Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly — bringing together the best insights about work, the workplace, and the workforce. Read by human resources practitioners, business leaders, and others interested in the world of work.

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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

• Updated 2023 Layoff Tracker of Organizations Announcing Job Cuts | Brian Heger | I provide new updates about organizations that have announced layoffs since the start of 2023. Additional features have been added to the tracker housing this information.

• Scenario Planning: Strategy, Steps, and Practical Examples | Oracle Netsuite | Shares ideas on scenario planning, one tool for effective workforce planning and keeping work demand and talent supply in better balance.

• HR Predictions for 2023 | The Josh Bersin Company | I summarize a few themes from Josh Bersin's new report that covers 15 trends and disruptions in the world of work. Includes a bonus webinar where Josh discusses the report.

• 3 Resources for Being Intentional About Contingent Workforce Management | Multiple Resources | Resources that discuss the workforce as an ecosystem of internal and external contributors, situations where using contingent workers (CW) are optimal, and collaboration between HR and Procurement in CW strategy.

• 40 Ideas to Shake Up Your Hiring Process | Harvard Business Review | Shares strategies organized into seven categories that either strengthen an organization’s hiring process or help enhance the competitiveness of a company’s offer.

And don't forget to check out the Chief HR Officer Hire of the Week, Tweet of the Week, and the most viewed resource from last week’s issue.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

Updated 2023 Layoff Tracker of Organizations Announcing Job Cuts | Brian Heger

Last week, I created and shared a tracker to help HR leaders, recruiting teams, and hiring managers stay informed about organizations that have announced job cuts and layoffs since the start of 2023. The intent was to provide those hiring in their organization with a resource for identifying talent in other companies affected by layoffs. While the tracker started with 15 organizations, I have now updated it to 42 organizations. I have also organized the tracker by ‘date of announcement’—beginning with the most recent. You can also sort the table by company alpha order or chronological order. Organizations that have announced layoffs in the past week include: 3M, Dow Inc., Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Hasbro, Hootsuite, IBM, SAP, and Shutterfly, to name a few. While layoffs are taking place in several organizations, other organizations in various industries continue to add jobs and recruit talent (e.g., Boeing, Eli Lilly, Tesla, Tyson Foods, etc.). With that in mind, recruiters and hiring managers can use this resource to identify opportunities for recruiting talent for their open jobs. I will update this tracker as new information about company layoffs and job cuts becomes available. Starting next week, I will include this tracker as an ongoing supplemental resource that can be found towards the end of the newsletter.

Scenario Planning: Strategy, Steps, and Practical Examples | Oracle Netsuite

As several organizations conduct layoffs and job cuts, it reinforces the importance of strategic workforce planning and one tool it relies on: scenario planning (SP). SP is a practice that helps organizations envision, describe, and plan for possible but uncertain and alternative futures they may face. These scenarios are informed by factors such as economic growth, labor market conditions, and the introduction of new technologies, to name a few. As this recent Fortune article points out, many organizations now announcing layoffs offer a similar reason for these cuts: “In the wake of the pandemic, we experienced growth in demand and increased our workforce to fulfill that demand. With a slowing economy and shifting market, we now see that we mistakenly hired too many, and we must correct that by letting some people go.” At the same time, a new article in The Wall Street Journal notes how Apple has “so far” been able to avoid layoffs that are hitting many of its peers. While it’s impossible to know all the reasons some organizations are now experiencing more job cuts than others, workforce and scenario planning is ONE tool that can help reduce the likelihood of an imbalance between an organization's work demand and talent supply. With that as the backdrop, this Oracle Netsuite article provides helpful suggestions for how an organization can conduct SP. As a bonus, I am resharing this one-page editable PDF by XPLANE that helps organizations identify “what-if” scenarios they may face in the future, define the “conditions” that would trigger each, and develop a response for each scenario.

