Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #31

September 06, 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.

Please note that Talent Edge Weekly is now published every Sunday instead of Saturday.

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

  • Stocking Up on Talent | SHRM | Roy Maurer

  • Managing Cost-of-Living Differences for Pay in a Remote World | HR Executive Online

  • The Postgenerational Workforce: From Millennials to Perennials | Deloitte

  • The Total Talent Management Playbook | Randstad

  • How Well Do You Manage Your "Portfolio” of Organization Effectiveness (HR) Initiatives? | Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, & Alan Todd | LinkedIn

  • The 21 Metrics You Need for Strategic Workforce Development (aka Workforce Planning) | AIHR Analytics

  • Webinar: Strategic Workforce Planning Amid COVID-19 | Deloitte and Anaplan

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

If you find this issue to be of value, please share the newsletter link or any of its articles with your social media networks. To share an article summary, you can click the “share” icon located below the summary.

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 every Sunday.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone--and for those of you who observe Labor Day--have a wonderful holiday weekend. Brian

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

Despite the economic hardships of COVID-19, there is a segment of organizations (even those who haven't experienced growth during the pandemic) that are proactively investing in talent acquisition and focused on hiring. For these organizations, the pandemic is an opportunity to assess their talent needs and build relationships with workers from hard-hit industries who are suddenly looking for work. This article highlights how the pandemic has given organizations unprecedented access to an expanding talent pool. Aside from it being a "buyers market," there are other factors that have broadened the available talent pool, such as  1) greater receptivity to remote work at scale is helping to remove (or at least shorten) geographic obstacles to attracting talent, 2) many workers have spent time during the pandemic reevaluating what they want from work, life, and their careers--and are more receptive to new opportunities, 3) due to travel restrictions and the greater use of video communications, organizations can more easily engage and build relationships with candidates 4) organizations are increasingly shifting from role-based recruiting and focusing more on transferable skills that go beyond boxes on an organizational chart--thereby expanding their talent pool. Regardless of an organization's specific situation, in general, it is a good time for talent acquisition teams to build relationships with both active and passive candidates for future opportunities, especially in areas that organizations are expecting to have an increased need for in 12 to 36 months. 

As the number of remote jobs increases, many employers are increasingly able to recruit skilled candidates from anywhere. Not only does this enable organizations to gain access to a deeper pool of talent, it can also help them to attract and employ diverse candidates. While these are a few of the positives that have emerged from the pandemic's many negatives, it has also forced organizations to rethink pay variation based on geography. As pointed out in this short article, fundamental questions have surfaced: Do salaries need to be adjusted for cost-of-living differences? Should someone living in Iowa, for example, earn the same salary for performing the same remote job as someone living in New York? And while some companies pay a globally universal salary, others apply a 'cost of living' differentiator-- a coefficient determined by the cost of living in a particular place. This factor is applied to the base salary for a position, usually determined by a range of other factors such as experience, team, position, and education. Given this approach, by default, you end up with different pay for the same job. Although this debate isn't new, it will now become a more significant part of the conversation due to remote work at scale. Organizations will need to determine how they will approach this topic, factoring in several variables such as role criticality, supply and demand of skills required, and their overall talent philosophy, to name a few. 

Understanding generational differences in the workplace have been a topic of interest for many years. However, "with careers becoming more dynamic and complex, generation—or any single attribute—is of limited value in understanding the workforce." This fact raises whether traditional workforce segmentation approaches, anchored in generation, should remain the focus of future workforce strategies. This article provides an in-depth view of how various insights into generational differences are becoming less relevant to understand the workforce. It posits that developing talent strategies to meet workers’ needs will require a deeper understanding of workers’ individual expectations. Such an approach entails gaining complex insights into the workforce on their interests, values, preferences, and opinions. For example, MetLife identifies five factors that organizations should consider in workforce segmentation: 1) Demographics such as age, gender, income, education, and life events, 2) Firmographics such as job tenure, company size, industry, role, and blue vs. white collar, 3) Attitudes toward life such as optimism toward the future, future vs. present orientation, orientation toward change, and sources of pleasure/stress 4) Attitudes toward work such as work-life balance, attitudes toward retirement, and motivations for staying at the job. 5) Needs from employer such as career development support, salary, benefits, work culture, and work subject matter. By applying this "consumer marketing insights and data analytics" approach to understanding their workforce , organizations can avoid the trap of oversimplifying a complex and multifaceted topic. Other ideas are discussed. 

