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- Talent Edge Weekly - Issue 349 - Best of May 2026
Talent Edge Weekly - Issue 349 - Best of May 2026
The top 15 articles and resources—plus bonus resources—from the May 2026 issues of Talent Edge Weekly.
Brian Heger
May 31, 2026
SPONSORED BY
Welcome to this special Best of May issue of Talent Edge Weekly!
A shout-out to Kanika Bhatia, Talent Director at GSK, for referring new subscribers to Talent Edge Weekly. Thank you, Kanika, for your support of this newsletter!
PRESENTED BY Draup
Most enterprises treat skilling as a training initiative. The companies pulling ahead in the AI era have done something different. They have built skilling into the operating model itself.
Draup's latest paper breaks down exactly how leading companies—such as Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, and Schneider Electric—are making this shift, drawing from 10 interlocking principles.
The paper also includes a seven-point leadership agenda showing why shared ownership across the CEO, CHRO, CTO, and business unit heads is what unlocks skilling programs that actually scale.
THIS MONTH’S CONTENT
This Best of May issue includes the 15 most popular resources from the May issues of Talent Edge Weekly. They span three sections:
HR Impact and Chief HR Outlook. How HR creates stakeholder value, linking HR results to business outcomes, and Chief People Officer sentiment on global labor market conditions.
Talent Practices. Performance management and assessing potential, redesigning entry-level jobs, skills-based profiles for +30 roles, AI fluency as a skill, unlocking workforce capacity, and strategic workforce planning.
AI and the Future of Work. Factors that unlock AI's business value, AI's reshaping of corporate functions, assessing AI's near-term impact on jobs, and research on AI's impact on the future of work.
There are bonus resources, such as information about company layoffs and movement in and out of the Chief HR Officer role.
Talent Edge Circle
My Private Community for Internal HR
If you’re an internal HR practitioner who wants to go deeper with me and other internal HR practitioners on talent topics tied to your most critical priorities, learn about my private community, Talent Edge Circle.
👉️ And if you want more open access resources, you can get them here on my website at brianheger.com
Let’s dive in.
THIS MONTH’S EDGE
I. HR IMPACT & CHIEF HR OFFICER OUTLOOK
How HR creates stakeholder value, linking HR results to business outcomes, and Chief People Officer sentiment on global labor market conditions.
HR CREATING STAKEHOLDER VALUE
The Age of HR: Delivering Stakeholder Value Through Strategic Organizational Capability: Talent, Leadership, and Culture | Edited by Anthony Nyberg, Rebecca Kehoe, Dave Ulrich, and Patrick Wright
A new open-access 338-page ebook across 61 chapters featuring 85 global thought leaders on how HR can create stakeholder value.
The field of HR has grown immensely, not only in terms of the value it creates for stakeholders, but also in the sheer number of areas within its remit. That volume and complexity can make it challenging to connect HR's work in an integrated way, which is why frameworks that cluster the work around a few vital capability areas are so useful. This new open-access Ebook, edited by Anthony Nyberg, Rebecca Kehoe, Dave Ulrich, and Patrick Wright, does exactly that: helping HR practitioners think more strategically about how HR creates value for employees, customers, investors, and communities. Organized around four human capability domains (talent, leadership, organization, and the HR function), it brings together 85 global thought leaders in the HR space and includes 61 chapters spanning seven themes: business context, business agenda, talent, leadership and organization, culture, the HR function, and personal growth for HR leaders. It covers everything from succession planning and workforce analytics to culture as competitive advantage, the CHRO as business leader, building organizations ready for agentic AI, and so much more. A special thanks to all contributors who helped bring this excellent resource to the field. And for those in my private community for internal HR practitioners, Talent Edge Circle, I'm looking forward to Dave Ulrich joining us in July for a discussion on creating stakeholder value through talent, leadership, organization, and the HR function.
HR IMPACT
My slide that can help HR leaders and their teams reflect on mid-year accomplishments and assess whether the work underway is connected to the business outcomes that matter most.
