Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #34

September 27, 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.

This week's Edge covers the following resources:

  1. What Talent Means in the Post-COVID-19 Workplace | World Economic Forum

  2. The New Shape of Work is Flexibility for All | Mercer

  3. What 12,000 Employees Have to Say About the Future of Remote Work | Boston Consulting Group 

  4. Voluntary Turnover Returns as COVID Recedes | Work Institute

  5. Report: Care to Do Better - Building Trust to Leave Your People and Your Business Net Better Off | Accenture

  6. Strategic Planning for Human Resources: Quick Guide | Gartner

  7. Workplace Policy Institute Report | WPI

If you enjoy content like this, you can access additional articles and resources 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.

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Have a great week 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

COVID-19 continues to force companies to reimagine how they invest in human capital and measure the return. In light of this effort, last month, I shared a 36-page report by Willis Towers Watson and World Economic Forum--Human Capital as an Asset: an Accounting Framework to Reset the Value of Talent. The report offered seven principles for enabling an organization’s board and management to track how their investment in people is augmenting the firm’s human capital and supporting the delivery of better outcomes for the business, the workforce, and the wider community. Attached here is a summarized version of the detailed report. In it, you will find the seven principles and a three-part framework that can help companies better understand how work and talent can create value in a post-COVID-19 workplace. The three parts include: 1) Assess the employee experience  2) Determine the value generated by all sources of work. 3) Assess the value of the workforce. Regarding #2 (value of work generated by all sources of work), organizations can apply this concept by “capturing the cost and productivity of all types of talent (e.g., employees, gig, outsourced) and automation on a like-for-like basis and using the resulting output to measure the value gained or The Return on Work.” Organizations can use the principles and framework to articulate ROI in human capital, just as it does on financial capital.

As employers consider longer-term remote working policies, many of them would benefit from expanding their perspective to include various forms of "flexibility" for "all" employees. As noted in this article, "flexibility in a post-COVID era will no longer be just an employee benefit or a perk limited to “proven” or tenured employees. It will no longer be contingent on a personal situation, life event, or manager approval. The future is shaped by organizations that embrace permanent flexibility for ALL employees to deliver value to both the business and the employee.|The article offers three questions that organizations can ask as they reset and reimagine flexibility at scale. 1) What flexibility is possible? Organizations can determine how different jobs can flex by assessing any role’s “flexibility quotient” against the five dimensions of flexibility: where, when, how, what, and who. 2) What flexibility is desirable? Since flexibility comes in different forms, organizations can understand what types of flexibility employees prefer and that are also achievable from a business perspective.  3) What flexibility is sustainable?  In order for a new model of flexibility to be sustainable, organizations must assess their readiness for supporting long-term flexibility at scale. To assess their readiness, firms can leverage Figure 2 (p.5), which provides nine critical questions to answer on permanent flexibility. The nine items are grouped by 1) foundation enablers - such as culture, 2) people programs, including benefits (e.g., understanding how benefits might differ for remote workers than their office peers) 3) infrastructure, such as digitalization (e.g., using technology to support new ways of working). The article provides several insights that can be leveraged for strategic discussions on this topic.

As organizations continue to optimize hybrid work models (remote and onsite), this research by BCG provides useful insights that organizations can use to shape their strategy in this area. The study uncovered four key factors critical to maintaining and improving productivity in hybrid remote/onsite and completely remote settings. One surprising finding of the research was that many respondents said they have maintained or even enhanced their productivity while working remotely during the pandemic. The four key factors that these respondents reported greater satisfaction in are 1) social connectivity  2) mental health  3) physical health, and  4) workplace tools (e.g., video conferencing, virtual whiteboards, project management software, etc.)  In other words, these four factors are enablers of optimizing productivity in a remote work environment. The report includes questions that employers can ask for each of the four areas, which can help determine tactics that enable productivity in this new environment. For example, for social connectivity: How do you foster a culture in which leaders see it as their responsibility to design and execute social-connectivity strategies and practices for their teams? Or for workplace tools: What role does the company play in either providing the physical tools and equipment needed to work from home, such as external monitors and ergonomic chairs, or compensating employees so that they can purchase them? Organizations can use these nine-questions to determine how they can enhance productivity regardless of when and where work is happening.

Despite being in a pandemic, recession, and faced with high unemployment, the latest voluntary quit (turnover) rate report shows nearly twice the amount of US employees quit their jobs in July 2020 than those who quit in April 2020. This short article points out that almost 3.4 million workers voluntarily left their jobs. What is unknown, however, is the reason why these workers voluntarily left. In some cases, it could be due to having to attend childcare or eldercare. Or, it could be that the pandemic made some workers realize that they wanted to pursue opportunities in which they found greater purpose and fulfillment. Regardless of the myriad possible reasons, it is an important reminder that organizations should strive to understand the sentiments of their workforce and how these perceptions can lead to actual turnover. Whenever I think of voluntary turnover, I am reminded of a quote from Leigh Branham's book, The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave: “Employee turnover is not an event — it is a process of disengagement that can take days, weeks, months or even years until the actual decision to leave occurs.” In the context of the pandemic, each day workers evaluate different aspects of their employment, organizational culture, and how they are treated by their organization, to name a few. These factors will eventually culminate in a worker's decision to stay with or leave an organization. Organizations should prioritize understanding the sentiments of their workforce and how these sentiments impact critical organizational outcomes, including employee retention. 

