Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #177

Using workforce data to deliver value, workforce ecosystems, new ways to support career development, HR operating models, and skills-based talent practices.

Author

Brian Heger
May 21, 2023

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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.

A shout-out to Hope Weatherford, Global Head of People, Fountain— for referring new subscribers to Talent Edge Weekly. Thank you, Hope, for your support of this newsletter!

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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.

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

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

This new 70-page report provides an in-depth view of how the data an organization collects about its workforce can help generate shared value for individual workers, teams and groups, the organization, and society. For each of the four segments, the report provides multiple use cases of workforce data collected, their purpose, and their impact. For example, page 11 begins a section on the individual with examples such as: Enhance performance feedback. When gathering performance feedback, mine employee work application data to identify the coworkers an employee interacts with most frequently, who can provide the most relevant feedback. Spot hidden high-potentials. Use organization network analysis to spot influencers with natural leadership skills and outsized impact. Create opportunities for growth and movement. Use data on transferable or adjacent skills, interests, and worker activity to suggest which skills employees can develop to be more marketable and employable as organizations evolve. Also, use this data to match them to new opportunities, projects, learning, or roles. Capture informal learning and measure impact of learning. Mine work application data to track informal learning from social discussions, metaverse interactions, videos watched, articles read, use of performance support tools, and calls with mentors. Track behavior change to determine the impact of learning. Several other examples are provided that can help HR leaders and their teams think through various use cases of workforce data.

Organizations increasingly rely on external contributors—such as those performing gig, contract, or freelance work—to help meet their talent needs. However, firms often struggle to integrate external contributors into their workforce—resulting in fragmented and uncoordinated work efforts across internal employees and external contributors. This new article offers a framework to help leaders adopt a more integrated approach to managing their workforce of internal and external contributors as a workforce ecosystem. It provides a four-component framework for enabling this ecosystem through (1) management practices, (2) technology enablers, (3) integration architectures, and (4) leadership approaches. For example, regarding technology enablers, organizations can identify and implement appropriate technological tools and platforms that facilitate seamless collaboration, communication, and coordination among internal and external contributors. For integration architectures, firms can establish systems and processes that enable smoother integration of internal and external contributors, such as developing clear communication channels, shared knowledge repositories, and standardized workflows that ensure seamless collaboration and information sharing. Other ideas are discussed, including ways to foster greater collaboration between procurement, IT, marketing, business units, and HR in enabling this ecosystem approach. To supplement this article, I am resharing the Workforce Ecosystems and AI report by The Brookings Institution, which explores the intersection of workforce ecosystems and AI.

Career development is a critical component of an organization’s employee value proposition. This fact is one reason HR leaders and their teams continue to reimagine ways to help workers develop their careers. But as noted in this new Gartner article, only 39% of surveyed respondents said they are interested in internal opportunities despite their organizations’ efforts to provide them. While this sentiment has various reasons (see Figure 1: Why Employees Are Interested in External Roles), many employees feel they must search externally to gain new experiences. This article shares tactics for creating new sources of experiences and development in an organization. One example is Texas Dow Employees Credit Union (TDECU), which uses “career experiments,” in which employees try different career options without the formality of applying for a new role. TDECU does this by breaking roles/jobs into tasks that employees from different business areas can perform. TDECU prioritizes high-level tasks that overlap between roles, meaning employees in high-supply roles will already be proficient or can quickly upskill. Once these tasks are identified, TDECU uses temporary mobility to shift the overlapping tasks from an established employee, who is already working in a high-demand role, to a “transferred” employee, who will temporarily own some of that role’s responsibilities. This tactic also provides a trial period for the transferred employee to work in other parts of the business, which enables development. As a bonus, here is a one-page template I created that can help you think through which roles might be broken down into tasks and serve as the basis for this form of career development.

