks for the future of work, and pay transparency.

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

  • Global Talent Trends 2022 Study: Rise of the Relatable Organization | Mercer | A newly released 88-page report that identifies five major trends to build a more human and relatable organization.

  • How Accenture Uses Virtual Reality to Onboard Employees and More | i4cp Productivity Blog | Provides ideas on how the firm is using virtual reality and the metaverse to drive employee onboarding, hold digital company events, and support employee wellness.

  • HR Strategy Template | Gartner | Provides a template for documenting and communicating key elements of an HR strategy on one page.

  • Reimagining Human Resources: The Future of the Enterprise Demands a New Future of HR | Deloitte | A 16-page paper that provides a few helpful frameworks for navigating the future of HR in support of the business.

  • Pay Transparency: Should Salary Be a Secret? | Visier | Shares findings from a small survey of 1000 people that suggest today’s job seekers and employees overwhelmingly prefer pay transparency.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

This newly released 88-page report identifies five major trends to build a more human and relatable organization. It’s based on insights from nearly 11,000 C-suite executives, HR leaders, and employees representing 16 geographies and 13 industries. As noted in the report, relatable organizations are honing in on a few key success drivers: resetting for stakeholder relevance, building adaptive capability in their people and processes, figuring out how to work in partnership and tackle inequalities, driving outcomes on employee health and total well-being, incentivizing employability, and harnessing energy for the collective good. The report addresses these topics through five sections — each section including an overview, data points, and recommendations for getting started and then accelerating each area. Figure 10 on p.21 points out how some organizations are addressing skills shortages by “bending” the talent supply and demand curve. Said differently, they are decreasing talent demand by deconstructing jobs into tasks, automating parts of jobs, redesigning jobs, and redesigning work models to make it easier to find people to do the tasks needed. This is a tactic emphasized by Ravin Jesuthasan and John W. Boudreau in their book, Work without Jobs: How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System (released March 29, 2022). Organizations are also increasing talent supply by accessing non-traditional talent pools, reskilling/upskilling and redeploying existing talent, rebalancing the employee value proposition to attract new talent, and considering co-opetition and talent sharing.  This tactic is partially addressed in a previously shared report by Harvard Business School —Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent.  Several other ideas are discussed in the Mercer report.

I recently shared a post about a Harvard Business Review article, How the Metaverse Could Change Work, that described how the metaverse will reshape the world of work in at least four significant ways. 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, regardless of their geographical location; it has been described as a virtual reality version of today’s internet. The metaverse has the potential to transform how HR delivers value in various areas, ranging from learning and development to the onboarding of talent. And although experts say the metaverse is still many years away, firms have been experimenting with it and its related components. This article by i4cp summarizes how Accenture is using virtual reality and the metaverse in the context of work. As noted in the article, Accenture’s innovative solution to onboarding was to create a digital new hire campus named One Accenture Park. Additional spaces include digital twins of many of Accenture’s physical offices, as well as an area dubbed “Nth Floor,” which is a virtual water cooler space where Accenture employees meet-up and hang out. The firm also uses VR to hold digital company events in various 3D spaces. Besides the article, i4cp has made available a 60-minute video discussion with Allison Horn, Executive Director, Global Head of Talent, and John Goodyer, Global Talent Capability Lead, of Accenture—where they describe how they’ve implemented these practices at the firm. 

It’s been almost four months since organizations communicated their 2022 business strategy and objectives. And similar to new year’s resolutions set at the beginning of each year, business strategy and goals can lose focus and attention as the year progresses. With one-third of the year behind us, it’s a good time for leaders to pause and reflect on their organizations’ progress towards 2022 goals and identify opportunities for adjustments. And as HR leaders reflect on their function’s progress towards 2022 goals, it is essential to communicate this status to stakeholders. This Gartner template helps to a) identify a shortlist of metrics to describe the HR function’s target state, b) document and monitor key assumptions, c) identify key initiatives and milestones required to move to the end state, and d) craft a concise statement that captures the essence of the strategy. HR leaders can use this template to distill their strategic planning status down to the essential components. In case you missed it last week, here is a one-page editable PDF by XPLANE that enables firms to identify a set of scenarios they may face and determine how they will respond. HR leaders can also use this reference as part of their strategic planning.

As the HR function evolves with shifting business models and expectations, this 16-page Deloitte paper provides a few helpful frameworks for navigating the future of HR. It starts with the premise that shifting to the future of HR is all about achieving business outcomes in the context of the three futures happening now: 1) Future of Enterprise, 2) Future of Workforce, and 3) Future of How Work Gets Done. These contexts require shifts in four areas: 1) Mindset - transitioning toward the future by adopting new traits and behaviors to thrive in the digital age. 2) Focus - driving value through customer-centricity and human-centered solutions. 3) Lens - breaking away from traditional HR operating models in favor of dynamic ways of working that are fit-for-purpose to achieve work outcomes inside an enterprise’s values and culture that flexes to dynamic business needs. 4) Enablers - deploying advanced technologies focused on creating productivity and simplicity of experience through a unified engagement platform. Factoring in these considerations, Figure 2 on page 8 depicts 35 areas where shifts can happen across the four areas. The length of each line on the chart reflects the potential distance between an HR organization’s current and desired future states. HR leaders can use this reference as they think about which priority areas they will tackle for their organizations. Other ideas are discussed.

Pay transparency—the degree to which an organization openly and proactively shares information about salaries—continues to be a topic of interest within many organizations. And as I mentioned in a previous post about a Payscale paper, How Fair Pay Perception and Pay Transparency Combat Turnover, one factor drawing attention to pay transparency is recently passed laws in different states that require employers to state their salary ranges, either in job descriptions or when an applicant requests it. The benefits of pay transparency range from helping to close the gender pay gap, establishing higher levels of trust with employees, and reducing turnover. This new Visier survey of 1000 people found that today’s job seekers and employees overwhelmingly prefer pay transparency. A few findings include: 1) When asked what information candidates most prioritize when looking at job postings and job applications, respondents named estimated compensation as the number-one factor, followed by job responsibilities and company benefits. 2) Half of the 1,000 surveyed respondents (50%) have withdrawn themselves from consideration during a job interview or application process because the pay that was revealed did not match their expectations. 3) While applicants value knowing the estimated salary of a role, only 8% of respondents proactively asked about compensation during the job application or interview process for their current role. One implication of these data points is that organizations can save applicants and their recruiting teams time, energy, and frustration by providing estimated salary ranges in job postings or during your first screening conversations. What is your organization's position on pay transparency?

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

I share multiple resources HR leaders can use to reevaluate their HR structures and operating models to optimize efficiency, cost, and impact.

CHRO APPOINTMENT OF THE WEEK

This past week, 32 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 32 detailed Chief Human Resources Officer announcements from this past week and +1600 archived announcements, visit CHROs on the Go .

If you are already a member of CHROs on the Go, you can log in to access all announcements and site functionality.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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OUR RESOURCE LINEUP

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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.