Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #116

Covers connecting business and workforce strategy, retaining talent, employee preferences, recruiting former employees, and bias in performance management.

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

  • Meet the Four Forces Shaping Your Workforce Strategy | strategy+business | A 14-page paper that includes a framework and underlying questions for understanding the interplay between workforce strategy, business strategy, culture, and technology.

  • Ten New Realities for Finding, Keeping, and Developing Talent | Mckinsey & Co.| Shares ten talent realities companies need to face and offers suggestions for how firms can address them.

  • Report: People at Work 2022: A Global Workforce View | ADP Research Institute | A 47-page report on employees’ attitudes towards the current world of work and what they expect and hope for from the future workplace.

  • Leave the Door Open for Employees to Return to Your Organization | Harvard Business Review | Presents several practices for cultivating relationships with former employees to make it easier for them to return to the organization.

  • How to Crush Bias in Performance Management | The Talent Strategy Group | Provides tactics for minimizing bias at each stage of the performance management cycle by using superior process design.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

This 14-page article highlights how companies are navigating four forces to inform their workforce strategy. The four forces and the questions they help firms answer include: 1) Specialization (the expertise we obtain and build to succeed). How can we anticipate the roles we’ll need (and the roles being displaced)? 2) Scarcity (the talent shortages and skills deficits that could harm our performance). Where are we short on talent now? What skills will we need? 3) Rivalry (the reasons employees choose us over competitors). Are we winning now? How can we win as our requirements change with our strategy? 4) Humanity (the good we do for our people—and the world. Does our company purpose resonate with our people? The article provides examples of how companies are examining workforce challenges and opportunities with the four forces in mind, and asking additional questions such as: Which roles risk being automated most quickly (specialization)? Where are our biggest skills surpluses and deficits—and which employees are most at risk of leaving (scarcity)? What’s our employee value proposition, and how could it be stronger (rivalry)? What’s our current commitment to an organizational purpose, as well as to the communities in which we operate (humanity)? HR leaders can use this framework and underlying questions to guide the development of their workforce strategy.

This article shares ten talent realities companies need to face and offers suggestions for how firms can address them. And while the article is written through the lens of ‘tech talent,’ many of the realities are agnostic of role, function, and industry, such as: #3. Think candidate experiences, not recruiting process. This point emphasizes that firms tend to focus on enhancing their recruiting processes mostly by improving efficiencies. A more effective approach is to “think like a recruit” and focus on the candidate experience. #5. You can’t hire or outsource your way out of your talent problems. Although filling talent needs through outsourcing and contingent labor is a vital workforce planning lever, many of a firms’ core capabilities need to remain in house to enable the business to move quickly, so outsourcing can’t be the answer in many cases. To help firms determine the right mix of build, buy, and borrow strategies, Exhibit 1 includes a workforce-priority grid. The grid has two dimensions 1) The degree to which a role disproportionately affects business priorities and capabilities, shown on a continuum from Non-Core to Core roles. 2) Time constraints to fill the role, indicated on a continuum from Flexible to Urgent (<3 months). Although a segment of firms places less emphasis on roles and focuses more on tasks and activities as the basis for workforce planning, firms can use the matrix to identify what roles to build, buy, and partner (e.g., outsource). Other ideas are discussed. 

This newly released 47-page report is part of ADP’s annual study of employees’ attitudes towards the current world of work and what they expect and hope for from the future workplace. It’s based on survey responses from 32,924 workers in 17 countries worldwide. And although the report was just published, the survey was conducted in November 2021. A few findings include 1) Seven in 10 workers (71%) say they have considered a major career move this year. 2) Feelings toward flexibility and work-life balance are not limited to parents (74%) who would like to arrange working hours to be more flexible, followed closely by 68% of non-parents. 3) If it came to it, employees are prepared to make compromises if it meant more flexibility or a hybrid approach to work location with more than half (52%) willing to accept a pay cut – as much as 11% – to guarantee this arrangement. 4) Pay equity is important: three quarters (76%) would consider looking for a new job if they discovered their company had an unfair gender pay gap or no diversity and inclusion policy. Other ideas are discussed that can help organizations further understand worker preferences.

As organizations continue to report challenges in attracting and hiring top talent, one potential untapped talent acquisition strategy is recruiting back former employees. According to a UKG survey across six countries comparing responses of 1,950 employees who quit their jobs since March 2020, nearly half of people (43 percent) who quit their jobs during the pandemic now think they were better off at their old job. And, 75% of respondents said they’d be interested in maintaining contact with their previous employer. This HBR article presents several practices for cultivating relationships with former employees to make it easier for them to return to the organization—often referred to as “Boomerang” employees. One tactic used by Bain to stay connected with departing employees is their robust alumni program. One element of the program is to have departing employees—known as Bainies—select an employee responsible for staying in contact and building a long-term relationship with them. This practice, along with others, enables Bain to “leave the door open” for those who ever want to come back. What tactics is your firm using to re-recruit former employees? As a bonus article, you can check out an MIT Sloan Management Review article, The Benefits and Risks of Rehiring a Boomerang Employee.

One goal of effective performance management (PM) is to provide objective and fair performance feedback. And while organizations seek to achieve this goal, PM is imperfect and subject to bias. This article offers ideas for mitigating performance management bias. It starts with the premise that while organizations often rely on bias training to help managers reduce PM bias, this tactic rarely translates into long-term change, despite good intentions. An alternative tactic for minimizing bias at each stage of the PM cycle is using a superior process design. Well-designed processes can help weed out PM bias since firms have more control over the process than they do over the individual behaviors of every single manager. For example, by default, a process leads to “more, diverse eyes looking at something” — meaning the more people who see it, the more input you get, the more likely you can identify outliers and potential biases (e.g., performance calibration sessions). The article outlines process tactics for reducing bias in goal setting (e.g., see whether goals within a function or group are set at a relatively consistent level of challenge) and performance reviews (e.g., eliminating mandatory self-reviews), to name a few. In case you missed it, here is also a one-hour webinar by Angela Lane and Marc Effron where they offer various tactics for reducing PM bias. 

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

A 16-page paper that provides a few helpful frameworks for navigating the future of human resources in support of the business.

CHRO APPOINTMENT 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 .

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.