During a time at which organizations want to unlock more of their employees’ potential, increase trust, and drive business performance, this Accenture reports provides ideas for doing so. The research introduces a framework called Net Better Off that centers on six distinct and connected dimensions that leaders must focus on. A key finding shows that 64 percent of people’s potential at work, defined as using and developing skills each day, is influenced by whether they feel better off across the six dimensions. The six dimensions include: 1) Emotional and mental – Feeling positive emotions and maintaining mental wellness such as a sense of accomplishment, compassion, happiness, fulfillment, and optimism, 2) Relational – Feeling a strong sense of belonging and inclusion and having many strong personal relationships, 3) Physical –Being in good physical health and equipped to take on normal daily stress, 4) Financial – Being financially secure without undue economic stress or worry and having equitable opportunity for future economic stability and advancement; 5) Purposeful – Feeling that one makes a positive difference in the world and that life has meaning and a greater sense of purpose beyond oneself; and 6) Employable – Having marketable, in-demand capabilities and skills that make it easy to obtain good jobs and equitable career-advancement opportunities. Page 12 includes a question for each dimension that organizations can ask themselves. For example, for the Relational component - organizations can ask: How do we create a sense of belonging in virtual teams? How do we ensure every voice is being heard throughout the organization? Other ideas are discussed, including five "Sweet Spot" workforce practices (Figure 4 on p.17) that pay dividends for both individuals and the organization when taken together.

As senior leaders continue to reset business strategy amidst a quickly changing business environment, it has become increasingly evident that these plans need to be streamlined and have greater flexibility. Said differently, these plans will need to rely on "adaptive strategies that can flex with evolving conditions." And as many HR organizations are in the process of refining their plans for the remainder of 2020 and also for 2021, this Gartner resource offers four planning components that HR organizations can leverage as they develop agile plans. The components include: 1) identify a shortlist of metrics to describe the function’s target state, 2) document and monitor key assumptions, 3) identify key initiatives and milestones required to move to the end state, and 4) craft a succinct statement that captures the essence of the strategy. To make it easier to concisely capture each of the four elements, page 6 provides an editable template that can be used, and page 5 shows an example of a completed template. HR leaders and their teams can use this approach to distill strategic planning down to only the essential parts--which will enable a "clear, effective, measurable, and communicable plan."

According to a new report, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to change the way we work fundamentally, a new set of challenges is presented to companies. This 34-page report is broken into four sections, covering 1) job markets, 2) the changing nature of work, 3) lawsuits associated with COVID-19, and 4) a chapter on state and federal efforts to address the pandemic. While each chapter contains several insights, the changing nature of work section (chapter 2 beginning on p.13) has interesting elements--each of which brings new challenges. The issues discussed in this section include Changes to On-Site Work, Allure of Automation, and On-Demand Economy. Concerning the On-Demand Economy, the report indicates that The demand for certain gig economy services, such as food service delivery, increased significantly. As more permanent jobs disappear, more workers are expected to pivot to work as independent contractors. However, certain legislative efforts at the state and federal level might make this transition more difficult." Although the gig economy was already on the rise before the pandemic, its accelerated growth post-pandemic presents an opportunity to reinvent aspects of strategic workforce planning (SWP). And as many organizations will continue to want flexible work models and cost structures, the "borrow" component of most SWP frameworks (Build, Buy, Borrow, Bot) is likely to become a more utilized lever for many organizations. In what ways will your organization need to adjust its workforce plans to reflect contingent workers--or borrow-based strategies? How will these plans change based on different future scenarios that your organization might face (e.g., a decline in revenue, business growth in a particular geographic region, etc?)

OTHER RESOURCES

Book Recommendations on HR and business topics, such as:

Recommended Tools I use for my personal learning and productivity, such as two of this newsletter's affiliates:

  • Soundview Executive Books Summaries which provides 7-8 page PDF summaries, and audio summaries, on the newest ideas and strategies from the best business books. They offer both individual and corporate plans, which can be monthly or yearly. One free sample is available for download.

  • Audible, who offers a 30-day free trial where you will get two free audiobooks immediately. You get to keep the two free audiobooks even if you decide to not purchase a monthly or yearly Audible subscription.

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.

The following subscribers are in the HR job market:

  • Cathy Ellwood - is looking for roles at the Director and Sr. Director level in Talent Management, Talent Acquisition, Organization Development and/or Learning & Development. Cathy especially enjoys roles where she can lead in each of these areas, but it is open to leading just one. Fully relocatable (currently in St. Louis), with a first preference of Columbus, Ohio.

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

Brian