PRESENTED BY

Welcome to this special Best of December issue of Talent Edge Weekly!

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THIS MONTH’S CONTENT

The Best of December issue includes the most popular resources from the December issues of Talent Edge Weekly, AND resources that are useful for this time of year. The 11 resources are:

• Talent Strategy Mix: 12 Examples of Tactics | Brian Heger

• 8 Questions to Determine If a Vacant Role Needs to be Filled | Brian Heger

• Linking HR Results to the Business Outcomes They Support | Brian Heger

• Framing Talent Initiatives Within the Business Context | Brian Heger

• New Economy Skills: Unlocking the Human Advantage | World Economic Forum

• A Faster Way to Build Future Scenarios | MIT Sloan Management Review

• Agentic AI Isn’t Just Joining the Workforce. It’s Reshaping how Organizations Plan for It | Deloitte Insights

• The Essential Guide to Agentic AI: How to Compete in an Autonomous Future | IBM Institute for Business Value

• New Research on AI and Fairness in Hiring | Harvard Business Review

• Is Your Succession Plan Just a List of Names on a Page? Five Signs, Indicators, and Fixes | Brian Heger

• Performance Calibration Discussions: 10 Questions to Help Managers Reflect on Employees’ Year-End Performance | Brian Heger

This issue has many bonus resources, including information about layoffs and Chief HR Officer hires and promotions during December.

Since this special issue contains a large amount of content, it may get cut off by some email providers. If you prefer, you can read it online.  

I hope you enjoy this issue, and I appreciate your readership of Talent Edge Weekly.

🎉 Wishing you a happy and healthy 2026, and I look forward to continuing to share ideas, practices, and resources in the new year!

TALENT STRATEGY

Talent Strategy Mix: 12 Examples of Tactics | Brian Heger

My cheat sheet with 12 talent tactics that help organizations determine when each approach works well, when it doesn’t, and examples of them in practice.

Every organization has a talent strategy to enable its business strategy. However, determining the right mix of talent tactics can be challenging, given the range of options, including hiring, outsourcing, internal movement, and upskilling. While each tactic has advantages, the most effective strategies usually combine multiple approaches. To help evaluate which combination may work best, my one-page sheet summarizes 12 example tactics, outlining what each entails, when it works well or not, and real-world examples. For instance, upskilling, which enhances existing or adjacent skills, works well when roles are evolving, employees have a solid foundation, and business needs can be met through targeted development. It is less effective when foundational skills are lacking or a rapid transformation is required. A practical example is a bank introducing digital literacy programs for frontline staff to adapt to new financial tech. Redeployment, which assigns employees to priority roles, is effective when urgent business shifts require internal agility and employees possess transferable skills aligned with emerging needs. It is less effective when there is a poor skill match or a high risk of disrupting critical teams. An example of redeployment is a retail brand redeploying store managers into e-commerce fulfillment roles during a digital transition. Although there is more to talent strategy than what appears on my cheat sheet, this resource offers a helpful starting point for evaluating options and facilitating discussions.

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TALENT ACQUISITION

8 Questions to Determine If a Vacant Role Needs to be Filled | Brian Heger

My cheat sheet with questions to help leaders decide whether to backfill vacant roles, reducing the costly cycle of overhiring.

Hiring talent is a crucial part of an organization’s talent strategy. However, managers often default to talent acquisition (hiring more people) as a reactive response to meet work demand. As I’ve tracked thousands of layoffs through my layoff tracker, a common theme emerges: many organizations cite “overhiring” as a reason for workforce reductions, resulting in costly cycles of hiring, layoffs, and rehiring. Although better workforce planning and talent forecasting can help minimize the likelihood of overhiring, another important practice is to be intentional about whether a role truly needs to be backfilled when it becomes vacant. Rather than automatically replacing someone, leaders and talent partners can ask sharper questions, such as “Has the business context changed since the role was created?” and “How likely is this role to remain vital over the next two years?” to guide a more informed decision. To help facilitate these discussions, my one-page cheat sheet offers eight questions to spark deeper evaluation and better hiring choices. As AI reshapes how work gets done, questions like these can help reduce the cycle of overhiring and the job cuts that often follow. And with 2026 just a few days away, now is an ideal moment to step back, reassess open roles, and determine which ones truly need to be filled and which ones warrant a different solution.

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HR’S BUSINESS IMPACT

Linking HR Results to the Business Outcomes They Support | Brian Heger

An excerpt slide from my private Talent Edge Circle community that shows an example of how year-end HR results contribute to various business outcomes.