As HR leaders continue to reevaluate and evolve their HR operating models to deliver new forms of value, this one-page playlist includes five articles and resources to consider. The link in the first column will take you directly to the full resource. The second column summarizes the article’s focus. For example, Dave Ulrich and his colleagues in the RBL Group share various factors that can influence HR operating model decisions, such as the stakeholders the HR organization serves and the 10 factors that enable HR to deliver value to stakeholders. Marc Effron of The Talent Strategy Group provides five questions that help inform the answers to HR operating model decisions. Sample questions include: What do we do, and why do we do it? What are our guiding principles to operationalize HR? How will we know if we’re successfully executing the HR Operating Model? Josh Bersin addresses how the HR function needs to be organized as an integrated operating system that focuses on “problems to be solved” rather than a set of “services” or “offerings” or “programs.” This HR operating system needs to be enabled by “full stack” HR professionals who are deep in one domain but also have wide expertise in the other domains of HR. And Gartner offers ideas on shifting operational HR activities to a Shared Services organization, while McKinsey provides insights on five HR operating models and how they align with eight different innovation shifts an organization may experience. These resources can help HR leaders identify opportunities for strengthening their HR operating model and unlocking value for organizational stakeholders.

Last week, I made a post on LinkedIn asking for questions that my network has about skills-based talent practices. I provided some starter questions and answers to get them thinking: 1) Which areas are organizations starting with when introducing skills-based talent practices? (A) Many begin with practices that have the most evident connection to skills, such as skills-based development and hiring. (Deloitte). 2) What is the most common way organizations document and validate workers' skills? (A) Many continue to rely on workers self-reporting their skills and proficiency levels, as compared to more valid ways of confirming skills. (Deloitte). 3) Do firms include a proficiency rating (e.g., beginner, expert) when assessing workers' skills? (A) The majority of survey respondents (78%) with a skills taxonomy have a defined proficiency rating scale for skills (Mercer). A few of the many questions that came back so far include: Brian Hackett asked: What is the business reason for having a skills-based approach? How do you understand the AI black box of skills vendors? Megan Bickle raised the question: How can you connect skills-based strategies to performance management? Naomi Titleman asked: How do you determine pay practices (and pay equity) in skills-based models? Another question by Carolina Noriega is: If there is no skills catalog defined in an organization that is embarking in this journey, what is the starting point? How skills should be selected? As I continue to compile these questions and provide answers, I encourage you to raise your other questions in the LinkedIn post. Meanwhile, I am sharing this 40-page LinkedIn report that addresses various aspects of skills. Page 29 starts a section on recommendations for accelerating the shift to skills-first hiring.

MOST VIEWED FROM LAST WEEK

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.

CHIEF HR OFFICER HIRE OF THE WEEK

As part of CHROs on the Go— a digital platform subscription that provides the easiest, fastest, and most convenient way to stay informed about hires, promotions, and resignations in the Chief Human Resources Officer role—20 new CHRO announcements were posted on the platform last week.

This week’s CHRO highlight is:

  • Mondee Holdings Inc. (AUSTIN, TEXAS) [NASDAQ: MOND)—a technology-driven, next-generation marketplace in a $1 trillion segment of the travel market—has named Geetika Gupta as Chief People Officer.Prior to joining Mondee, Ms. Gupta held the role of Global HR and Talent Lead at Accenture, where she was responsible for leading human resources initiatives for a globally distributed workforce of 22,000.

Do you want to join hundreds of others getting the EDGE each week in knowing which CHROs are being hired, promoted, and resigning? If so:

Currently, there are +2300 CHROs announcements on CHROs on the Go, with an average of 25 new announcements added each week!

If you are already a member of CHROs on the Go, you can log in to access all announcements and site functionality.

Click the link or table below to see the latest updates from a segment of organizations that have announced job cuts and layoffs since the start of 2023.

Recruiters, search firms, and hiring managers can use this resource to identify opportunities for recruiting talent from organizations affected by layoffs. A few firms that announced job cuts this past week include Oracle and TuSimple.  

TWEET OF THE WEEK

TALENT EDGE WEEKLY REWIND

Highlights a previously shared Talent Edge Weekly resource that received many views and engagement!

A 52-page report that dives into various learning and development (L&D) topics, including internal mobility, upskilling/reskilling, and career development. It also covers ideas on how the L&D function continues to evolve.

If so, you can check out issue #174, which includes 15 of the most popular resources from April. Topics include workforce planning, succession planning, workforce trends, AI in the workplace, and more.

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Have a great week!

Brian

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.