Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #25

July 25, 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 Impact of COVID-19 on Performance Management | HRD Canada

  • LinkedIn 2020 Workplace Learning Report | LinkedIn Learning

  • How is HR Addressing the Childcare Crisis | HR Executive

  • 3 Structural Changes the New Workplace Requires of HR Technology | HCM Technology Report

  • Are Generational Categories Meaningful Distinctions for Workforce Management? | National Academies Press

  • Evidence-Based Ideas to Increase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace | Center for Employment Equity UMass - Amherst

  • Webinar: HR's Role in Reimagining How We Work | Glint and Josh Bersin 

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

During the past several weeks, I have made multiple posts about performance management (PM) to help organizations determine if and how they should adjust their PM process as a result of COVID-19. And with many organizations in the process of having mid-year PM check-ins designed to help employees and managers reflect on progress made towards yearly objectives and expectations for the remainder of the year, this article provides ideas for conducting those conversations. The article encourages managers and employees to adapt check-in conversations in four ways, including 1) Focus on contribution, not performance. Given that shifts in business priorities and personal circumstances have impacted employee performance (likely in many instances), organizations might focus more on behaviors and contributions vs. outcomes. 2) Adjust the agenda of check-in conversations to acknowledge new realities. Many managers can demonstrate empathy during conversations with employees by asking questions such as How are you managing to balance professional and personal demands? How are you adjusting to working remotely? Other recommendations center on focusing conversations on shorter-term prioritization of work rather than long term goals that are subject to change. In case you missed it, you should check out my post on an article by the Talent Strategy Group, which provides further guidance for adjusting PM based on the extent to which COVID-19 has impacted an organization. 

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to alter how and where work gets performed, and the skills that workers need in order to manage in this new environment. In this LinkedIn 2020 Workforce Learning Report, several insights are provided on how organizations can create a culture of learning, measure the impact of learning, and enhance learner engagement. And while the report appears to have been compiled before the pandemic shifted into high gear, there are various insights that can be used by HR and Learning leaders as they adjust learning strategies and tactics during the pandemic and beyond. Of particular relevance is the section on upskilling and reskilling (p.30). Specifically, "soft skills" or the essential interpersonal skills that make or break our ability to get things done, are noted as increasingly important. The top five soft skills are creativity, persuasion, collaboration, adaptability, and emotional intelligence. Given that the shelf life of technical skills is relatively short—less than 5 years—organizations are increasingly investing in "soft skills" development since they are "foundational to every employee’s success, regardless of their functional role or how the technology landscape evolves." Several other insights are provided in this 40+ page report. 

While working parents continue to manage teaching, feeding, caregiving, and other home responsibilities, to name a few, all while attending to their job responsibilities— many reports indicate that this burden has primarily fallen on mothers. According to this article, most working moms are only getting 2.6 hours of uninterrupted work time each day since the pandemic. And as this challenge persists, it can lead to a significant number of women leaving the workforce. This article cites a survey of 1,000 working moms conducted earlier this month, where 70% would consider leaving their job if it was economically feasible. Adding to this issue is that many workers are reluctant to raise concerns about the challenges they’re facing or to ask their employer for help. As such, employers must take bold actions to address the challenges that working moms face, such as how Twitter launched a virtual day camp for kids of their employees, or Microsoft offering 12 weeks of parental leave due to the pandemic. Concerning creating a culture of “psychological safety,” (PS)–where workers feel compelled to share with they are feeling–please check out my post from last week that highlights a podcast on this topic and provides examples of how organizations are fostering PS within their cultures.

Many organizations and parents are increasingly realizing that the pandemic will persist beyond the timeframe initially expected. And with many school districts already announcing their plans to conduct either online or a hybrid on-site/digital approach, this will present further challenges to workers who need to juggle childcare and education with their job responsibilities. As such, how work gets done will continue to change, which will call for advanced HR technology capabilities that enable performance in this challenging environment. This article provides three structural changes that COVID-19 will bring to HR technology, including 1) Streamlining the navigation of communication and collaboration platforms with more apps embedded in other products. 2) Providing touchless interfaces that streamline access to facilities (e.g., using facial recognition to eliminate the need to have workers scan or display ID cards. 3) Creating in-the-moment apps that proactively serve up information versus having a worker request it (e.g., a system that offers flight schedules as soon as users enter a meeting in their calendar). HR leaders can consider these and other factors as they work with IT to implement technology solutions that optimize efficiency, performance, safety, and the employee experience. 

Although there has been much interest over the years in studying the needs and behaviors of different generations in the workforce, a new report suggests that generational categorizations cannot adequately inform workforce management decisions. Instead of relying on generational stereotypes, employers and managers should focus on individuals’ work needs. The report suggests that varied values and behaviors among workers are more likely to reflect "differences in their ages, career stages, job experiences, and general changes in society and work conditions, rather than their generations." Said differently, the report’s assessment of the scientific literature found that individuals from the same generation are just as likely to be different from one another as they are from individuals born in other generations. Several weeks back, I made a post based on a study by Columbia Business School that found that generational categorizations of workers are too broad to be meaningful. Instead, the authors suggest that individuals’ life preferences are shown to be strongly related to the economic environment in which they came of age (e.g., those who come of age in an economic downturn will place higher value on compensation for years to come). Anyhow, both studies provide useful insights for understanding worker preferences.

Despite organizations increasing their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, many of them continue to fall short of their aspirations in this space. This 50-page report provides six chapters (each addressing a particular DEI topic) of research-based evidence about strategies that are effective for reducing discrimination and bias and increasing diversity within workplace organizations. By using a research-driven report such as this one, organizations can pinpoint and implement practices that are likely to have the greatest impact on DEI. Although each chapter provides keen insights, there are two in particular that I found helpful. Chapter 2 (p.16) discusses the importance of establishing DEI goals and metrics, then making them transparent to stakeholders, who should be "empowered to hold decision-makers accountable for making progress toward a diverse and fair workplace." Chapter 4 (p.30) provides recommendations for using technology to increase fairness in hiring. Although the use of technology and AI in employment selection does come with missteps, carefully designed technological solutions can provide viable alternatives to a biased human approach.

THE SOUND OF INSIGHT

As organizations continue to work through the next phase of recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, this 40-minute fireside chat between Glint head of people science Justin Black and Josh Bersin dives into various questions around how work and the workplace will be different and HR's role in this journey. Issues explored include: How can we use this as an opportunity to help our people be happier and more successful in the long-run? And, what would it look like to create a more people-centric organization? Josh mentioned that these challenging times are “waking everybody up to the fact that all this ‘people stuff’ that HR people have been talking about, and other people have either been listening to or not listening to, actually is critical.” 

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 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.

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