As many HR leaders and their teams begin summarizing the outcomes they delivered this year, it is impactful to organize accomplishments by the business results they enabled rather than simply listing activities completed. One approach is to start with the business outcome of greatest importance and use a few reflection questions to surface the accomplishments that best demonstrate impact. For example, if Revenue Growth is a priority (e.g., increasing income through higher sales, customer acquisition, or market expansion), you might ask: How did our talent practices strengthen the capabilities of revenue-impacting teams? Where did workforce decisions (hiring, development, mobility) support growth priorities? How did we ensure the right people were in the right roles to enable expansion? These are simply starting points that you can adjust to your context. And while Revenue Growth is one example, the same approach can be applied to outcomes such as Profitability and Margin Improvement, Operational Efficiency, Customer Experience and Satisfaction, and Strategic Agility and Organizational Adaptability, among others. To make this easier to put into practice, I’m sharing an excerpt slide from my private community, Talent Edge Circle. The slide shows a full example linked to all five business outcomes.

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HR IN BUSINESS CONTEXT

Framing Talent Initiatives and Objectives Within the Business Context | Brian Heger

My one-page slide with an example of framing HR initiatives in the context of the business and the business problems they address.

With the start of the new year just a few days ahead, HR teams are developing, refining, and prioritizing the initiatives that will help create stakeholder value in the months to come. While there are many ways to determine which HR efforts can unlock the greatest value, one effective approach is anchoring those initiatives in the real business problems they are intended to solve. To support this, I am sharing an excerpt slide from a broader deck I developed for the Talent Edge Circle. The example focuses on workforce planning and includes the business problem being addressed, supporting stats that reinforce the issue, a high-level talent solution, and a final section that highlights the cost of waiting or not acting now. This last component is especially important, as it is often overlooked when presenting to executive teams. Not taking action is still a decision, and it carries risks. Making those risks clear up front helps articulate the downside of inaction and strengthens the case for moving forward. I also recommend including a second slide with a high-level, phased implementation plan, which helps translate the proposal into clear next steps. Talent Edge Circle members received this additional slide in the full deck.

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SKILLS

New Economy Skills: Unlocking the Human Advantage | World Economic Forum

A new 39-page white paper provides guidance on skills that should be prioritized to ensure organizations have the talent to deliver on innovation, resilience, and growth priorities.

This new 39-page white paper provides guidance on the skills organizations should prioritize to ensure they have the talent needed to deliver on innovation, resilience, and growth priorities. As the first installment in a broader series, it focuses on human-centric skills—uniquely human capabilities such as collaboration, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence that enable effective interaction, problem-solving, and decision-making. While AI adoption continues to rise, these human skills remain essential for driving innovation and adaptability. The paper covers everything from the supply and demand of human-centric skills, with a breakdown by industry and geographic region, to tactics for developing, assessing, and credentialing these capabilities. One section beginning on page 30 includes seven case studies showing how organizations are embedding human-centric skills at scale. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) uses AI-powered simulations to help learners practice customer conversations and strengthen their problem-solving skills. PwC uses verified digital credentials to recognize behaviors like inclusive leadership. Udemy offers adaptive AI role plays that help learners rehearse difficult conversations and build confidence. Together, these examples show how organizations are scaling the development of human-centric skills in an AI-enabled world.

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SCENARIO PLANNING & AI

A Faster Way to Build Future Scenarios | MIT Sloan Management Review

A new article offers a streamlined approach to scenario planning that leverages AI to navigate future uncertainties more efficiently.

I’ve made several posts about how scenario planning (SP), which involves envisioning and planning for multiple futures an organization might face, is a critical tool for workforce and talent planning. One of my cheat sheets helps HR and business leaders align workforce plans with potential business scenarios. That said, SP can be hard to execute in practice, often requiring significant time, coordination, and expertise. A new MIT Sloan Management Review article shares ideas on how organizations can apply accelerated SP, including using AI as a brainstorming partner. One useful insight is how two companies, Fazer and Unum Ltd., have put these concepts into action. Fazer, a Nordic fast-moving consumer goods company, used this approach to identify a small set of critical assumptions related to climate change and the availability of key raw materials across its portfolio, including confectionery, bakery and breakfast products, plant-based drinks, and other food innovations. It then used AI to deepen research on environmental trends and turn workshop insights into scenarios that helped leaders rethink strategy, operations, and talent needs across different futures. While AI can speed up scenario creation and analysis, effective SP still depends on leaders’ judgment to assess plausibility and apply insights to talent and workforce decisions. Blending both approaches can provide a strategic advantage.

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WORKFORCE PLANNING & AGENTIC AI

Agentic AI Isn’t Just Joining the Workforce. It’s Reshaping how Organizations Plan for It | Deloitte Insights

Explores how agentic AI can transform workforce planning into an adaptive, real-time discipline that helps organizations respond more effectively to changing workforce needs.

