Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #23

July 11, 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.

The following resources are covered in this week's issue:

  • Should the CHRO Become Part of a Chair-CEO-CHRO SuperTrio?| People Matters

  • Mitigating Bias in Performance Management | Deloitte Insights

  • Workforce Planning — How to Use Technology to Support Planning Processes | Gartner 

  • Can You Answer These 10 Strategic Workforce Planning Questions |Clarity Magazine via Visier | includes additional 14 articles

  • The New Meaning of Talent: Adapting to the Work and the Workforce of Tomorrow | Allegis Group

  • The Future of Work in a Pandemic Era | The Xerox Future of Work Survey

  • Working Fathers More Concerned Than Mothers When It Comes to Caregiving Responsibilities, Job Security, & Productivity | Perceptyx

You can also access additional resources and articles at www.brianheger.com

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.

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Have a nice and safe weekend everyone.

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

The role of the CHRO, in many leading organizations, continues to be elevated, particularly in light of COVID-19. Increasingly, CHROs are called upon by their CEOs to offer guidance on a range of critical people-centered challenges faced by the business. Further, for a CHRO to make an impact, it requires a productive working relationship with the CEO and an organization’s Board of Directors and Chair. This article explores the relationships and interactions across three stakeholders: Chair-CEO-CHRO. Although this trio (sometime duo) operates in varying workplace contexts that can largely determine how they work, this article provides some “core, foundational actions and behaviors that can be usefully deployed by the trio, whatever the organizational context and personalities involved." It offers three types of scenarios in which this group interacts: 1) The Chair and CEO have a cordial and friendly relationship, but neither is close to the CHRO. 2) The Chair and CHRO have a good working relationship, and the CEO is more distant from them both. 3) A healthy and constructive relationship is enjoyed by the Chair, the CEO, and the CHRO. For each scenario, a summary is provided on the risks of inaction and opportunities for growth and strengthening of these relationships.

Before COVID-19, performance management bias (PMB) was a topic of interest to many organizations that seek to achieve more fair and objective performance management (PM). However, the pandemic has radically disrupted how organizations are operating, which can exacerbate PMB–ranging from inconsistencies in goal difficulty and evaluation, coaching and feedback, development opportunities, and rewards. This article provides an overview of how bias can impede performance, why it needs to be addressed, and a threefold approach for mitigating bias in PM. This triple approach, ACT, includes 1) Awareness, 2) Calibration, and 3) Technology. What I like about this article is that, for each of the three areas, it provides practical tactics and behaviors that can reduce PMB. Further, these suggestions are segmented by a) Leaders, b) HR Professionals, and 3) Team Members. For example, for the Calibration component, which refers to the deliberate and thoughtful process of making data-informed and fact-driven decisions as opposed to making decisions driven by groupthink or gut instinct”- one thing leaders can do is seek and interpret data to offer objective, meaningful, and unbiased feedback. As organizations continue to refine their PM efforts during this unprecedented time, this is a timely resource that provides useful ideas.  

The COVID-19 crisis continues to place greater emphasis on workforce planning (WP) within many organizations. And given that WP can mean different things to different people, this Gartner article introduces five types of WP that can help organizations understand the distinction among each, the question that each tries to answer, and the required technologies. The five kinds of WP and questions they seek to answer are: 1) Workforce optimization: How do we optimize the assignment and distribution of tasks and processes to improve capacity utilization, productivity, and other business outcomes? 2) Workforce scheduling optimization: How do we optimize workforce schedules to meet compliance and fair scheduling needs while ensuring that we can hit business targets? 3) Operational workforce planning: How do we plan for the right number and types of workforce resources to hit projected business targets and make sure we are executing them? 4) Organization modeling and transformation management: How do we align resources with our new organizational structure following a significant transformation? 5) Strategic workforce planning: What are the workforce implications of our organization’s short and long-term strategy? For each of the five areas, the article provides the key features, limitations, and example vendors. This article is a useful resource as organizations refine or build their WP approach.

