TALENT EDGE WEEKLY - Issue #21

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.

Additional COVID-HR resources--as well as strategic HR topics--can be accessed at www.brianheger.com

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

  • 2020 Top CHRO List - The People Leaders To Watch | N2Growth

  • How to Avoid Talent Gaps with Data-Driven Succession Planning | Visier | Carla Williams

  • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 4.0 : A Toolkit for Leaders | World Economic Forum 

  • How to Evaluate HR Technology Post COVID-19 | HR Toolbox

  • How to Do Performance Reviews — Remotely | Harvard Business Review

  • The Business Case for Pay Transparency | HR Daily Advisor

  • Unlocking Change Management with People Analytics | Boston Consulting Group

  • Podcast: Performance Management and Talent Management - Time for a New Order? | The HR Congress Podcast

If you enjoy Talent Edge Weekly, please share this newsletter with your colleagues and social media networks!

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Have a good weekend everyone and please be safe.

Brian

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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 EDGE

As the role of the CHRO continues to become increasingly recognized as vital to organizational success, it was nice to see this list of the 2020 Top 25 CHROs, published by N2GROWTH. This publication recognizes CHROs who have shaped careers, culture, and talent at the world's most innovative people-driven companies. Although this list is not all-inclusive, it does represent a strong showing of CHROs from companies such as Humana, Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Verizon, to name a few. Over twelve criteria were used to evaluate CHROs, including peer recommendations and interviews, impact on industry, and strong positioning of the employer brand. For each of the 25 CHROs mentioned, a summary of the CHRO and his or her impact is provided. Given the significant opportunities that CHROs and their teams will have to innovate over the next 12-18 months, I expect this list to continue to grow. For those who may have missed it, here is a link to a Spencer Stuart article that outlines the CHRO capabilities that are important now and in the future.

During the coronavirus crisis, many organizations became acutely aware of how the ability to manage talent risks and gaps is a vital talent capability. This realization has placed a greater priority on using data to effectively manage talent and make talent decisions. This article provides examples of how data can be used through three common talent management processes: 1) talent reviews, 2) succession planning, and 3) career development. Since this article is written by a technology provider, the examples used are based on their product; nonetheless, there are many insights and examples that can be leveraged by HR practitioners to generate ideas of their own. One important question as it relates to talent reviews and succession and where data can help answer is: Which employees are "hidden talent" that are connectors and influencers in the organization? As mentioned in the article, Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) is a technique that can be used to identify hidden leaders within an organization that may get overlooked through more traditional talent identification tactics. 

Many leading organizations are proactively leveraging technology as part of organization-wide strategies for achieving “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) 4.0”.  However, there are often unintended consequences and risks when implementing new technology tools. This toolkit highlights the opportunities and outlines the challenges specific to greater use of technology in the service of DEI efforts. These areas are explored through three lens: 1) Talent Sourcing and Selection, 2) Organizational Analysis and Monitoring, 3) Employee Experience, Reward, and Development. For the Talent Sourcing and Selection lens, a few challenges discussed include a) addressing bias in job advertisement - where the language used might bias the application process and limit the pool of applicants. b) tapping into talent pools of diverse candidates - where existing approaches to posting roles might fail to reach diverse talent pools, and c) identify best-fit candidates based on merit and skills - interview process might introduce a range of biases into the hiring process. The insights throughout this report can be used to drive DEI through technology while minimizing unintended consequences.

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on how organizations will prioritize and evaluate HR technology investments moving forward. This article offers three ideas, based on views from multiple practitioners, on how to prioritize HR Technology in a post-COVID 19. They include 1) A fierce focus on employee experience - e.g. solutions that are intuitive, self-service, and offer employee personalization, 2) integration - e.g., focus on solutions that can integrate into an organizations' established processes--therefore saving time. A good set of 8 questions are provided to help organizations think through this component. 3) Collaboration - alignment across the leadership team on priorities versus having competing interests and working in silos. The article also offers a set of questions HR leaders should ask vendors when evaluating HR technology, such as "What is your full integrated solution" - which helps to understand not only what the platform can do now, but 18-36 months from now. It also covers HR Tech platforms that should be prioritized such as engagement and employee listening, wellness monitoring, people analytics, and digital learning. 

