Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #129

Covers resources for CHRO and team effectiveness, performance management, employee retention, a podcast on workforce planning, and strategies for leading the future of work.

August 07, 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

  • 7 Resources for Enabling CHRO and HR Team Effectiveness | Multiple References | Includes resources, such as a CHRO diagnostic and HR Leader onboarding plan, to help Chief Human Resources strengthen their personal and HR team effectiveness.

  • How to Win the War for Talent Through Performance Management | Gartner | Shares tactics for incorporating employee well-being into performance management discussions.

  • It’s Time to Reimagine Employee Retention | Harvard Business Review | Offers three ideas for using career development as a retention strategy. I provide two bonus references to help managers identify employee retention risks and tailor retention strategies to individuals.

  • Podcast: How Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) Contributes to Business Success  | Digital HR Leaders Podcast | A 49-minute discussion where David Green interviews Alicia Roach—Founder and CEO of eQ8—on various aspects of SWP. Bonus resources are provided.

  • Strategies for Leading the Future of Work | MIT Sloan School of Management | A new 23-page four-article issue that provides actionable steps to build capabilities that support a more digitized and dispersed workforce.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

The Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) role remains prominent in many organizations. Over the past 30 days alone, I have tracked 135 CHRO appointments as part of CHROs on the Go—an individual subscription that provides insights into hires, promotions, and resignations to the CHRO role in organizations of all sizes and industries. As CHROs continue to drive their personal and team effectiveness, here are seven resources they can draw from: 1) Gartner’s CHRO Self-Diagnostic: This interactive tool allows you to evaluate your mastery of activities core to the CHRO role. Upon completion, you’ll get personalized feedback. 2) Spencer Stuart – New CHRO Playbook: Getting Off to a Strong Start as a New Chief Human Resources Officer. This resource helps CHROs gain momentum through an eight-point transition plan spanning 114-days. 3) Egon Zehnder: Time to Transform the “Traditional” HR Operating Model? This article shares ideas on alternative HR operating models. 4) Talent Strategy Group and The Shanley Group: Offers five questions CHROs can ask themselves to determine if they have an all-star HR team. 5) HR Policy Association: The CHRO’s Guide to The Expanded Role of the Compensation Committee. This 16-page paper provides insights into how the role of the Compensation Committee continues to expand beyond its traditional charter. 6) Deloitte: The Workforce Takes Centerstage: The Board’s Evolving Role, which includes 14 questions that Boards are asking CHROs about the workforce and talent. 7) SAP: How Well Do You Really Know Your Workforce? Includes 100 questions spanning eight categories to help HR teams think critically about their workforce and talent strategies.

Employee wellbeing (EWB) continues to be a top priority for many organizations. And while leaders have implemented practices and tools to support EWB, this article argues that HR leaders can “reposition performance management (PM) at their organizations to deliver on employees’ wellbeing needs, not just their performance needs.”  As illustrated in Figure 2, PM processes can help meet 3 of 6 EWP needs in particular: mental, career, and family wellbeing needs. Specifically, managers can use ongoing performance feedback discussions to support EWB through three types of wellbeing conversations: 1) Disruption-focused conversations, 2) Mental wellbeing conversations. 3) Career conversations. Examples of how a few organizations are incorporating these discussions into performance check-ins are provided. Regarding disruption conversations, Figure 3 on page 17 applies two types of disruptors to a Disruption Differentiation Matrix to help managers determine how they might message the conversation: 1) Work disruptions: disruptions to the business unit, team, project, or workflow (e.g., change in responsibilities, loss of key team members), 2) Personal disruptions: disruptions to the individual employee’s ability to work (e.g., new caregiving responsibilities, health challenges, etc.) How can modifying your organization's PM practices support employees’ performance and their well-being?

Employee retention is a key focus of many leaders as workers continue to re-evaluate their preferences and what they value in their employment and employer. As managers and leaders develop and implement tactics to stem unwanted turnover, this article shares three ideas for using career development as a retention strategy. And while career development is a critical driver of employee retention, managers must remember there are various aspects of an organization’s employee value proposition that workers will value more than others. Since these preferences vary by each individual employee, managers’ effectiveness in retaining their key employees hinges on their ability to understand the individual preferences of their workers. It also requires them to be aware of the cues that indicate retention risks across their teams. With this as the backdrop, I am resharing two bonus resources for managers to leverage. 1) A template by Jo-Ann Garbutt that includes 18 questions managers can use to raise their awareness of the factors that influence employee retention risk. 2) Cues of Turnover Scale — a 13-item survey where managers indicate the extent to which they have observed certain retention risk behaviors of an employee during the last 2 to 3 months. Managers can use these resources to identify employee retention risk and tailor retention strategies to individuals.

Many leaders recognize the critical role of strategic workforce planning (SWP) in executing organizational strategy. Yet, SWP practitioners continue to face challenges in implementing SWP in their firms. I covered a few of these challenges in my 2019 People + Strategy article on SWP. As SWP practitioners continue to overcome challenges to workforce planning in their organizations, this recent video podcast from the Digital HR Leader’s Podcast with David Green provides several ideas. In this 49-minute discussion, David interviews Alicia Roach—Founder and CEO of eQ8—and covers topics such as: 1) best practices and common pitfalls HR can avoid in setting up SWP for success, 2) common misconceptions of SWP, and 3) the importance of focusing on your organization’s unique SWP challenges, to name a few. One challenge for organizations to overcome is getting comfortable with the “directional nature of SWP” and avoiding the tendency to want “perfect data, a precise forecast, or trying to predict the future with 100% accuracy.” You can also check out another of David’s recent video podcasts on SWP, How MetLife Made a Success of their Strategic Workforce Planning (interview with Laura Shubert).

According to IBM’s Institute for Business Value report, 5 Trends for 2022 and Beyond, digital transformation is a top priority for many organizations. However, a segment of firms falls short of building robust digital capabilities that are needed to support digital strategies and transformations. This new 23-page four-article issue provides actionable steps to build capabilities that support a more digitized, diverse, and dispersed workforce. The articles include: 1) Why Distributed Leadership is the Future of Management. Discusses how the future of work requires an agile mindset focused on small, short-term wins, and a “cultivate and coordinate” approach to leadership. 2) How to Make Work of the Future Work for Everyone. Shares ideas on how firms can develop working models that deliver for shareholders, employees, and global communities. 3) Five Traits of the Workforce of the Future. Shares ideas on how future-ready employees are empowered, data-literate, comfortable with artificial intelligence and machine learning, and committed to social and climate concerns. 4) What Work of the Future Means to 5 Business Leaders. Shares ideas on how executives from Google, Target, and Amgen prioritize data, artificial intelligence, and empathy as they shape a future-ready workforce.

CHRO HIRE OF THE WEEK

This past week, 28 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 28 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 VIEWED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

Reshaping Your Organization Using a Skill-based Reward Structure | Deloitte US | Offers ideas on how organizations can begin to move towards skills-based reward structures.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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.