TALENT EDGE WEEKLY - Issue #22

July 04, 2020

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:

  • Priming Performance Management | Heidrick & Struggles

  • The Double-Double Shift: Supporting Women’s Performance Management During a Pandemic | Red Thread Research (includes a bonus report)

  • The Single Biggest Step to Pay Equity? Stop Asking About Salary History | LinkedIn Talent Blog

  • Resetting Normal: Defining the New Era of Work | Adecco Group

  • COVID-19 and the Employee Experience: How leaders Can Seize the Moment | McKinsey & Co.

  • Managing Transformation and Changes Using People Analytics | AIHR Digital

  • What I Am Reading: Introduction to People Analytics: A Practical Guide to Data-driven HR 1st Edition

  • Webinar: The Changing HR Agenda for 2020-21 | Gartner

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 nice and safe weekend everyone and, for those of you who observe July 4th, enjoy the holiday.

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

Organizations continue to make decisions on how they will handle performance management (PM) in 2020. Examples of questions that organizations are grappling with include: How much should you consider the impact of COVID-19 on your assessment? How can an organization be equitable—and continue to show empathy— when managing performance? Since the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted organizations in different ways (e.g., some firms won't be on a clear path to recovery by the end of 2020 whereas others have thrived during the shutdown), the answers to these questions will depend on an organizations' situation. Regardless, many organizations will continue to provide guidance to their workforce on resetting or modifying goals. While this article provides various insights on PM, it also reinforces four types of goals associated with PM, what they intend to achieve, and the pros and cons of each. They include: 1) Output - focused on desired business outcomes, 2) Input - focused on steps required to achieve the outcome, 3) Learning - focused on how to get better at achieving the desired business outcome, 4) Team - focuses on how to enable teams to operate more effectively. Organizations can use this framework along with their unique situations to provide guidance to their workers on how to handle PM in an unprecedented year.

While most workers have felt the impact of the pandemic on their performance at work, one worker segment where this is likely more pronounced is: women who are working mothers. Recent data show that some women are taking on at least 20 hours per week of extra work during the lockdown as they balance work with teaching, feeding, caregiving, and other home responsibilities. This research paper presents the argument that performance management (PM) practices must be refined to reflect these variables, particularly given the hurdles that many women had already faced with PM. For example, women are 17% less likely than men to rate their managers as being able to have difficult conversations; and women who are also mothers are recommended for promotion less often than women without children or men (with or without children). The report suggests that there are three primary levers that can help overcome this PM challenge. 1) Culture, 2) Capability of managers, and 3) Clarity. Within each of these areas, there are various tactics for making PM more equitable and that are most relevant in the context of the COVID-19 and a work from home environment. As a bonus report, I am including Leveling the Field: Making Performance Management Work for Women, which was conducted by the same organization.

Pay equity-- compensating employees the same when they perform the same or similar job duties while accounting for other factors, such as their experience level, job performance, and tenure with the employer (SHRM)--continues to be a priority for many organizations. And as this topic becomes increasingly important, many HR and Total Rewards leaders are reviewing their organization’s compensation policies and practices to achieve greater pay equity. This article highlights a new research study conducted by Boston University’s School of Law that suggests that pay equity can be accelerated by banning salary history questions when interviewing candidates. The study found that "in states where salary history bans have been enacted, pay for those who switched jobs increased, on average, 5% to 6% more than for those who changed jobs in other states. But the boost was even larger for African Americans, who received increases that were 13% to 16% higher, and for women, who received bumps that were 8% to 9% higher. As noted in the article, even if your company does business in a state or country that still allows questions about salary history, consider dropping them and, instead, share your salary ranges. In case you missed it, you can see three of my recent posts on pay transparency--a practice that enables pay equity.

As organizations continue through the recovery phase of the pandemic and beyond, many of them are using the learnings from the crisis to establish new working norms. This report by the Adecco Group explores the rising expectations of both employees and managers in this post-pandemic era. It is based on responses assessing the attitudes to work of 8,000 people across eight countries. A few of the findings include a) Remote Working - 74%of workers say that a mix of office-based and remote working is the best way forward--where many would prefer to only spend half (51%) of their time there, with the balance spent working remotely. b) When One Works - rather than have set business working hours, many employees believe they should have the flexibility to organize their work hours so long as they complete the tasks they are expected to do and deliver the results expected of them. c) Key performance indicators - should relate to output and impact by which a knowledge-economy employee is measured, as opposed to how long they have worked. The report has other insights that organizations can use as they "re-think their operating models and pivot toward working styles that will benefit both management and employees long-term."