Strategic workforce planning (SWP) remains a top priority, yet surveys continue to show gaps in SWP capabilities. While there are many reasons for this gap (including six I’ve previously highlighted), one reinforced in a recent Deloitte article is that SWP remains a static, annual exercise. When SWP is tied to an annual calendar instead of evolving business needs, organizations risk misalignment between talent supply and demand and slower responses to changing conditions. The Deloitte article shows how agentic AI can help shift SWP from static to dynamic by sensing workforce signals, forecasting demand and supply, and supporting more agile decisions. One illustration comes from health care, where AI agents can detect demand spikes (such as seasonal flu surges or public health emergencies); sense talent supply changes (including attrition signals and mobility patterns); assess workforce capacity (by gathering real-time data on clinician workloads); match clinicians to patient needs (based on licensure, specialty, location, capacity, and historical performance); forecast future staffing needs (using historical, demographic data); monitor clinician well-being (by identifying early signs of stress or fatigue and triggering interventions); and support ongoing learning (by offering personalized training and managing certifications). The article also outlines key practices organizations can take to position themselves for an agentic future.

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AGENTIC AI

The Essential Guide to Agentic AI: How to Compete in an Autonomous Future | IBM Institute for Business Value

A new 30-page report that explores three essential components for scaling agentic AI and making it a performance enabler for the business.

As AI agents evolve from passive tools to active collaborators, they are reshaping how work gets done, who does it, and how teams are structured. Scaling this capability across an organization, however, is complex and requires careful consideration. This 30-page report outlines three essential components for scaling agentic AI and turning it into a true performance enabler: 1) the chassis, or the strategic technical framework, which provides a secure and open foundation connecting agents, models, and systems enterprise-wide to support orchestration, interoperability, and scalability; 2) the fuel, or the high-quality, well-governed data streams that power adaptive decision-making through integration, accessibility, and real-time flow across the enterprise; and 3) the powertrain, or the human–AI collaboration that converts potential into measurable outcomes by aligning actions to KPIs and embedding accountability. The report explores each component in depth, and starting on page 21, introduces an Action Guide designed to help put these ideas into practice. For example, to enable continuous data flow to and among agents, one recommended action is to conduct a quick audit of your data governance framework to identify bottlenecks that slow access to high-quality data and pinpoint the high-impact data sources most critical to agent decision-making. Other ideas are discussed. As a bonus, I am resharing two McKinsey reports: 1) The Agentic Organization: Contours of the Next Paradigm for the AI Era, and 2) Agents, Robots, and Us: Skill Partnerships in the Age of AI. 

Read the IBM report

HIRING & AI

New Research on AI and Fairness in Hiring | Harvard Business Review

Drawing on a study published this year in the Journal of Management Studies, the authors have released a new HBR article that provides a shorter, practitioner-focused look at AI-based hiring practices and their implications.

In August 2025, the article “Is There Fairness in AI?" was published in the Journal of Management Studies to examine how AI-based hiring practices might lead to fairer hiring practices. The authors have now released a shorter, practitioner-focused version of that research in a new HBR article. The research draws on a three-year field study of a global consumer-goods company processing more than 10,000 job applicants per year. It examines how AI-based hiring systems support more objective hiring practices. To reduce hiring bias, the organization replaced resume reviews with blinded, gamified assessments analyzed by AI and trained the algorithm on current employees’ game data linked to performance outcomes. While this increased consistency, the study found that one definition of fairness—standardization and uniform rules—became hard-coded into the system, deprioritizing managers’ local judgment about role requirements, labor markets, and team needs. Fixed thresholds automatically advanced or rejected candidates, and deviations from the model were framed as breaking the rules rather than as exercising judgment that might otherwise account for regional talent shortages, known candidates (such as interns or project contributors) whose capabilities exceeded what assessments captured, and other contextual factors. The authors also provide questions to help organizations better leverage AI-enabled hiring tools while preserving human and contextual judgment. Both versions of the article are worth reading to understand the study’s limitations and implications.

Read the HBR article

SUCCESSION PLANNING

Is Your Succession Plan Just a List of Names on a Page? 5 Signs, Indicators, and Fixes | Brian Heger

My cheat sheet highlights five signs that succession plans may not be providing practical value, along with a few suggestions for addressing these challenges.