As business models continue to be disrupted by the changing nature of work, workforce, and the business environment, many organizations are reviewing their strategic workforce planning (SWP) practices to ensure that they can keep pace with these changes. In this two-page article-infographic that begins on p.34, which is part of the 2020 v.3 of Clarity Magazine, ten questions are provided that organizations can ask themselves relevant to SWP. Examples include: 1) Who is going to quit or be terminated in the next 90 days? Next 12 months? Organizations can begin to answer this question and adjust workforce plans using forecasted exits and even predictive analytics. 2) Can the Talent Acquisition function support our hiring plans? To answer this question, firms can use tactics such as scenario planning to understand and plan for fluctuations in hiring volume based on different business situations they may face. Aside from the questions mentioned in the article, I would add two others:  a) Which roles and skills disproportionately enable our strategic capabilities? b) Of these roles and skills, where do we have the most significant gaps? This magazine issue includes 15 articles ranging from people analytics, employee experience, remote workforce, and gender equity, to name a few, and is replete with insights.

According to a recent study by the Allegis Group of 1,000 HR decision-makers, 94% of them report that navigating talent management trends and challenges today is more complicated than five years ago. These challenges range from longer hiring cycles, increased costs, and productivity, to name a few. This report explores six key trends in how organizations are addressing these challenges through three lenses. 1) Who does the work? 2) How do companies secure the workers they need? 3) What is the nature of the work itself? One challenge that organizations are overcoming is the demand to meet the needs of multiple generations in the workplace. Rather than focus on the unique needs of each generation, organizations are focusing on addressing the shared needs of the workforce, such as their desire for flexibility (e.g., work location, hours worked, etc.) A few organizations are getting creative in this space. For example, one company offers 12-week, paid “returnships,” giving seniors who have been out of the workforce for two or more years the opportunity to work on professional assignments while receiving coaching and mentoring. Another organization "offers a 10-week paid internship for women who have been out of work for multiple years, a flexible approach that enables skilled workers to restart their careers." There are several insights throughout this report on other important trends and practices.

A new global business survey commissioned by Xerox of 600 IT leaders across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and France, show “that an estimated 82% of the workforce in respondents’ organizations will have returned to the workplace in 12-18 months, on average.” In preparation for a return, companies are investing in new resources to support a hybrid remote / in-office workforce, with 56% increasing technology budgets and 34% planning to speed their digital transformation as a result of COVID-19. Also, 58 % intend to change their work-from-home policies within the next year, "instituting the option to work indefinitely from home for those whose roles allow for it." Within that group, nearly a third said they were examining implementing that change immediately. Despite employers’ receptivity to remote work arrangements, 95% of respondents say that in-person communication is vital for personal development and assessing talent. As such, widespread remote work will not replace more traditional workspaces, but instead, give rise to hybrid work arrangements. Additional insights are provided and can be used by organizations to make and implement decisions in this area. 

Last week I made a post on how the COVID-19-driven remote work environment has been especially challenging for many working mothers who have to balance work, teaching, feeding, caregiving, and other home responsibilities. In a recent survey by Perceptyx, the results show that anyone who is a caregiver (e.g., a parent without child care, caring for aging parents or family members battling illness) is more than twice as likely to report that their remote work environment harms their productivity and focus, to name a few. Caregivers are almost twice as likely to say the company’s response has not minimized stress, regardless of whether caregivers work from home or in an office location. Interestingly, working fathers are beginning to worry more than mothers across several areas, including caregiving responsibilities, job security, and job productivity - a full 18 percentage points higher than mothers. As noted in the article, these differences may be due in part to a new level of awareness fathers are experiencing when it comes to caregiving and family needs. Recommendations are offered on how organizations can support caregiver employees, including individualized accommodations, based on unique caregiving responsibilities.

OTHER RESOURCES

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.

Book Recommendations. Section of my website where I provide a few suggestions on HR and business books to read.

Recommended Tools I Use. Section of my website where I list a few of the tools that I use for personal productivity and learning.

WHO IS IN THE HR JOB MARKET?

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 email me at [email protected] using the email address that you used when signing-up for this newsletter.

  • Serguei Zaychenko - is looking for an Executive Recruiter/Talent Acquisition Recruiter role in the metro New York City area. Serguei worked both for large, Fortune 500, as well as small, entrepreneurial companies and thrives in hyper-growth environments.

  • 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.

FINAL COMMENTS

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If you enjoy this content and would like to access all issues of Talent Edge Weekly, you can do so by clicking here. You can also access content at www.brianheger.com

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

Have a nice and safe weekend everyone.

Brian