The return phase of the COVID-19 crisis is an optimal time for organizations to focus on creating a more impactful employee experience in response to workplace challenges. This article provides suggestions on how to positively impact the EE by focusing on meeting four prominent needs of the broader workforce. 1) safety and security 2) relationships - 3) culture, and 4) purpose. Aside from these primary needs, the article reinforces how organizations should take stock of the unique needs of different worker segments and individuals. Exhibit 3 shows the top employee needs (e.g. financial security, balance of work and private life) and outcome drivers, grouped by five core EE themes. Exhibit 4 illustrates how that while all workers are experiencing some degree of disruption, the range of experiences is wide, from the very positive to the very negative. For example, of the population of fathers working at home, 79.4 % report positive work effectiveness and 70.5 % say they have a positive state of well-being. Conversely, of the group of employees working in non-remote positions with little workplace flexibility, 70.5 % report negative work effectiveness, and 57.6 % say they’re struggling. These and other insights can be used by organizations to develop both broad and targeted EE strategies.

Although companies are leveraging people analytics (PA) in areas such as performance, retention, strategic workforce planning, identifying skills gaps, and evaluating the effectiveness of recruiting channels, to name a few, there is more opportunity for utilizing PA to drive practices related to change, culture, and transformation. Last week I made a post based on an article by the Boston Consulting Group that illustrated ways that PA can be used to drive successful change, including behaviors and ways of working. As a supplement to that article, this additional AIHR article provides a perspective on capturing the right data to hypothesize, experiment, measure, and generate insights that help drive change. Figure 1 illustrates a model on how various components of data such as 1. Communication Data (e.g., Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc,) 2. HR and Org Data (e.g. Workday, Taleo, etc.), 3) Collaboration Data (e.g. Grithub), and 4) Survey Data can be used with data mining techniques, Organizational Network Analysis and Natural Language Processing to gather insights to manage various aspects of change and transformation. Other ideas and resources are provided, including web links to related resources.

WHAT I AM READING

It used to be that only those employees on data and analytic teams had to have an understanding of People Analytics (PA). However, with PA becoming increasingly recognized as a way to provide insights that enable organizations to make better business decisions, most HR professionals need to at least have foundational skills in this area. In this book that was released in April 2020, Nadeem Khan and Dave Millner help HR practitioners begin to develop a better understanding of PA and how it can be used to move from data to insights. It provides studies and thought leadership insights from companies who have leveraged PA to improve culture and employee engagement, increase performance and reduce costs, including Experian and AstraZeneca. There is also expert guidance and practical advice on how to embed analytics into HR processes and adopt a data-driven approach to all workplace activities. Another good book on this topic is Data-Driven HR: Use Analytics and Metrics to Drive Performance by Bernard Marr.

THE SOUND OF INSIGHT

In this 60-minute webinar, learn how HR’s agenda has changed and what changes chief human resource officers (CHROs) will make soon to fulfill existing and future goals differently as a result of COVID. A few of the topics discussed include 1) How have business priorities changed as a result of COVID (e.g., cost optimization a greater focus instead of growing the business). 2) Shifts in HR priorities in 2020 through 2021 (e.g., while the top 5 priorities now have not changed since one year ago, the order of those priorities has changed--such as Inclusion and Diversity rising as a priority.) The content of the webcast starts at the 6:45 minute mark and here is the PDF that was used during the discussion. This educational hour can be applied towards SHRM and HRCI credit. Please note that you might need to enter your email address in order to access the webinar.

OTHER RESOURCES

If you are looking to catch-up on your reading with various business and HR books, check out:

  • 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. 2) help to solve practical HR challenges that HR leaders face.

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 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 and safe weekend everyone and, for those of you who observe July 4th, enjoy the holiday.

Brian