As the rate of change and uncertainty in many organizations continues to accelerate, many firms recognize the importance of agile and flexible talent management approaches. This 34-page resource guide provides insights on the concept of Total Talent Management (TTM)-- an approach that integrates the full range of talent sources - from traditional full-time employees to the various contingent workers with whom an organization works. It is based on a strategy that applies multiple resources to achieve the desired outcome, each from a different engagement and capability model. This holistic approach to talent management can accelerate an organization's ability to respond to shifting market conditions with the right expertise and skills. While there are several insights in this report, a few pages to point to are: a) p.12 includes a TTM maturity diagnostic that organizations can use to quickly determine the extent to which they employ TTM , b) p.18 provides a decision tree for determining how different TTM solutions can meet specific talent needs. In case you missed it, I made a post several months ago based on an article by Dave Ulrich titled, From Workforce to Worktask Planning. In the article, Dave offers a 7-step model for breaking work down into specific tasks or activities. The model helps identify which tasks require strategic, creative, and unique solutions that are more likely to be done by full-time employees who become a strategic differentiation source. For the remaining tasks, organizations can use their other TTM channels to deliver the work.

As pointed out in this article, HR's effectiveness is primarily determined by the value it delivers to key stakeholders both inside (employees, business strategy) and outside (customers, investors, communities) the organization. This value is delivered through 1) insights and initiatives (programs, processes, practices) that enable individual competence (workforce, talent, people), 2)  organization capabilities  (workplace, culture, and process), and 3) leadership at all levels. These factors collectively establish a portfolio of various initiatives and can be used to help guide the allocation of resources (time, energy, money) to key organization effectiveness priorities. The article offers a few ideas and illustrations on the portfolio concept and can help leaders organize and evaluate the impact of various initiatives on organizational effectiveness. You can also learn more about this free tool--Organization Guidance System (OGS)--through the article. As a separate resource, I am including a reference by Gartner titled, Prioritizing HR Cost Optimization Initiatives. This resource can help CHROs and their teams to evaluate HR initiatives against eight criteria 1) strategic relevance, 2) cost savings and productivity gains, 3) business impact, 4) impact on employee experience, 5) investment requirement, 6) time requirement, 7) HR service delivery risk and 8) stakeholder buy-in) that enable cost reduction without comprising value. 

I continue to get requests to share resources that I come across on various workforce metrics. This article provides a list of metrics that are useful for Strategic Workforce Development (SWD)--otherwise known as workforce planning. And while the 21 metrics aren't all inclusive, it provides a solid list. The article states that once an organization develops its multi-year business strategy, it is useful to understand (metrics and insights) about workforce segments that disproportionately enable that strategy. These metrics range from Internal Mobility Rate (number of people that move in and out of the target group from or to the organization) to Yearly Count of Failed Hires (number of new recruits who leave the organization within a year). For each of the 21 metrics, a definition is included as well as a statement on why the metric is important. Which of these metrics does your organization currently capture? What are other metrics that you would add, particularly given the many ways in which work, the workplace, and workforce are changing?

THE SOUND OF INSIGHT

While this 45- minute webinar was conducted at the beginning of the summer, it provides useful insights on workforce planning that can be employed during the pandemic and beyond. The discussion covers some of the factors that are creating challenges to workforce planning, such as technology disruption, shifts in the labor market, continued rise of the contingent workforce, the aging workforce, changes in employment preferences, and changing nature of careers, to name a few. Tactics for overcoming a few of the challenges are discussed. Please note that there were some technical difficulties at the beginning of the webinar, so you will want to go right to the 3 minute and 15-second mark of the webinar to get to the start of the discussion. 

OTHER RESOURCES

Book Recommendations on HR and business topics. Examples:

Recommended Tools I use for my personal learning and productivity.

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

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.

  • Scott Hall - is looking for an Analytics leadership position in a diverse array of areas (HR, Industrial Engineering, Logistics/Supply Chain, Workforce Mgmt.,Workforce Planning). Thoroughly adept with Excel, Tableau, and other data analytics and visualization tools. Virtual position, greater central FL, or hybrid travel position.

  • 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.

SHARE YOUR IDEAS

While I try to read as much as I can and share resources and ideas that I believe would be of value to readers, there is only so much that one person can possibly uncover! This is where I ask for your active contribution to this newsletter.

If you have an article, report, or resource that you recommend, please send me an email at [email protected]. I would love to review it and potentially share it in a future newsletter.

And, if you have any ideas or suggestions on how this newsletter can be improved or deliver greater value (including topics you would like to see covered), please send me a note with your suggestions.

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!

Brian