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Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly—bringing together insights about work, the workplace, and the workforce from various sources.

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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 an internal human resources practitioner with a Fortune 150 organization and has responsibilities for Strategic Talent and Workforce Planning. You can connect with Brian on Linkedin, Twitter, and brianheger.com

THIS WEEK'S CONTENT

Below is a glance at this week's issue. My detailed summaries of these resources are in the section after this one.

• Will AI Fix Work? | Microsoft 2023 Work Trend Index Report | A new 29-page report that explores the opportunities and challenges associated with AI's integration into the workplace.

• Strategies to Improve Succession in a High-Disruption Environment | Gartner | Shares ideas for building robust leadership pipelines amid disruption and continuous change.

• 10 Talent and Workforce Risks Template | Brian Heger | Includes an inventory of 10 talent and workforce risks that firms can use to highlight their level of risk exposure and actions for mitigating risks.

• Major Six-month Trial Finds Working a Four-day Week Boosts Employee Wellbeing While Preserving Productivity | University of Cambridge | Shares findings from a 6-month study on the impact of a 4-day work week on outcomes such as workforce stress, retention, and business metrics.

• Your Workforce Includes People with Disabilities. Does Your People Strategy? | Boston Consulting Group | Provides ideas on how firms can ensure their DEI strategies include People with Disabilities (PwD). I reshare a DEI strategy template from Gartner.

And don't forget to check out the 2023 Job Cuts and Layoff Tracker.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

Will AI Fix Work? | Microsoft 2023 Work Trend Index Report

AI in the workplace is one of the most prominent and highly discussed topics in organizations today. To shed light on this topic, this newly released 29-page Microsoft Work Trend Report explores the opportunities and challenges associated with AI’s integration into the workplace. Based on a survey of 31,000 global workers, labor trends from the LinkedIn Economic Graph, and trillions of aggregated Microsoft 365 productivity signals, the findings point to three primary insights for business and HR leaders as they look to adopt AI quickly and responsibly. 1) Digital debt is detracting from innovation. The inflow of data, emails, meetings, and notifications has outpaced humans’ ability to process it all. Microsoft reports that 64 percent of employees need more time and energy to complete their work. Every minute spent managing this digital debt is time spent on something other than the creative work that leads to innovation. 2) There’s a new AI-employee alliance. While 49 percent of workers surveyed say they are worried that AI will replace their jobs, 70 percent are more eager for AI to help lessen their workload. 3) Every employee needs AI aptitude. For workers to reap the benefits of AI in boosting their productivity and alleviating their workload, they will need skills that help them integrate AI into their day-to-day work (e.g., Generative AI, how to write great prompts, etc.). Has your organization identified the skills its workforce will need to unlock the potential of AI and worker collaboration? Does it have a plan for developing and hiring for these skills? Other ideas are discussed. In case you missed it last week, here is a playlist of 5 articles and resources on AI in the workplace.

Strategies to Improve Succession in a High-Disruption Environment | Gartner

Succession planning has long been a top priority for many organizations. Still, we are often reminded how executives can fall short of performance expectations within 12-18 months of taking on a new role. One report by DDI, Leadership Transitions Report 2021, shows that nearly half of externally hired executives fail in their roles; the numbers are only slightly better (35%) for internally promoted executives. And while developing and retaining the best successors has always been hard to do, it has become increasingly challenging for organizations to implement in rapidly changing environments faced with disruption. This new Gartner article provides ideas for building robust leadership pipelines amid disruption and continuous change. One case study involves Bridgestone, which uses two strategies for implementing adaptable approaches to succession planning. 1) Before discussing who should fill a critical role, Bridgestone’s HR and business leaders analyze the role and consider making changes based on current and future business needs. They ask questions such as, “If the person in this critical role leaves, would we keep this role?” and, “Knowing our strategy and future goals, do we need this role as it looks today?” If a change is needed, Bridgestone’s leaders eliminate the role, split it up based on potential successors’ current capabilities, or redesign it based on strategic goals. 2) Bridgestone also creates pools of potential successors for roles duplicated across multiple business units (e.g., multiple business units may have a vice president of finance.) These cross-business talent pools increase the number of available successors for a given role, which makes it easier to fill critical roles if someone leaves suddenly. As a bonus, I am resharing this one-page template I created that has 10 succession metrics. This reference can be used as a starting point for determining the vital few metrics an organization will use to measure its succession effectiveness.