HR Predictions for 2023 | The Josh Bersin Company

In this new report, Josh Bersin covers 15 trends and disruptions in the world of work that all HR leaders and professionals need to keep in mind as the year progresses. The trends are organized into three categories and provide various insights for HR teams to leverage for their strategic planning. The three categories and topics are: 1) Work: changing jobs, skills, and career models; skills-based approaches; and hybrid work as a design challenge. 2) Workforce: people sustainability as the future of DEI; new leadership models; and a balance of productivity and wellbeing. 3) HR: Reinvented learning, recruiting, pay, and performance approaches; an emerging people analytics and HR tech landscape, and “systemic HR” as the new operating HR model. Regarding the trends 7) new models of performance management will take hold, and 8) organizations will seriously revisit their pay and rewards strategies), I would add that as work becomes more project-based, it might require the cadence of performance feedback, evaluation, and rewards to align with the shorter duration of project cycles. This approach—which can strengthen the connection between performance evaluations and compensation—is what Gartner has referred to as “project-to-project performance management” (see 6 Predictions for the Future of Performance Management). To access the Bersin report, you must download it from their website. To supplement the report, here is a 60-minute webinar (the audio is a little low) that Josh conducted on January 18th, where he covers insights from the report. In case you missed it, here is my one-page summary of 2023 Workforce and HR priorities, according to seven sources.

3 Resources for Being Intentional About Contingent Workforce Management | Multiple Resources

Contingent workers—freelance, contract, gig, and temporary—are a vital and growing workforce segment. These workers help organizations enable the “borrow” component of their strategic workforce planning (SWP) and offer several benefits, such as flexibility and fast access to talent and resources as work demand changes. Despite these benefits, SWP processes often focus primarily on internal workers and/or take a reactive approach to contingent workforce practices (e.g., a manager needs help on a project and calls the procurement team to source contingent workers). As organizations take a more deliberate and holistic approach to contingent workforce management, I am resharing three resources that provide ideas. 1) Workforce Ecosystems A New Strategic Approach to the Future of Work—a 43-page MIT Sloan Management Review report that provides insights on how firms can adopt an integrated approach to managing their workforce of internal and external contributors. 2) Remote Work Has Opened the Door to a New Approach to Hiring—an HBR article that touches on situations where it makes sense to use external workers (e.g., internal workers cannot be redeployed easily), 3) Talent Disruption: Strategic Workforce Planning in the Age of Labor Shortages — a white paper by HBR Analytics Services on how HR and Procurement can partner to drive aspects of contingent workforce strategy. What are 1-2 actions you can take to integrate CW into your organization’s workforce planning more effectively?

40 Ideas to Shake Up Your Hiring Process | Harvard Business Review

This article shares 40 strategies organized into seven categories that either strengthen an organization’s hiring process or enhance a company’s offer. The seven categories include: 1) hiring campaign and selection, 2) talent sourcing, 3) channel strategy, 4) compensation and benefits, 5) career development, 6) work design, and 7) culture. A few tactics include: a) figure out what work needs to get done, and rewrite job descriptions to focus on the skills and specs that matter the most for that work, instead of relying on generic education or experience requirements, b) seek candidates who match 70% to 80% of the most critical skills for the role — and develop learning curricula to equip them with the remainder, c) tap into “hidden” populations, including retired workers, d) segment and develop tailored benefits for hard-to-fill talent populations. Regarding benefits, I am resharing this Gartner reference on how organizations can communicate reward programs and benefits more effectively through “life moments,” such as getting married/engaged, purchasing a home, having/adopting a child, or taking a big trip. Organizing and communicating reward programs and benefits through life moments can help job candidates and employees recognize the strength of an organization’s employee value proposition—serving as an effective tool for talent attraction and retention.

MOST SHARED FROM LAST WEEK

Report: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Lighthouses 2023 | World Economic Forum

A new 61-page report that shares five success factors common across the DEI initiatives that yield the most significant, scalable, quantifiable, and sustained impact. I also share two bonus reports on DEI. You can also view this post here on LinkedIn.

CHRO APPOINTMENT OF THE WEEK

This past week, 23 new 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:

• Stanley Black & Decker (NEW BRITAIN, CONNECTICUT) [NYSE: SWK] announced the appointment of John T. Lucas to SVP, Chief Human Resources Officer. Lucas has more than 35 years of human resources experience, serving for the last 10 years as the most senior HR executive for global multinational companies. Lucas was most recently the founder of True North Human Capital Consulting, LLC. Current interim CHRO Deborah K. Wintner will assume the role of CHRO for the company's largest segment, Tools & Outdoor. Lucas's appointment is effective Jan. 30, 2023. READ MORE

To learn how to gain access to all 23 detailed Chief Human Resources Officer announcements from this past week and +2000 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

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