Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #127

Covers CHRO trends, non-technological barriers so internal mobility, making performance management fairer, redefining rewards for hybrid work, and 5 types of talent pools.

July 17, 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

  • CHRO Trends 2022 | The Talent Strategy Group | Shares the top ten trends across 30 new Fortune 200 CHROs that came into the role in 2021. Topics range from CHRO succession, diversity, and turnover, to name a few.

  • Non-Technological Barriers to Internal Mobility in Organizations | Brian Heger | I share 6 non-technological barriers to internal mobility. I provide an opportunity for readers to share what they believe are additional barriers.

  • 6 Ways to Make Performance Reviews More Fair | Harvard Business Review | Identifies 6 behavioral nudges — four for managers and two for employees — that will make the performance management process fairer.

  • How to Redefine Total Rewards for the Hybrid Workforce | Gartner | Addresses how the benefits of hybrid work and location flexibility create challenges for total rewards leaders in four areas, including location-based pay.

  • The Great Attrition is Making Hiring Harder. Are You Searching in the Right Talent Pools? | McKinsey | Shares new research that identifies five distinct talent pools (or personas) with varied workplace priorities.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

This fifth edition of the Talent Strategy Group’s Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) report outlines the top ten trends across 30 new Fortune 200 CHROs that came into the role in 2021. A few highlights include 1) For the first time since the report’s inception in 2017, more CHROs were appointed externally than internally. In 2021, 41 percent of CHRO appointments were internal compared to 70 percent in 2017. The number of internal CHRO appointments has been on a gradual decline since 2017, which raises the question: how well are organizations doing in developing and retaining their internal CHRO successors? It would be interesting to see how these numbers compare to other functions and whether the appointment of an external CHRO followed the hiring of an external CEO. 2) The Chief Talent Officer/Head of Talent Management role emerges as a viable contender to the HR Business Partner (HRBP) role for the most likely role to ascend to CHRO. While previous years showed that the primary pathways to the CHRO role were a) serve as an existing CHRO and move to a new company as CHRO, and b) be appointed internally, with the role before the appointment almost exclusively being the HRBP, a third of CHRO appointments in 2021 held the Chief Talent Officer or Head of Talent Management role prior to appointment. The report covers other topics, such as turnover in the CHRO role and gender representation. As a side note, as part of CHROs on the GO —where I track hires, promotions, and resignations to the CHRO role—I have found that 67 CHRO appointments so far in 2022 have been in organizations where the CHRO role is newly created, reinforcing the role’s growing importance.

Internal mobility (IM) — the movement of employees across roles and opportunities within the same company — is a critical component of effective talent management. As HR leaders and their teams strengthen IM practices in their organizations, many look to technology to support these efforts. And while technology is a critical enabler of IM, organizations often approach IM as a technology initiative and lose sight of the non-technological components that are critical to an IM strategy. I believe technology represents about 25 percent to a third of the factors essential to driving the successful execution and sustainment of an organization’s IM efforts. As practitioners think more holistically about the non-tech barriers that impede IM, a few from my perspective include 1) Policies that restrict internal movement (e.g., the employee must be in a role or employed with the company for a certain amount of time before moving to another internal role or opportunity), 2) Bureaucratic processes that slow down the placement of internal talent (i.e., hiring managers often have to go through more steps in moving internal talent than they do in hiring external talent). 3) Narrow and irrelevant selection criteria (e.g., managers include criteria that are too specific or not relevant to success in the role and end up limiting the internal talent pool). 4) Talent hoarding (i.e., managers prevent or discourage employees from pursuing internal opportunities). 5) Restricting recruiters to identify only external talent when filling a role or opportunities. 6) Limited view of career development (e.g., managers and employees emphasize upward progression or only seek opportunities in one’s native function or business areas). Since these are just a few barriers, what do you believe are other non-technological barriers to internal mobility in organizations? Share your quick thoughts here. I will consolidate the responses and share a summary in an upcoming issue of this newsletter.  

