Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly - the weekly newsletter for human resources practitioners, bringing together talent, workplace, and workforce insights from various sources.

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

• Mercer’s 2022 Inside Employees’ Minds Study | Mercer | A new 29-page report that provides insights into worker sentiment on various workforce topics and issues, such as worker preferences and values.

• 12 Resources on Talent, the Workplace, and the Workforce | Brian Heger| A PDF that includes 12 of my tweets related to the topics of 1) CHRO, 2) Skills, 3) Talent Risks, and 4) Culture and Leadership. You can click on any image in the PDF to access the referenced article or report.

• The Skills of Tomorrow: How Critical Roles Are Evolving | Gartner Business Quarterly Q322 | Explores nearly eight million job listings to visualize how the skills required in the most competitive roles in critical functions in the S&P 100 are changing.

• How Higher Ed and Employers Can Partner to Power Talent Pipelines | BCG | Discusses how employers and colleges/universities can overcome challenges they face when partnering to help organizations source talent.

• The Five Stages of DEI Maturity | Harvard Business Review | Describes five stages of an organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion journey and provides questions that leaders can ask during each stage to determine DEI tactics.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

Mercer’s 2022 Inside Employees’ Minds Study | Mercer 

This new 29-page report by Mercer provides insights into worker sentiment on various workforce topics and issues. The study is based on a small sample of 4,049 US-based full-time employees working for organizations with over 250 employees. The report highlights six key findings of which employers should be aware. Two highlights include 1) Retention. 1 in 3 employees is considering leaving their employer — up from 1 in 4 last year. 2) Shifting worker preferences. Financial concerns increased significantly — with covering monthly expenses now in the top spot from #9 last year, and the ability to retire jumped to #2, and personal debt is now in the top 10. Page 11 shows the top 10 needs reported by workers in 2022 vs. 2021. The increased priority that workers are placing on the financial components of the employee value proposition is also evident in the 2022 LinkedIn Global Talent Trends Report, which showed that candidates now consider compensation and benefits their top priority when evaluating job opportunities. The LinkedIn report also notes that candidates’ and employees’ confidence in their ability to improve their financial situation had decreased or remained low from January to August 2022. Both reports can help organizations understand shifts in employee sentiments and preferences and how these changes might inform workforce strategies.

12 Resources on Talent, the Workplace, and the Workforce | Brian Heger 

This PDF includes images of 12 of my tweets related to talent, the workplace, and the workforce. The images also include clickable links that will take you to the source article/report. The 12 resources are broken into four categories: 1) CHRO, 2) Skills, 3) Talent Risks, and 4) Culture and Leadership. A few examples of the resources across the four areas include 1) CHRO - (e.g., talent questions CHROs and their teams should be able to answer; agile HR operating model; ESG in HR), 2) Skills - detailed reports on how organizations are shifting to skills-based talent practices, 3) Talent Risks (e.g., talent risks that stand in the way of executing business strategy, scenario planning, and succession, and 4) Culture and Leadership (e.g., enablers of an effective organizational culture, signs of a toxic culture, and how leaders can help to address worker burnout). The PDF provides a simple and fast way to access resources on several talent, workplace, and workforce topics.

The Skills of Tomorrow: How Critical Roles Are Evolving | Gartner Business Quarterly Q322 

As organizations shift to more skills-based talent practices, it is important to understand which skills are emerging as increasingly important and which are declining as less critical. This Gartner paper looks at nearly eight million job listings to visualize how the skills required in the most competitive roles in critical functions in the S&P 100 are changing. The framework used for the report is based on five categorizations of skills: 1) New. Could become important; they are now starting to appear in postings, 2) Emerging. Found in a small percentage of job postings a few years ago but have increased enough to catch our attention, 3) Growing. On the way to becoming a core skill. Formerly optional but increasingly important to the talent profile, 4) Core. Essential for the job. Present in a high percentage of job postings and have been for a while. 5) Declining. It used to be more prevalent but now appears in a lower percentage of job postings. The paper includes a few visuals showing how the skills across various roles (e.g., leadership, IT, HR, Finance, etc.) are shifting along these five categories. The five-category framework can serve as one way to talk about how skills are shifting in organizations.

How Higher Ed and Employers Can Partner to Power Talent Pipelines | BCG 

Organizations continue to find ways to tap various sources of talent to supply their talent pipeline. And according to i4CP’s Talent Ecosystem Integrated Model, high-performance organizations consistently leverage talent from 11 alternative sources—from gig workers to colleges and universities. This BCG article provides ideas on how employers can partially meet their talent needs by enabling better partnerships with colleges and universities. It includes a section on how this partnership can be improved by first overcoming common challenges in the employer-college/university relationship. For example, one challenge mentioned is how colleges and universities get frustrated with employers since "many employers struggle to make workforce projections—specifically, the types of skills that they will need and the number of employees with those skills who they will seek to hire."  Many times, employers provide broad criteria, such as job categories (e.g., software developer)—which are less useful and result in best guesses about what skills will be in demand. One of the challenges that employers can face when it comes to partnering with colleges and universities is the longer timelines higher education programs usually require to produce the needed talent (e.g., 3 years is often required to build new talent programs—which is too long for many organizations). Other ideas are discussed.

The Five Stages of DEI Maturity | Harvard Business Review 

This HBR article describes the five stages of an organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) journey. The five stages and their descriptions include: 1) Aware. DEI is new to my organization, and we are just becoming aware of its importance. 2) Compliant. DEI in my organization is focused on compliance with EEOC and other legal requirements. 3) Tactical. DEI has been connected to business initiatives and outcomes in pockets of the organization. 4) Integrated. DEI is part of everything we do as an organization; we have both internal and external efforts on DEI. 5) Sustainable. DEI efforts are best in class and remain strong over time through our efforts to continuously improve and evolve. According to the researchers, nearly a third of organizations are stuck in the compliant stage. The article includes questions (for each stage) that leadership teams can ask themselves to determine the best DEI actions to take. As a bonus resource, I am resharing this 63-page report by ADP Research Institute titled, Measuring the “I” in DEI. It provides a 12-item index (page 12) for measuring employees’ sentiment of inclusion via a Connection XPerience Score.

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

Critical Role Risk Template | Brian Heger 

An editable one-page template to help practitioners gain directional insights into the level of risk exposure in their critical roles. NOTE: If you would like to be emailed when templates like this become available, click here. Clicking the link will just add this preference to your email profile and ensure that you are among the first to receive these templates when they become available.

CHRO APPOINTMENT OF THE WEEK

This past week there were 22 Chief Human Resources Officer announcements posted on CHROs on the Go – a subscription that provides the easiest way to stay informed about hires, promotions, and resignations in the CHRO role. This week's highlighted CHRO on the Go is:

• Chobani—an American food company specializing in strained yogurt— announced the appointment of Shari Eaton as Chief People Officer, beginning November 7th. Eaton was most recently the Chief People and Culture Officer of Peloton.

To learn how to gain access to all 22 detailed Chief Human Resources Officer announcements from this past week and +1500 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 of the announcements and site functionality.

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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.