Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #302

Using 'number of development moves away' as a measure of successor readiness, breaking down the infinite workday, identifying and removing barriers to internal mobility, learning and development trends, and skills-based talent practices.

Author

Brian Heger
June 22, 2025

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Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly!

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THIS WEEK'S CONTENT

Below are links and descriptions of the topics covered in this issue. If you're interested in my deep dive, you can read the full newsletter.

Also, check out my job cuts tracker & Chief HR Officer move of the week.

Let’s dive in! ⬇️

THIS WEEK'S EDGE 

SUCCESSION PLANNING

My one-page cheat sheet with 9 questions and tips to help identify development moves that accelerate successor readiness.

Succession planning is crucial for ensuring business continuity and maintaining a strong leadership pipeline. Yet despite its importance, many organizations struggle to prepare successors effectively for larger roles. Two common barriers I often see are: 1) lack of accountability for development follow-through, where plans are created but not tracked or executed, leading to stalled growth and missed opportunities; and 2) development efforts that don’t address the most critical skill or experience gaps, defaulting instead to generic, low-impact activities. Leaders also tend to rely on vague timelines like “ready in 12 months” to assess readiness. While directionally useful, this approach overlooks which specific skills must be built, how to build them, and the time required. An alternative is to define readiness by the “number of development moves away”—the distinct number of development experiences or actions a successor needs to complete before being considered ready for the role. Against this backdrop, I’ve created a one-page cheat sheet with nine questions and tips to help leaders think in terms of development moves required for readiness. Focused actions like these, paired with clear accountability, are what truly move the needle on accelerating successor readiness.

ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

A new report that shows how fragmented focus, constant interruptions, and excessive meetings are eroding productivity—and why rethinking how work is structured is critical to unlocking AI’s full potential.

AI continues to transform work—automating tasks, accelerating decisions, and freeing time for higher value work—while holding even greater potential. But realizing that potential requires more than new tools; it demands rethinking how work is structured and experienced. A new Microsoft WorkLab report warns that without change, organizations may simply use AI to accelerate a broken system—one plagued by fragmented focus, constant interruptions, and poor collaboration. Drawing from Microsoft 365 data and a survey of 31,000 workers, it finds that employees are interrupted every two minutes (up to 275 times/day) and receive 153 Teams messages and 117 emails daily. Sixty percent of meetings are ad hoc, and 1 in 10 is scheduled at the last minute. Meetings after 8 p.m. have risen 16%, with many working late just to keep up. The result? An “infinite workday” that quietly erodes productivity and well-being. Separate reports from Deloitte and Mercer echo this, citing too many meetings, interruptions, and lack of focus time as major drains. While AI offers real opportunities to unlock capacity, those gains will fall short without cultural and mindset shifts. Leaders can ask: 1) How are our ways of working helping or hindering performance? 2) What norms must change so employees can do their best work where it matters most? Reimagining work—through the combined power of AI and mindset shifts—can unlock your workforce’s full potential.

INTERNAL MOBILITY

My one-page editable template designed to help identify the presence of nine common barriers to internal mobility, so actions can be taken in response

Internal mobility—the movement of employees across different roles and opportunities within the same organization—is a critical component of talent management. However, several factors can limit internal mobility, including restrictive policies that govern the conditions under which moves can take place, managers who resist letting go of high-performing team members to other parts of the organization, and the absence of enabling technologies such as internal talent marketplaces. We recently discussed this topic in my new, private Talent Edge Circle community for internal HR practitioners (currently have a waiting list to open to new members soon). We had a practical discussion to examine common barriers to internal mobility and explored tactics for addressing them within each member organization. To help others, I’m sharing one of the resources used during the discussion, which is a one-page sheet featuring nine examples of internal mobility barriers. It includes a brief description of each barrier, a section to indicate whether the barrier exists in your organization, space to provide additional context, and a column to identify two to three actions to address it. By organizing the information in this simple format, teams can more easily pinpoint barriers and take targeted steps to overcome them.

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

A 38-page report with evolving trends in learning and development, including how leading organizations are embedding learning into daily work.

The McKinsey Research and Innovation (R&I) Learning Lab reviewed over 45 global learning trend reports across various industries. A team of senior leaders analyzed data, identified themes, debated findings, and shaped perspectives on the future of people development. One standout insight: forward-looking organizations are embedding learning into work—not treating it as a separate or scheduled activity. Instead of asking employees to pause work to learn, they integrate learning across the employee experience—from hiring and onboarding to daily tasks and performance feedback—making work itself a primary vehicle for development. It’s a shift from viewing learning as a destination to seeing it as a thread woven through everyday activity. Still, many employees experience learning as disconnected from their roles. Instead of asking “How do we get people to make time to learn?”, leading firms now ask, “How do we make the challenges of work spark growth?” By embedding development into workflows and interactions, learning becomes an essential and ongoing process. Each of the report’s three sections—including one on responsible AI—ends with practical actions for leaders, managers, and individual contributors to enable learning.