Effective performance management (PM) aims to provide objective and fair performance feedback. And while most people try to be meritocratic when assessing the performance of others, PM is imperfect and subject to bias. This article identifies several sources of bias in the performance-review process and shares six behavioral nudges — four for managers and two for employees — that will make the PM process fairer. One suggestion speaks to similarity bias or like-me bias, where evaluators of performance look favorably on individuals who are like them, often at the expense of those who are not. While not mentioned in the article, similarity bias can manifest through another bias—proximity bias (PB). PB happens when workers who spend more time in the office or in proximity to organizational decision-makers are viewed more favorably than their remote counterparts. In performance management, managers who work primarily from an office location are likely to view their in-office workers more positively than those who don’t (i.e., similar to me bias and proximity bias), which could lead to an unfair performance evaluation. In fact, research conducted in 2010 (well before the pandemic and prior to remote work becoming more mainstream) found that remote workers might receive lower performance evaluations and smaller raises compared to their in-office colleagues. As HR teams help leaders and managers mitigate performance management bias, a few tactics to consider are: 1) help managers and leaders recognize their tendencies to engage in similar to me and proximity bias 2) invest in the development of manager and leadership skills, mindsets, and behaviors that minimize these biases, and 3) use data, process, and calibration to root out these biases from performance management and other talent processes.

As remote and hybrid work continues to take hold in many organizations, employers are re-evaluating various talent policies and practices. One area in which remote and hybrid work has implications is total rewards. This article addresses how the benefits of hybrid work and location flexibility create challenges for total rewards leaders in four areas: 1) the relocation of existing employees, 2) perceptions of pay fairness, 3) recruiting from more diverse geographies, and 4) employee burnout. Regarding the relocation of existing employees, total rewards leaders continue to grapple with whether to adjust employee pay in line with any change in the cost of living. For example, while Meta, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google base pay on geographic location, smaller companies, including Reddit and Zillow, have shifted to location-agnostic pay models. Google even has a Work Location Tool that enables its workers to estimate how their salaries might decrease depending on location. The article notes that respondent organizations (a small sample of 26) have taken the following approaches when considering salary adjustments based on relocation: a) Case-by-case (46%), b) One-Time Pay Increase/Reduction (31%), c) No Adjustment (23%), and d) Gradual Adjustment of Merit Increases (8%)—where the rate of future pay increases are slowed down. What is your organization’s philosophy on location-based pay, and what tactics is it using to support this philosophy?

Workers continue to be more discerning about what they expect and value in the worker-employer relationship. As a result, many leaders are turning to their firms’ employee value proposition (EVP)—the set of attributes the labor market and employees perceive as the value gained through employment with an organization—as a source of differentiation. However, many organizations continue to rely on traditional EVP levers to attract and retain people—although varying segments of the workforce place more value on other aspects of the EVP. This article shares new research that identifies five distinct talent pools (or personas) with varied workplace priorities. The pools are 1) Traditionalists. Career-oriented people who care about work–life balance but are willing to make trade-offs for the sake of their jobs. 2.)The do-it-yourselfers. Run the gamut from self-employed to full-time employed in nontraditional roles to gig and part-time workers. 3) The caregivers and others.  Have decided to sit it out at home, with some actively looking for work and others who are passive job seekers hoping to find an opportunity that would justify reentering the paid labor force. 4) The idealists: Students and younger part-timers and 5) The relaxers. This cohort is a mix of retirees, those not looking for work, and those who might return to traditional work under the right circumstances. Exhibit 4 shows how nontraditional workers (the four groups other than the Traditional segment) vary in their preferences, and Exhibit 5 shows a more detailed breakdown of three nontraditional groups. One limitation of worker personas is that they don’t always capture the multifaceted components of one’s identity and values and how they might change with life stage, personal situations, etc. Therefore, personas provide directional guidance on shifting preferences and are not a substitute for understanding what is important to each individual.  

CHRO HIRE OF THE WEEK

This past week, 25 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 25 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.

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

A 41-page issue with seven articles on tactics for realizing the benefits of hybrid work while preserving aspects of organizational culture.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

You can see several book recommendations by clicking the image below. One book I have been referencing this week from my bookshelf is:

Partial View of Recommendations. Click Image to See All Books

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.

CHROS on the Go is a subscription that provides the easiest and most convenient way to stay informed about Chief Human Resources Officer hires, promotions, and resignations in organizations of all sizes and industries.

​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.