Many organizations invest heavily in succession planning, yet surveys consistently show that these plans often become static grids of names that don’t meaningfully influence talent decisions or development. In this one-page cheat sheet, I highlight five signs that an organization’s succession plans may be “just names on a page” rather than practical, implementable plans. The cheat sheet includes sample indicators to help identify whether any of the five challenges exist, along with an example step to help address them. One challenge is that succession plans are updated only during formal succession planning cycles. When this happens, plans tend to reflect process calendars rather than current business realities, increasing the need for off-cycle updates. One way to address this is to define business trigger events, such as strategy shifts, organizational restructuring, or significant changes in company size or scale, that would prompt a reevaluation of succession plans. To support this, I am resharing another one of my cheat sheets that outlines nine sample trigger events that prompt an off-cycle reevaluation of succession plans. Use the five-signs succession planning cheat sheet to facilitate discussion, assess whether any of these challenges exist, and identify practical action steps to address them. Even addressing just one of these challenges can make succession plans more relevant. For more on succession, SuccessionHR is hosting a webinar on 1/21/26.

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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Performance Calibration Discussions: 10 Questions to Help Managers Reflect on Employees’ Year-End Performance | Brian Heger

My cheat with questions to help managers prepare for performance calibration discussions and drive more objective, consistent evaluations.

As the year comes to an end, many organizations are preparing for year-end performance evaluations. These evaluations are often supported by performance calibration discussions, where managers come together to ensure greater consistency and objectivity in performance evaluations. They aim to promote fairness by addressing discrepancies between “tough graders,” who hold employees to exceptionally high standards, and “easy graders,” who offer overly generous evaluations. When done well, calibration discussions lead to more accurate and credible performance differentiation. To help managers prepare, I’ve created a one-pager featuring 10 sample questions. They range from Goal Achievement—“What were the employee’s most significant accomplishments during the performance period?”—to Obstacle Navigation—“What were the most significant obstacles this employee faced, and how did they overcome them?” and Impact on Team Performance—“In what ways has the employee positively influenced the performance of others?” While I’ve provided 10 example questions, not all of them need to be answered. Draw from the ones that you find most useful. And if ongoing performance check-ins and feedback occurred all year, this reflection simply culminates those conversations into a representative view of performance.

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JOB CUTS AND LAYOFF TRACKER

Here is my tracker, which includes announcements from a segment of organizations that have announced job cuts and layoffs since the start of 2023.

A few firms that announced job cuts in December include:

• Elanco Animal Health Incorporated (NYSE: ELAN). The global animal health company announced a restructuring that will affect 600 positions across the company, with half of those roles eliminated and the remainder shifted to other areas or locations.

• Intercept Pharmaceuticals. (NASDAQ: ICPT). The New Jersey–based drugmaker disclosed plans to lay off 146 employees in phases, beginning December 31, after withdrawing its commercial drug, Ocaliva, from the U.S. market.  

• Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC). The global marketing and communications company said it will cut more than 4,000 jobs and shut down several agency brands following its $13.5 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group.

• UBS Group AG (NYSE: UBS). The Swiss multinational bank is reportedly planning to cut up to 10,000 additional jobs by 2027 as part of its ongoing integration of Credit Suisse, which UBS acquired in 2023.

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CHIEF HR OFFICER MOVEMENT

During December, 67 new announcements were posted on CHROs on the Go, my subscription-based platform tracking movement in and out of the CHRO role. Subscriptions are for monthly or yearly plans. A few headlines are below:

• Andersen Corporation (BAYPORT, MINNESOTA)—a manufacturer of America's most trusted brand of windows and doors—announced the appointment of Laura Watterson as Chief Human Resources Officer. She joins Andersen from CWT, formerly Carlson Wagonlit Travel, where she served as EVP, CHRO for the last four years.

• Chanel (LONDON, ENGLAND)—a world leader in creating, manufacturing, and distributing luxury products—announced that Elisabetta Caldera has been named Global Chief People and Organization Officer. Caldera joins from Aegon, where she spent more than four years as Global Chief HR Officer.

• DaVita (DENVER, COLORADO) [NYSE: DVA]—a leading provider of kidney care services—announced the promotion of Stephanie Hendrickson as Chief People Officer. Hendrickson previously served at DaVita from 2013 to 2018 and returned to the company in 2023, most recently serving as Group VP of Operations.

• PODS Enterprises (CLEARWATER, FLORIDA)—an industry leader that revolutionized the moving and storage category through its portable container service offerings—announced that Lisa Goettel, SVP of HR, will retire effective January 2, 2026, after 18 years of service to the company, and that Laureen Druker has been promoted to CHRO, effective the same date. Druker has been with PODS since September 2014, most recently serving as VP of HR Operations.

Get all of the detailed 67 announcements from my CHROs on the Go subscription and gain immediate access to +4500 (and growing) CHRO announcements, including hires, promotions, resignations, and board appointments.

If you are already a subscriber to CHROs on the Go, log in here.

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