TALENT EDGE WEEKLY - Issue #19

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

As a reminder, you can still access archival COVID-19 HR resources in issue # 6, COVID-19 Resources for HR. These resources were gathered from March through May and contain 150+ references that can be leveraged as HR practitioners continue to lead their organizations through the recovery phase and beyond.

You can also obtain additional HR content at www.brianheger.com 

For this week's issue, I cover the following resources:

  • The Evolving Role of Global Mobility Programs in Talent Strategy | HR Grapevine

  • How Cisco Uses a Data-Driven Approach to Strategic Workforce Planning | i4cp

  • The Leadership Development Playbook | DDI

  • The Impact of Macroeconomic Conditions on Worker Preferences | Columbia Business School

  • Smart Watches for ... Learning? | CLO Magazine 

  • What is Text-to-Apply? How Should You Be Using It? | ClearCompany

  • Podcast: Managing the Employee Experience While Returning to Work | DecisionWise

  • What I Am Reading: Book: Learning Analytics: Using Talent Data to Improve Business Outcomes: 2nd edition | published April 2020.

If you enjoy Talent Edge Weekly and aren't yet a subscriber, please sign-up so that it can be delivered to your email inbox each Saturday afternoon.

Have a good weekend everyone and please be safe.

Brian

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Brian Heger is a human resources practitioner with responsibilities for Strategic Talent, Workforce Planning, and Analytics. To connect with Brian on Linkedin, click here.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

A central aspect of an organization's talent strategy is global mobility-- the ability of a workforce to seamlessly move from one location or country to another and succeed, both in business and personal lives. And with advances in technology and automation, global mobility functions are now able to unload more tactical and administrative tasks and focus more time on refining mobility strategies, talent/assignment forecasting, and analyzing data to support strategic decisions, to name a few. As such, global mobility teams are increasingly evaluating and adjusting the services they traditionally offer to employees and the business so that they can drive business value. This article provides a few examples of how companies are transforming mobility via technology. 1) Using machine learning and AI to predict how well suited an assignee may be to a specific location. 2) Leveraging Virtual Reality where the assignee can take virtual home and school tours, so no need for pre-assignment on-site visits—ultimately driving up efficiency and driving down costs. 3) Using intention-matching where an AI platform helps an employee answer this question, “Is this experience going to move me closer to my career aspirations?” Exploring ideas such as these can help organizations tap into the skills of their global talent and increase the likelihood of having the right talent when and where needed. 

While the use of data and analytics (D&A) has permeated most HR-business related processes and approaches, one area in which D&A is driving advances is strategic workforce planning (SWP). This article highlights how Cisco redesigned its SWP approach by using data, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and predictive modeling, to guide its efforts. A few steps include 1) Partner with the Chief Strategy Office to ensure alignment with Cisco’s strategic direction, including competitive landscapes and the current and future growth skills required to drive Cisco’s long-term success. 2) Leverage market intelligence from multiple sources, to identify job skills and roles for hiring companies. This information, along with existing internal data and leader interviews, were combined to create a common taxonomy of roles, job families, job titles, and functions within Cisco. 3) Validate roles and skills against business priorities to determine if Cisco has a gap or an opportunity for growth in each area. 4) Identify and plan for similar skills and roles, learning and development approaches, and critical talent. Other ideas are offered, including that Cisco uses an enterprise learning experience platform (LXP) that provides user-friendly and curated learning content in which employees can access content related to skills of interest. The team is also applying a diversity lens to ensure the revised SWP approach aligns with the company’s diversity and inclusion goals.

As evidenced during the coronavirus, today’s organizational leaders are called upon to do much more than setting vision and strategy and delivering business results. Today's leaders must be masters of emotional intelligence, expert coaches, engaging motivators, and role model compassion and empathy, to name a few. With leadership effectiveness so heavily determined by leaders' so-called "soft skills," these soft-skills continue to become a central focus of leadership and leadership development efforts. In this 30-page report by DDI, various insights are provided into how organizations can begin to re-evaluate which skills are most necessary and how they can be developed within leaders. Page 29 argues that there are certain skills that have the ability to increase leadership impact across multiple leadership situations and challenges. These leadership skills are also relevant during all career stages, which make them useful as a foundational component of leadership development efforts. They include 1) Interaction Essentials - the ability to facilitate high-quality interactions, through a diverse range of mediums and with a diverse range of people, 2) Business Judgment - the ability to make sound business judgments that are aligned with the organization’s cultural and strategic priorities. 3) Personal Mastery - the ability to understand, manage, and leverage one’s abilities, personality, and motivations to maximize personal impact and effectiveness. Other ideas are discussed.

The ability to understand worker preferences and their impact on attraction, engagement, and retention has been a topic of interest for quite some time. This interest seems to peak during times of crisis, like the coronavirus pandemic, in which worker preferences are shaped and altered. A new study, “Macroeconomic Conditions When Young Shape Job Preferences for Life,” suggests a need for employers to change how they go about attracting and retaining the generation coming of age in this challenging job market. And while prior research has shown that employees rank a sense of meaning or purpose ahead of compensation when asked what they value most from an employer, the study suggests that the opposite will be true for those coming of age now. Said differently, compensation will be prioritized ahead of purpose in evaluating job opportunities for years to come. Behind this thinking is that recessions create cohorts of workers who give higher priority to income, whereas booms make cohorts care more about job meaning. Given this finding, this study also challenges the usefulness of conventional generational groupings such as Gen Z, Gen X, and Millennials in understanding differences in attitudes. The authors posit that these categorizations are too broad to be meaningful since they include those who came of age (18-25 years old) in various economic climates. Instead, individuals’ life preferences are shown to be strongly related to the economic environment in which they came of age. This research provides useful insights for how employers might conduct employee preference research in the future and interpret results. For those who are interested in the academic research paper, you can find it here. 