As we enter June, HR teams may be reflecting on what they have accomplished so far this year and how those accomplishments are creating value for the organization and the stakeholders they serve. It is also a good time to reflect on the work ahead, where we are relative to achieving our objectives, and to determine any adjustments needed to set ourselves up for success in the second half. To help HR leaders and their teams pause and reflect at this point in the year, I am sharing a one-page slide I originally created for year-end to organize accomplishments by the business outcomes they enabled. While I tend to use it toward year-end, I also find it a useful ongoing tool for checking whether what we are working on is connecting to real business outcomes. I am sharing it here for those who want to reflect now, reset, and use it as a springboard for the work ahead. The slide shows an example of how HR results can be linked to five business outcomes (Revenue Growth, Profitability and Margin Improvement, Operational Efficiency, Customer Satisfaction and Experience, and Strategic Agility and Speed to Market) but you can easily adapt it to focus on the outcomes most relevant to your context. As a bonus, I am resharing my additional one-page slide, Framing Talent Initiatives in Business Context, which helps shift the narrative from "here is the HR initiative" to "here is the business problem we are solving/opportunity to unlock, why it matters, and what is at stake if we wait or do not act." Both slides are excerpts from additional resources in my private community, Talent Edge Circle.
CHIEF HR OFFICER OUTLOOK
A new 19-page report tracks Chief People Officer sentiment on global labor market conditions across three areas.
The World Economic Forum released its updated Chief People Officers' (CPO) Outlook, a report that tracks shifts in sentiment on global labor market conditions by regularly surveying short-term expectations around talent availability and job creation among CPOs. The May 2026 edition (based on a survey of more than 140 global CPOs between January and March 2026) covers three areas: 1) an appraisal of global and regional labor market sentiment, 2) current workforce strategy trends with a particular focus on AI deployment, and 3) the workforce impact of increased geopolitical and geoeconomic fragmentation. One finding is that while half of the surveyed CPOs expect talent availability in their industry to improve over the next 12 months, there is significant variation across geographic regions, with stronger talent availability expectations in East Asia, China, and Europe, and more cautious outlooks in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America. When CPOs were asked which workforce and talent planning actions they will prioritize in the next 6–12 months in response to geoeconomic disruption, strengthening local talent pools through internal mobility and rapid redeployment capabilities ranked first, cited by 50% of respondents; this is one signal that organizations are increasingly looking at ways to redeploy internal talent more effectively rather than depending on an uncertain and uneven external labor market. With this in mind, I am resharing three of my cheat sheets designed to strengthen internal mobility. You can get all three of them in the Best of April 2026 issue of Talent Edge Weekly. See resource 9.
II. TALENT PRACTICES
Performance management and assessing potential, redesigning entry-level jobs, skills-based profiles for +30 roles, AI fluency as a skill, unlocking workforce capacity, and strategic workforce planning.
PERFORMANCE AND POTENTIAL
Marc Effron provides a review of performance management and assessing potential, along with specific actions to strengthen each.
Two talent practices that enable business strategy execution are performance management (PM) and organizational talent reviews (OTR). On one hand, PM ensures strategy gets translated into the right goals at the right levels and executed with accountability. On the other, OTR identifies those with the greatest potential to take on bigger or more complex roles and puts the right development in place to accelerate their readiness. A new article by Marc Effron offers a candid assessment of both. Among the various insights, two I want to highlight. First, while PM can serve many purposes (development, engagement, compensation decisions), it can only do one thing really well. When PM tries to solve multiple purposes at once, it tends to serve none of them well. Second, on assessing potential, decades of research show consistent findings about high-potentials demonstrated capabilities (e.g. cognitive ability, learning velocity), just grouped and expressed in slightly different language by different firms. As Marc notes, since the science on potential is well established, the bigger challenge for most organizations is often the execution (e.g., developing identified talent, holding managers accountable for their growth) rather than the potential model itself. For those in my private community, Talent Edge Circle, you can access two of our separate discussion replays in our resource library: one we had with with Marc on PM and one with Allan Church, Ph.D. on assessing potential. And as a bonus, here is one of my cheat sheets on talent reviews.
