Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #24

July 18, 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.

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

  • The Role of Succession Management in Uncertain, Tumultuous Times | i4cp

  • A Faster Way to Remove Bias from Performance Management | Talent Strategy Group

  • Reimagining the Postpandemic Workforce | McKinsey Quarterly

  • 22 Examples of Diversity Goals | Ongig Blog

  • The New Social Contract: Age-Friendly Employers: Retirement Readiness Report 2020 | Aegons

  • Podcast: How to Create Psychological Safety at Work | Amy Edmondson with David Green | Digital HR Leaders Podcast

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.

If you find this issue to be of value, please share the newsletter link or any of its articles with your social media networks.

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

Many HR organizations have had to reimagine and reprioritize their HR strategy, processes, and programs as a result of COVID-19.  One such area is succession planning (SP). This article represents a summary of survey results on how organizations are/will modify their SP as a result of learnings from COVID-19. A few of the SP practices discussed are: 1) many organizations will have an increased focus on short-term/emergency SP needs and contingency planning. 2) many will expand SP to include more roles , 3) due to increase in remote work, firms will reassess the necessity of "location" as a criterion of SP, 4) switch to a talent pool SP approach, rather than succession that focuses on individuals for specific positions, a growing practice by high-performing organizations. 5) emphasis on diversity and inclusion, such as providing targeted development (e.g., sponsorship, coaching, mentoring, and/or training) of individuals in underrepresented groups. Other ideas are covered. 

Last week I made a post on performance management bias (PMB) and how it is a topic of interest to many organizations that seek to achieve more fair and objective performance management (PM). Although PMB was an issue before the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis is likely to exacerbate PMB due to shifts in ways of working, changes in worker and employee interactions, and reprioritization of goals and objectives. This article by the Talent Strategy Group posits that reducing PMB is heavily determined by having robust PM process controls that reduce bias faster by 1) subjecting individual managers' PM evaluation to group calibration 2) using analytics to identify and correct bias across the PM process, 3) having clear standards that reduce variation in how PM is implemented. Tactics are offered on minimizing bias at each stage of the PM cycle. One tactic to ensure that team members' goals are set at a relatively consistent level of difficulty is to have each team member read his/her goals to each other (and the manager) and then adjust as needed.

Many companies continue to plan for a new combination of remote and on-site working, a hybrid virtual model where some employees are on-premises, while others work from home. As organizations determine which model to implement for the long-term, this article provides a few considerations. It suggests that the model selected should be the one that best optimizes the factor(s) most important to an organization, such as real-estate cost, employee productivity, access to talent, and employee experience, to name a few. Since each model will optimize certain factors while detracting from others, organizations will need to make tradeoffs. Further, since the various models' influence the types of interactions between leaders and teams, as well as company culture, these are important decisions to make. This article has six models representing a mix of on-site and remote working, such as "Partial remote work with flex space." Each model shows its impact on different outcomes, such as productivity. This framework can help organizations make informed decisions about which model enables the outcomes they deem most important. 

Inclusion and Diversity(I&D) continue to be a primary focus for many organizations. And although setting I&D goals isn't sufficient by itself, it is a foundational component that begins to establish accountability for an organizations' I&D efforts. This article provides 22 examples of diversity goals from top companies aiming to boost diversity, inclusion, and belonging in the workplace, such as AT&T, Facebook, Netflix, and SAP, to name a few. While this list is not all-inclusive, it does provide one reference that can be used as organizations set D&I goals. The goals listed center on various themes such as investing sizable cash in good D&I causes (e.g. Apple committed $100 million to the Racial Equity and Justice Initiative). Also, in case you missed it, you can check out a post I made based on a report by McKinsey that provides strategies and case-studies on what top-performing organizations, such as Citigroup, Pentair, Target Corporation, and Lockheed Martin, are doing to accelerate their D&I efforts.

Although it is too soon to determine the coronavirus pandemic's long-term impact on workers' retirement security, indicators before the pandemic already suggested that workers are planning to work longer, beyond retirement eligibility. The reasons span from people living longer, the personal preference to stay active, to financial necessity. This 70+page report provides recommendations for employers and serves to "stimulate the much-needed societal debate on age-friendly workplaces and secure retirement." It offers practices that employers can implement to support their employees to extend their working lives and financially prepare for retirement, including the development of skills, education, and well-being. One interesting finding is that, while 50 percent of workers report having flexible working hours, only 28 percent indicate their employers offer pre-retirees the option to move from full-time to part-time work while phasing into retirement. However, 57 percent expect a phased transition into retirement. This report helps to identify opportunities to leverage this worker segment when addressing talent gaps and planning for future workforce needs.  

THE SOUND OF INSIGHT

Many workers continue to feel varying degrees of anxiety and stress due to the impact that COVID-19 continues to have on aspects of work and life. With this as the backdrop, it seems even more critical for organizations, leaders, managers, and colleagues to foster a workplace of psychological safety (PS). In this 40 minute podcast, Amy Edmondson and David Green have a discussion on the topic. Amy shares that PS is created when colleagues trust and respect each other and feel able, even obligated, to be candid and speak up about what they are feeling, to name a few. Insights are offered on how to create PS in virtual teams, the role of leaders and HR in creating PS, and examples of how organizations are creating PS within their cultures. I particularly like the point that Amy reinforces how when leaders demonstrate vulnerability by sharing what they are feeling, it invites others to do the same. In turn, this enables a culture that fosters PS-- well beyond the pandemic.

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 send me an email from 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.

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

FINAL COMMENTS

If you aren’t yet a subscriber to Talent Edge Weekly and want to have it delivered to your email inbox each Saturday, you can  subscribe by entering your email below.

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

If you found this issue to be of value, please share the link above with your social media networks.

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

Have a nice and safe weekend everyone.

Brian