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- Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #351
Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #351
The talent strategy of rehiring former employees, ensuring critical roles are occupied by top talent, career stall points, strategic workforce planning and scenario planning, and change fatigue.
Brian Heger
June 14, 2026
SPONSORED BY
Welcome to this new issue of Talent Edge Weekly!
First, a shout-out to Zoe Winsey-Thomas, Head of Talent Management at bp, for referring new subscribers to Talent Edge Weekly. Thank you, Zoe, for your support of this newsletter!
PRESENTED BY Draup
Most enterprises are running AI on an organizational structure it was never designed for. That is easy to overlook early on. Over time, it becomes one of the costliest problems a leadership team can inherit.
Draup's latest research gives HR, strategy, and operations leaders a clear framework for getting ahead of it:
What AI actually does to organizational structure and reporting lines
How leading enterprises are sourcing capability beyond the traditional build-buy-borrow model
Where to place AI leadership so it drives real strategic value
How to keep humans in the loop without slowing the organization down
What the financial return on getting organizational design right actually looks like
The findings draw on research from IBM, PwC, Deloitte, Gartner, and McKinsey, mapped to decisions you can act on today.
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.
HR Monitor 2026 | McKinsey | A new 44-page report with benchmark insights on workforce planning, employee development, and talent acquisition, among other topics. I expand on building proactive external talent pipelines.
Are Your Critical Roles Occupied by Your Top Talent? | Brian Heger | My cheat sheet offers five factors for evaluating whether a critical role is staffed with the talent needed to deliver its full value.
Sidetracked: The Hidden Crisis in Mid-Career Mobility | Burning Glass Institute & NYU School of Professional Studies | A new 41-page report finding that 24.2% of mid-career professionals are stalled— 5 or more years with no meaningful promotion. I zoom in on how lateral moves can help.
Strategic Workforce Planning and Scenario Planning Worksheet | Brian Heger | My one-page worksheet for thinking through workforce planning responses to different scenarios.
When Employees Are Drowning in Change | MIT Sloan Management Review | Outlines three suggestions for managing change more effectively. I build on the one related to sequencing change based on employees’ capacity.
Also, check out my job cuts tracker & Chief HR Officer move of the week, which is an excerpt from my CHROs on the Go platform.
⬇️ Now let’s dive in.
👉️ P.S. - If you are part of my private community for internal HR practitioners, Talent Edge Circle, this is a reminder that thought leader Adam Gibson will be joining us on Wed, 6/17 for a 90-minute discussion on agile workforce planning. See you then!
THIS WEEK'S EDGE
TALENT TRENDS
A new 44-page report with benchmark insights on workforce planning, employee development, and talent acquisition, among other topics. I expand on building proactive external talent pipelines.
This past week, McKinsey released its HR Monitor, an annual benchmark survey on the biggest global workforce and HR trends. The 44-page report covers topics such as workforce planning, talent acquisition, employee development, and employee experience. One section I want to zoom in on is the talent acquisition chapter, which emphasizes building proactive pipelines through active relationship management with passive candidates, strong referral programs, and reengaging prior "runner-up" candidates. An often-overlooked pipeline source I would add is former employees. Although not every former employee makes sense to re-recruit, some high performers who voluntarily left may want to return after realizing their new role and/or culture was not the right fit. And research supports the case for rehiring. A study in the Academy of Management Journal found former employees often outperform new hires in roles requiring relational skills and coordination, while research in Organization Science shows returning employees tend to help colleagues more than external hires. Is rehiring part of your talent strategy? As you think through your strategy, consider a Visier analysis that found the average time away before returning is 13 months (up to 36), but likelihood drops sharply after 16, making 13 to 16 months the critical window. Don't let that window close. These are the types of strategic discussions we have in my private community, Talent Edge Circle.
TALENT MANAGEMENT
My cheat sheet offers five factors for evaluating whether a critical role is staffed with the talent needed to deliver its full value.