PERFORMANCE AND DEVELOPMENT
My cheat sheet with 9 scenarios that can undermine performance, along with tactics to identify and address each.
Recently, while backing my car out of a narrow parking space in a shopping center, I checked my mirrors and thought I had a clear view. But just as I began to move, someone walked behind my car. Fortunately, my vehicle's safety system alerted me in time. It was a reminder of how easily we can overlook something nearby, simply because we’re unaware it’s there, even when we think we’re paying attention. The same thing happens in organizations. We can miss critical issues or behaviors that are right in front of us simply because they fall outside our awareness. In the workplace, blind spots can undermine performance, relationships, and career growth if not recognized and addressed early. These scenarios can vary by context, such as being a first-time manager, being a new hire in an organization, shifting from an operational to a strategic role, or returning to a role after a career break. To help, here's my one-page cheat sheet with nine example scenarios where blind spots often emerge, early warning signs they may be present, and a sample tactic to address each. As you review it, consider asking a colleague, boss, or direct report: What's one thing you think I'm unaware of in how I work or lead that, if improved, could significantly and positively impact my own performance and that of my team? The answer may uncover a hidden opportunity to accelerate your growth, fuel team performance, and create stakeholder value.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND AI
A new article argues that most organizations are using AI to produce more polished versions of the same flawed performance reviews rather than to fix the underlying information quality problem.
AI continues to influence how organizations implement various talent practices, including performance management (PM). However, a new HBR article by Boston University professor Chris Dellarocas suggests many may be scaling the wrong application of AI in PM. While companies like Citi, JPMorgan, and BCG have deployed AI to streamline performance reviews (with some reportedly cutting review-writing time by 40%), the author argues these are writing-efficiency tools that produce faster versions of the same flawed evaluations. The better use of AI is to surface direct evidence of performance, including decisions, problems solved, collaborators influenced, and contributions to team outcomes. The article offers three suggestions for making this shift. As HR practitioners think through practical implementation and implications, a few questions to consider: Has our organization developed a clear strategy for how, if at all, AI will be used in PM? What traditional PM problems would an AI-based solution help solve? Where will AI not play a role in PM? What evidence are we using to make these decisions? What risks could emerge, and how will we mitigate them? These are just a few of many questions that will need to be considered. For those of you in my private community for internal HR practitioners, Talent Edge Circle, you can catch the replay of our recent discussion with Dr. Anna Tavis, Clinical Professor and Chair of the Human Capital Management Department at NYU School of Professional Studies, and author of The Digital Coaching Revolution, where we discussed how organizations are using AI-enabled digital coaching to develop employees at scale.
ENTRY-LEVEL JOBS AND AI
Amy C. Edmondson and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic share four tactics for redesigning entry-level jobs rather than eliminating them.
A few weeks ago, I shared the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI’s 2026 AI Index Report, one of the most comprehensive annual reports on the state of AI. While there was much to unpack in the 400+ page report, one finding I highlighted was that early-career workers in AI-exposed roles, such as software development and customer support, have experienced meaningful employment declines, while mid-career and senior workers in those same roles have held steady or grown. This matters because entry-level roles help people build the tacit knowledge, judgment, and leadership capabilities that senior roles eventually require. Organizations that automate away entry-level positions without rethinking early-career talent strategies may find their leadership pipelines weakening in the years ahead. In a new article, Amy C. Edmondson and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argue that the smarter path is to redesign entry-level jobs rather than eliminate them. They offer four tactics, including building critical thinking alongside AI use. One example they cite is banking, where junior analysts participate in “red teaming” exercises that require them to challenge AI outputs for incorrect assumptions, missing data, and logical flaws, and then defend their critique to senior colleagues. Amy and Tomas also cite research in Science showing that novices who accept AI outputs uncritically can perform worse than those who reason through problems themselves, reinforcing why building the capability to question AI outputs early matters. Do you have a strategy for redesigning your organization’s entry-level roles before the pipeline gap shows up in your leadership bench?
SKILLS
An open-access library of 30 employer-validated skill profiles co-created by organizations such as Walmart, Microsoft, Bank of America, and Accenture.