SKILL-BASED TALENT PRACTICES

A 28-page report offers recommendations for quantifying the impact of skills-based talent practices. I also reshare two reports from the Business Roundtable on skills-based practices.

This 28-page report offers practical recommendations for quantifying the impact of skills-based talent practices. Developed through a collaboration between Business Roundtable member company leaders and expert partners as part of the Multiple Pathways Initiative, participating companies include American Express, Chevron, Medtronic, Target, and Walmart, among others. One of the report’s key features is a framework of 10 critical questions organizations should answer to evaluate the impact of skills-based practices—each paired with suggested metrics. The questions are grouped into three categories: 1) practice adoption, 2) employee impact, and 3) business impact. For example, under practice adoption, one question asks: Are we actually hiring more people based on skills? A corresponding metric might be: the percentage of new hires without a 4-year degree out of total job postings that do not require one. Additional ideas are also explored. As a bonus, I’m resharing two other Business Roundtable reports, Cultivating a Skills-Based Culture, which highlights early lessons from companies working to embed skills-based practices. A key takeaway is the need to clarify the “why” behind skills-based practices. Without a clearly defined purpose, these efforts risk being deprioritized or perceived as performative rather than strategic. The other is the Skills-Based Internal Mobility Playbook, a 56-page resource featuring insights gathered from VP and C-suite HR leaders.

MOST POPULAR FROM LAST WEEK

TALENT MANAGEMENT

My slide to help evaluate if key development roles are used effectively to support talent growth and leadership pipeline flow.

In every organization, certain roles act as accelerators of development—positions where the nature of the work and its challenges enable individuals to build critical skills and gain meaningful experiences faster than in other roles. But when someone remains in one of these high-impact roles too long—without the interest or potential to move into larger, more complex roles—it can hinder both individual growth and organizational performance. Here’s my one-page slide with guiding questions for managers to identify when high-impact development roles may benefit from talent rotation, ensuring the leadership pipeline flows effectively.

JOB CUTS AND LAYOFF TRACKER

Check out my tracker of announcements from a segment of organizations that have conducted job cuts and layoffs since the start of 2023.

A few job cuts announced this past week:

  • Hasbro (NASDAQ: HAS). The toy giant announced it’s cutting approximately 3% of its global workforce—roughly 150 positions—as part of a continued cost-cutting and restructuring strategy triggered by rising US tariffs on Chinese-made toys and prolonged demand challenges in its core toy segment.

  • Lululemon (NASDAQ: LULU). The Canada-based athleisure company is cutting 150 roles from its support centre team as part of an effort to streamline operations and improve efficiency.

  • Standard Chartered (LSE: STAN). The London-based bank has reportedly laid off around 80 employees in Singapore, primarily from its technology and operations teams, with roles being offshored to India.

 Click here to access all listed announcements.

CHIEF HR OFFICER MOVE OF THE WEEK

This past week, 10 new Chief HR Officer announcements were posted on CHROs on the Go, my subscription-based platform tracking movement in and out of the CHRO role. This week’s CHRO move of the week is:

  • Intuit Inc. (MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA) [NASDAQ: INTU]— a global technology platform with products such as TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma and Mailchimp—announced in it's FORM 8-K that Laura Fennell, the EVP and Chief People & Places Officer since August 2018, will move to a new role during a transition period effective July 31, 2025 through September 1, 2027. Caryl Hilliard, the current SVP of People & Places, will assume the role of Chief People & Places Officer, effective August 1, 2025. ​​

🔓️ Never miss another Chief HR Officer announcement!

CHROs on the Go has over 4,000 archived announcements in its database, with new announcements added daily!

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FROM ME ON LINKEDIN

Catch up on what you may have missed from me on LinkedIn:

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THE BEST OF MAY 2025

Did you miss the “Best of May ” issue of Talent Edge Weekly? If so, check out issue #299, which includes 18 of the most popular resources from the month.

Thank you to our sponsor, Draup, who sponsored the Best of May.

Download Draup’s report, AI-Driven Skills-Based Talent Architecture, and learn how organizations are unlocking the potential of their skills-based practices. 

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Talent Edge Weekly is written by Brian Heger, a human resources practitioner. You can connect with Brian on Linkedin and brianheger.com