In last week's issue of Talent Edge Weekly, I shared my cheat sheet for evaluating six factors that can signal risk in an organization’s critical roles. These roles, which may represent roughly 20% of total roles, have a disproportionate impact on business strategy execution. The intent is to jumpstart discussions that help organizations proactively identify risks and turn those insights into actions that protect performance and strengthen talent advantage. One factor I presented is top talent risk, where a critical role is not occupied by the best available talent. This risk can signal an opportunity to strengthen organizational performance by ensuring the role is staffed with the talent needed to deliver its full value. To help make this determination, I’m sharing another cheat sheet that considers five factors, including performance results, such as whether the person is delivering what the role requires, and internal benchmarking, such as whether someone internal could perform the role significantly better. The cheat sheet also includes why each factor matters, probing questions, and indicators. These are examples, and you can use your judgment to determine the criteria that best fit your organization.
INTERNAL MOBILITY
A new 41-page report finding that 24.2% of mid-career professionals are stalled— 5 or more years with no meaningful promotion. I zoom in on how lateral moves can help.
Internal mobility (IM) is a critical talent management strategy. However, IM is often viewed though a narrow lens of upward movement, such as job promotions and hierarchical progression. Lateral moves, or transitions into roles at a similar level across functions, teams, or disciplines, are often seen differently. Employees may view them as a career setback, while managers may treat them as a fallback when promotion opportunities are limited. A new report from the Burning Glass Institute and NYU School of Professional Studies challenges that view. Drawing on over 1.3 million career histories, it finds that 24.2% of mid-career professionals are “stalled,” defined as five or more years with no meaningful promotion and negligible wage growth. The report notes that warning signs of a stall are often visible as early as the 10-year career mark. For HR and talent practitioners, this creates an opportunity to utilize data and analytics to identify employees showing early signs of a career stall and offer lateral development moves (which also helps supply work demand) before disengagement and attrition sets in. One example in the report: a stalled IT worker who pivots into an adjacent, lateral data science role can see their stall risk drop by 86%. My takeaway: organizations need to better position and market lateral moves as a deliberate and valuable development strategy that have significant benefits to employees, managers, and leaders. This report provides a useful starting point for beginning to craft that message.
WORKFORCE AND SCENARIO PLANNING
My one-page worksheet for thinking through workforce planning responses to different scenarios.
Strategic workforce planning (SWP) consistently ranks among the talent practices with the largest gap between importance and capability. One contributing factor is that workforce plans are often built on a single expected scenario, which can make it harder to respond when business conditions shift. Scenario planning (SP), the practice of anticipating and preparing for plausible future business conditions, can help close this gap. While SP is best enabled by technology, data, and analytics, even a high-level discussion is a strong starting point. My worksheet covers three elements: 1) a Base Scenario, the scenario your organization expects and its workforce implications; 2) at least one Alternative Scenario, a plausible different scenario informed by your organization’s strategic business planning process; and 3) the Triggers that signal the alternative scenario is more likely to happen, along with the workforce plan changes you would make. As I noted in a 2019 People + Strategy article, one reason the SWP gap persists is that organizations wait for perfect technology and analytics before acting. This cheat sheet helps you get started. Even directional insights put you in a better position than having no view at all. For members of my Talent Edge Circle community, this will also be a timely lead-in to our 90-minute discussion this Wednesday, 6/17, with thought leader Adam Gibson on agile workforce planning.
CHANGE ENABLEMENT
Outlines three suggestions for managing change more effectively. I build on the one related to sequencing change based on employees’ capacity.
As organizations implement new technologies, AI tools, team restructurings, and other organizational changes, change fatigue has become a growing concern for HR and business leaders. Change fatigue happens when the volume and pace of change outpaces what employees can realistically absorb. Prosci's 2023 Best Practices in Change Management Report found that the average organization is managing five major change initiatives at any given time. Many are juggling 10 or more once smaller projects and process changes are factored in. A new MIT Sloan Management Review article adds important context: research cited in the piece finds that employees can realistically absorb only one or two major changes per year, yet leaders are planning three or four by 2027. Most organizations don't fail at change because they are doing too much. They fail because they are not intentional about the cumulative changes occurring at the same time. The article outlines three suggestions for managing change more effectively, including sequencing change with people's capacity in mind. With this as the backdrop, I am resharing my one-page template that provides space to capture current and proposed changes, priority level, degree of impact, timing, risks, and recommended action. It gives leaders a practical starting point for aligning the pace of change with what employees can realistically handle.
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