As HR practitioners help their organizations navigate the evolving skill demands across roles, this updated open-access resource includes employer-validated skill profiles for 30 roles representing 35 million U.S. workers. It was developed through the Skills-First Working Group, consisting of practitioners from organizations such as Walmart, Microsoft, Bank of America, Accenture, and others. Roles range from Project Management Specialists and Data Scientists to Financial Analysts and Software Developers. Each profile includes: 1) top skills for the role, 2) skill definitions describing how each skill is used in that specific role, 3) market trends showing which skills are rising or declining in demand, and what skills earn a premium in the market, and 4) proficiency standards defining what basic, intermediate, and advanced mastery look like. Clicking on any individual skill within a profile reveals more detail. For example, within the HR Specialist profile, HRIS skill demand has grown 31.8% over five years, Succession Planning carries an 18.4% wage premium, and Full-Cycle Recruitment has declined 15.4%. As a bonus, I'm including the Skills-First Implementation Playbook, published in September 2025, which provides the foundation for the updated skill taxonomy. For those in my private community, Talent Edge Circle, you can check out the replay (in our private platform) of our discussion with Ravin Jesuthasan on skills-based talent practices.
AI FLUENCY AS A SKILL
A recent article by Tracy St. Dic, Global Head of Talent at Zapier, shares the company's V2 AI Fluency Rubric, offering a framework for defining and assessing AI fluency.
In resource 8 of this issue, I shared an open-access resource of employer-validated skill profiles for 30 roles, ranging from Project Management Specialists to Data Scientists. It’s from The Burning Glass Institute and developed through the Skills-First Working Group, including practitioners from Walmart, Microsoft, and others. Each profile includes: 1) top skills for the role, 2) skill definitions describing how each skill is used in that specific role, 3) market trends showing which skills are rising or declining in demand, and what skills earn a premium in the market, and 4) proficiency standards. Building on the theme of skills, here is another practical resource that addresses one of the most pressing skill-building challenges organizations are facing right now: AI fluency. The resource is Zapier's V2 AI Fluency Rubric, recently published by Zapier's Global Head of Talent, Tracy St. Dic. It offers HR practitioners practical ideas for defining and assessing AI fluency across their workforce, mapping it across four components: 1) Mindset: how someone approaches AI as a tool for their work; 2) Strategy: how they identify opportunities to apply it; 3) Building: whether they have developed repeatable systems rather than relying on one-off prompts; and 4) Accountability: whether someone critically evaluates AI outputs and takes ownership of the results. Thirteen functional-specific examples across Engineering, HR, Finance, Marketing, and other functions are provided, making it easier to apply to different roles.
WORKFORCE PLANNING
I share how SWP gaps show up in two costly ways: overhiring and premature AI-driven layoffs. I reshare an HBS tool to help assess how vulnerable specific jobs are to AI replacement versus augmentation.
Strategic workforce planning (SWP) is consistently rated a top HR priority among HR practitioners. Yet it also carries one of the largest gaps between importance and capability. I recently shared BCG's and WFPMA analysis of 28 workforce practices, which found SWP ranked fourth in terms of that gap, meaning organizations know it matters but have not built the muscle to do it well. That gap shows up in predictable ways. One of the most common is overhiring, in which organizations miscalculate how many people they need, and when workforce supply outpaces demand, resort to layoffs only to begin rehiring when demand returns. I recently addressed this cycle with my post and cheat sheet featuring eight questions to evaluate whether a vacant role needs to be backfilled. Another symptom is premature AI-driven layoffs, where roles are eliminated to fund AI investments before organizations fully understand how work is changing, what can be automated versus augmented, or which human capabilities will still be needed. Without that clarity, workforce decisions risk being undone at significant cost. Gartner predicts that by 2027, half of companies that cut staff due to AI will rehire for similar functions, often under different job titles. To help bring more clarity to these decisions, I am resharing an interactive HBS Working Knowledge tool that lets you gauge how vulnerable a job is to AI replacement versus augmentation. Use the dropdown filters by job category or keyword to see where occupations land on the spectrum, a useful starting point for more informed workforce planning.
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