While smartwatches are heavily used for health and fitness, there is an opportunity to integrate this technology into components of organizational performance, group collaboration, and behavioral coaching. This article provides a few examples of how smartwatches can be used in organizations: 1) Watches could indicate which people in the workplace have the knowledge we need to answer a question, including if they are close to our location or available for a digital coaching moment. 2) Mental readiness to learn: Bioindicators could measure if one is tired or feeling stress, indicating to learners that now may not be the best time to engage in certain learning activities. 3) Provide digital coaching on behavior patterns. If an employee is working on improving interactions with colleagues by not interrupting colleagues mid-sentence, the smartwatch could provide real-time or end-of-day feedback to the employee about their behaviors, including how they are improving. This example is very similar to how my Apple watch just informed me that I am behind in my progress to complete the daily exercise targets that I have set for myself. Such an alert has prompted me to alter my behavior by getting up and taking a walk. When applied to an organizational setting, such approaches will have privacy concerns that need to be considered. Still, there is an opportunity to explore these ideas, especially when considering that, as of today, just in the US alone, 21% of people have a smartwatch--with the numbers growing daily.   

We all know that the candidate experience is critical to attracting great talent and is a vital component of employer brand. This article provides ideas on how Text-to-Apply (TTA), a recruiting technology, can be used to capture mobile-driven candidates, increase the ease-of-use in applying, and create a more compelling candidate experience. A few of the reasons why TTA is increasingly used as a recruiting tool in many organizations are 1) there is 99% open rate and 95% of texts are read within three minutes of being sent 2) texting is the most used form of communication for Americans under 50, 3) and it is 10x quicker than phone calls, 4) employers also report that they see an increase of 40 to 50 percent in response rates from candidates when they use text platforms over emails. Another reason that TTA functionality is effective is that it provides an immediate call-to-action. As an example, if an organization posts a job on LinkedIn, within seconds of a candidate viewing it, with TTA, the candidate receives a) An apply code: a unique identifier that the candidate types into the body of their text message, which will help identify the position(s) the candidate is applying to. b) A phone number: This is the number a candidate types into the contact destination field to identify where they’re texting. The article provides more detail on how TTA works. Since recruiting is an applicant-driven process, it is important to use recruiting tools that "can quickly adapt and meet job seekers where they are."

THE SOUND OF INSIGHT

In this People Podcast episode, DecisionWise experts share their thoughts on managing the employee experience while returning to work, following the coronavirus pandemic. While many companies are starting to send people back to work, some leaders may feel a little unsure about resuming “business as usual” or even the “new normal.” Then, there are also questions such as: How will employees view your back-to-work strategy? Will they come back engaged? Will you need to revisit specific aspects of your culture? This 60-minute podcast (the discussion starts around the 3:20 mark) helps to answer these questions. It covers things such as employee experience principles, identifies key return-to-work goals, and new tools and resources. Aside from the podcast audio link that is included in the article title, there is also a webinar version that you can view. If you access the webinar, you will be required to fill out information by DecisionWise. However, the webinar does qualify for one-hour of SHRM and HRCI credits. Regardless, the messaging from both formats is the same. 

WHAT I AM READING

As organizations continue to evaluate and measure the impact of learning and development initiatives, learning analytics can be leveraged to identify gaps for improvement and ensure that efforts are aligned to the business' needs. Including case studies from companies such as The Gap, Hilton Worldwide University and Seagate Technology, this book provides ideas on how Learning Analytics can help build a learning organization that boosts performance and competitive advantage. Updates in this latest edition include chapters on learning technology tools and moving beyond learning analytics to talent management analytics, and also features new content on measuring informal learning, increasing data literacy, and framing L&D's contributions through a portfolio evaluation approach.

OTHER RESOURCES

If you are looking to catch-up on ideas from some great business books, I recommend that you try two of this newsletter's affiliate partners:

Soundview Executive Books Summaries which provides 7-8 page PDF summaries, and audio summaries, on the newest ideas and strategies from the best business books. They offer both individual and corporate plans, which can be monthly or yearly. One free sample is available for download.

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BECOME A SPONSOR

If you would like to sponsor an issue of this newsletter and feel that 1) your offering fits in line with the topics of Talent Edge Weekly and 2) the interests and needs of HR practitioners, please send me an email at [email protected]

JOB SEARCH

If you are someone with whom I worked or that I know and are currently in a job search, I am here to help you in whatever way I can. Feel free to send me an email at [email protected]

Also, if you are a subscriber to this newsletter and are searching for an HR-related role, I am more than happy to list your name, a link to your Linked In Profile, and a sentence or two that describes what you are looking for, in a future issue of this newsletter. If interested, please send me an email from the email address that you used when signing-up for this newsletter.

FINAL COMMENTS

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I look forward to sharing more ideas in next week’s Edge!

Have a nice weekend everyone and, again, be safe.

Brian