Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #137

This issue covers developing a human capital strategy, hybrid work, skills-based organizations, performance management, and a webinar on creating a talent strategy.

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

  • Plan Your Human Capital Strategy With CHRO Strategic Roadmaps | Gartner | Shares ideas that cover all the essential elements of a strategic HR plan on one page, and offers considerations for three types of strategy scenarios.

  • Report: Hybrid Work Is Just Work. Are We Doing It Wrong? | Microsoft Work Trend Index: Pulse Report - September | A new 27-page report that points to three urgent pivots every leader should make to lead effectively in the hybrid work landscape.

  • The Skills-based Organization: A New Operating Model for Work and the Workforce | Deloitte Insights | A new and in-depth article that provides several ideas for operationalizing skills-based talent practices.

  • Performance Management Shouldn’t Kill Collaboration | Harvard Business Review | Offers a four-part performance scorecard for every employee and establishes shared goals for tackling big challenges while holding people accountable for delivering individual results.

  • Webinar: How to Create a Talent Strategy | The Talent Strategy Group | A 30-minute webinar where Marc Effron covers four steps for developing a talent strategy.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

Last week, I shared a one-page Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) reference that includes 12 resources for CHROs as they drive personal, team, and organizational effectiveness. These resources covered topics such as transitioning to a new CHRO role to talent questions the board of directors might ask. One topic I continue to get requests to cover is: resources that help HR leaders shape and communicate aspects of their HR strategy. This new Gartner article provides ideas that cover on one page all the essential elements of a strategic HR plan, including 1) Scenario — a brief description of the setting the organization is facing, 2) Underlying beliefs and assumptions — a set of elements the CHRO can’t change, and that enable and reinforce the purpose of the strategy (for example, a company’s strategy), 3) Top human capital strategic initiatives — what the CHRO and HR senior leadership team are responsible for and can control via the HR strategy, 4) KPIs — measures to evaluate the impact of each initiative and 5) Rationale — bullet points explaining the reasons for selecting each priority. Figure 1 on page 12 shows an illustration using a scenario titled and described "HR Strategy for Hybrid Work: Your organization is shifting to full-time hybrid/remote work for some, if not all employees." Considerations for other scenarios (e.g., Organization in Hypergrowth; Post-M&A Integration) are covered. 

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As the workforce becomes increasingly hybrid, leaders must develop the skills and mindset to lead in this environment. This new 27-page Microsoft Work Trend Index Pulse report points to three urgent pivots that every leader should make to navigate this new work landscape. The report is based on survey responses from over 20,000 people in 11 countries, trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, and LinkedIn labor trends. Two of the pivots leaders are encouraged to make include: End productivity paranoia. Data show that the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging for leaders to have confidence that employees are being productive; at the same time, employees report working more than ever. The report notes that leaders must shift from worrying about whether their people are visible and working enough to focusing on the value and outcomes each employee delivers. Re-recruit your employees. As many employees continue to value development and career opportunities, the report notes how leaders can re-recruit, re-onboard, and re-energize employees around new opportunities. According to the report, 55 percent of employees say changing companies is the best way to develop their skills. However, workers also say they would stay longer at their company if it were easier to change jobs internally (68%) or if they could benefit more from learning and career development support (76%). As leaders think through ways they can support the career development of their employees, one starting point is for them to self-reflect on whether they have a tendency to hoard talent—where they prevent or discourage employees from pursuing internal opportunities. With this as the backdrop, managers and leaders can check out my post, 5 Indicators of Manager Talent Hoarding. 

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Much has been written about how organizations continue to shift from role-based to skills-based talent practices. But as noted in this new Deloitte article, fewer than one in five organizations have adopted skills-based approaches to a significant extent (i.e., across the organization and in a clear and repeatable way). However, those who’ve made the shift reported achieving better business results than those with jobs-based practices (figure 2). This in-depth article provides several ideas for organizations to leverage as they find ways to operationalize skills-based talent practices. One point made is that organizations are moving towards skills-based work models in one of three ways: 1) Most often, they start with a particular talent practice (e.g., workforce planning) and transform it to be based more on skills and less on jobs, and then continue to either similarly transform another practice or determine that they have to create a skills “hub” before realizing the transformation. 2) Others start by creating a centralized “skills hub” before expanding out to skills-based talent practices. To do this, they often start by inventorying or creating a language for skills or developing a skills-based talent philosophy. 3) Start with the work, either with an internal talent marketplace that lets some work live as projects and tasks outside of the job, or as broadened jobs. While jobs won’t go away entirely for most organizations, these and other skills-based tactics provide alternative options for organizing work and supporting it through skill-based talent practices. 

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Most organizations rely on cross-functional and unit collaboration to drive business performance and results. And while organizations often include a “team” component as part of evaluating and rewarding employee performance, this article argues that performance management practices can still discourage cross-silo collaboration. The authors offer a four-part performance scorecard for every employee that establishes shared goals for tackling big challenges while holding people accountable for delivering individual results, including 1) Cross-silo goals: broad shared goals that focus on big challenges and can be achieved within a year (e.g., cutting the time to market for new products by half), 2) Team goals: goals that measure team-level results and hold people accountable for raising the performance of their whole working group, 3) Individual goals: goals that measure a person’s individual contribution to higher-level success, and 4) Long-range programs: while the first three goals focus on what can be achieved in a single performance cycle, the fourth component focuses on longer-term, multidisciplinary initiatives (e.g., an initiative to enter a new market segment, developing white papers that showcase the organization’s innovative ideas, etc.) The article shows several illustrations where each goal type is weighted according to its importance in helping the company achieve its strategic aims. Practitioners can determine whether implementing this four-part performance scorecard in their organizations is feasible and if the value gained outweighs the complexity; this determination will be influenced by many factors, from organizational culture, company size, to business model. As a bonus resource, here is a 28-minute podcast where one of the article’s authors, Heidi Gardner, elaborates on many of the points in the article. 

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In my 2016 article, Linking Talent Strategy With Business Strategy, I mentioned that if you ask HR practitioners to articulate their company’s talent strategy, the answers might sound more like a list of talent processes, programs, and practices versus a strategy. And while these components enable a talent strategy, they are not a talent strategy by themselves. As HR practitioners help their organizations develop and/or refine their talent strategy, this 30-minute webinar by Marc Effron of the Talent Strategy Group provides four steps. They include: 1) Identify your strategic drivers - what are the few significant outcomes you want to promise and that the business would care about?, 2) Identify the key activities that will deliver each strategic promise - exactly how will you make these outcomes happen? 3) Determine the resources needed - what will it cost (dollars, people, etc.) to deliver on the plan? 4) Bullet-proof the talent strategy by thinking through and asking - what obstacles will you face in implementing the strategy, and how will you overcome them? Marc walks through how to execute each of these steps—which works best over a 2-day in-person meeting and where the meeting outcome is to develop a draft talent strategy that can be socialized with important constituents. As a bonus resource, Marc’s article, How to Create a Talent Strategy, addresses a few of the insights covered in the webinar. 

MOST VIEWED FROM LAST WEEK

A one-page PDF that includes links to 12 resources for CHROs to leverage for various purposes—ranging from transitioning to a new CHRO role to developing an HR strategy.

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CHRO HIRE 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

​​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.