Pay transparency--allowing every employee to view what his or her colleagues earn--is a topic that generates much debate. Whereas some feel it fosters resentment among team members and limits employers’ bargaining power in recruitment, proponents such as Women’s rights activists advocate for full pay transparency "as the increased visibility encourages businesses to establish a standard of equal pay for equal work and empowers female employees with information to advocate for themselves." This article provides a view on how pay transparency benefits both employees and businesses, ranging from establishing higher levels of trust with employees to removing structural inequalities that result from gender discrimination. It should be noted that there are degrees of pay transparency. For example, companies may decide to implement partial pay transparency policies where they make pay ranges available for roles within a company. A few visual examples are provided on how pay transparency can be depicted. In case you missed it, here is a link to a pay transparency study conducted by WorldatWork and Mercer earlier in the year.

COVID-19 has forced many organizations to rethink how they will handle performance management (PM) in 2020. In this HBR article, a few strategies are offered to answer questions such as: How do you begin to evaluate your employees’ performance at such a challenging time? How much should you consider the impact of Covid-19 on your assessment? And how do you make sure you’re fair-minded given everyone’s different circumstances? One recommendation speaks to the challenge of evaluating performance when not having as much data or "observations" one usually has as a result of not seeing employees in person, or due to other changes that have reduced the number of interactions between employee and manager. In such a case, managers should gather feedback from different sources (e.g., peers) to gain insights into questions such as: How is this employee proactively communicating? How are they connecting with clients and colleagues? Who are they helping? In case you missed it, last week I shared a post based on an article by Marc Effron that provides guidance on how organizations can manage PM approaches during this time. 

As organizations continue to quickly transform in response to COVID-19 and the future of work, the change management of these efforts will be critical to success. This article by the Boston Consulting Group focuses on five key elements of people analytics (PA) that can be used to help organizations drive successful change. While each of the five areas is important, one area in which PA can facilitate change is in Behaviors and Ways of Working. PA can help reveal inefficiencies and ineffective ways of working and behaviors such as " the amount of time devoted to certain meetings may be disproportionate to the relative importance and decision rights of those meetings." Or identifying more broadly how "executives who spend more than one-third of their time in internal meetings—or sales executives who spend less than two-thirds of their time with clients—are generally ineffective in their jobs." These and other ideas are discussed. Also, Exhibit 1 shows the five areas in which PA can facilitate change, associated metrics, and the practical application of each area. 

THE SOUND OF INSIGHT

In this 30-minute podcast, Alan Colquitt discusses the state of modern performance management (starts at 2 min 14 sec mark), the impact of COVID-19 on organizations (starts about the 8 min mark), talent management, and some of the fundamental organizational dilemmas that persist today. Alan also raises the question on whether some companies that got rid of performance ratings will consider going back to ratings at some point. Alan is also the author of the book: Next Generation Performance Management: The Triumph of Science over Myth and Superstition.

OTHER RESOURCES

If you are looking to catch-up on your reading with various business and HR books, you can check out the section of my website that includes recommended HR books and a brief summary of each.

You can also check out two of my 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.

  • Audible, who offers a 30-day free trial where you will get two free audiobooks immediately. You get to keep the two free audiobooks even if you decide to not purchase a monthly or yearly Audible subscription.

BECOME A SPONSOR

If you are an organization or HR service provider that would like to sponsor an issue of this newsletter, please contact me at [email protected]. Sponsorship must be in line with 1) the topics covered in this newsletter and 2) provide practical solutions and views that enable HR practitioners to drive business strategy through HR and talent strategy.

WHO IS IN THE JOB MARKET?

  • Nora Kinsela - is currently seeking a mid/senior level Talent Management/Development role in the Greater Boston area. The ideal company is one that looks to create an engaged workforce by providing career development opportunities needed for them to thrive and be their best selves.

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