Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #38

October 25, 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. Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce | Harvard Business Review

  2. If Women Drop Out of the Labor Force, Corporate Effectiveness Will Suffer | Wall Street Journal 

  3. Microsoft's New Remote Work Policy: Embracing Flexibility | The Official Microsoft Blog

  4. Future of Recruiting: 6 Predictions on How COVID-19 Will Transform Hiring | LinkedIn Talent Blog

  5. One Potential Pandemic Upside: Performance Reviews are Getting Simpler | The Washington Post 

  6. Nine Dimensions for Excellence in People Analytics | myHRfuture

  7. Webinar: How Work is Transforming in the COVID Era | ADP & Josh Bersin

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

The benefits of the gig workforce--also referred to as the contingent workforce--have been well established over the past few years. These benefits range from making hiring easier for hard-to-fill jobs, access to short-supply skills, and more flexible cost structures. And although the number of "gig" workers continues to increase, as does the digital platforms to engage this workforce segment, the ways these workers are hired is often done in an ad-hoc and "transactional" manner versus strategic talent management. If firms are to engage with the on-demand workforce at a strategic level, this article argues that they will need to focus on overcoming five main challenges, two of which include: 1) Reorganizing work into components. Rather than being vague about work, firms need to break work down into rigorously defined components that can easily be transitioned to gig workers. 2) Rewiring organizational policies and processes. Many internal mechanisms and processes for engaging gig workers can be laborious and have unnecessary steps. If companies want to work successfully with digital talent platforms, they need new structures and processes that enable this work rather than present roadblocks. As organizations overcome these five challenges, they can accelerate their ability to leverage the gig workforce in executing business strategy in an agile, cost-effective manner. 

Covid-19 continues to force many women to leave or consider leaving their jobs. As mentioned in my recent post on Lean In's and McKinsey's Women in The Workplace 2020 report, 1-in-4 women is considering downshifting (working in a reduced capacity) their careers or leaving the workforce due to the pandemic. In a new study by Fidelity Investments, nearly 4-in-10 working women (39%) are actively considering leaving the workforce or reducing their hours due to increased remote schooling and caregiving responsibilities. Also, in the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) monthly jobs report, nearly 80% of the 1.1 million workers who dropped out of the workforce in September were women. Although the impact of women leaving the workforce will have several implications for years to come, this Wall Street Journal article emphasizes the impact this trend will have on company performance. Based on an analysis of over 600 largely publicly traded companies, the article highlights how firms in the highest quartile in each of five performance categories (customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength) have a far greater concentration of top women executives than those in the lowest quartile. The article notes, "all of this suggests that companies would be wise to reach out to the women who work for them and find more ways to be supportive during this difficult time. Otherwise, the leaks in the talent pipeline may flood every dimension of corporate performance." Please note that you may need a WSJ subscription to access the article. 

As the pandemic continues, many HR leaders find themselves creating guidelines and policies for remote work and flexible work arrangements. Earlier this month, Microsoft EVP and Chief People Officer, Kathleen Hogan, provided guidance to its employees via the attached memo, stating: "moving forward, it is our goal to offer as much flexibility as possible to support individual work styles, while balancing business needs and ensuring we live our culture." The company clarified that flexibility encompasses three components. 1) Worksite (the physical space where you work, e.g., office, center, home, mobile): 2) Work hours (the hours and days when employees work, e.g., workday start and end times, full- or part-time) and 3) Work location (the geographic location where you work, e.g., city and country). Other reports I have read suggest that Microsoft will allow most of its employees to work from home indefinitely. Employees who choose to work remotely permanently won't have assigned office spaces but will have access to flexible "touchdown space" at Microsoft's offices. Also, most employees will be allowed to work from home regularly, as long as that time doesn't exceed half of their workweek. CHROs can use the attached memo as a reference for crafting their guidance to their workforce. 

While recruiting functions have always had a difficult job, the role has gotten more challenging amidst a new set of circumstances accelerated by the pandemic. To help manage through these challenges, this Linked In (LI) article--based on insights from survey responses and interviews with over 1,500 talent professionals and data from LI's proprietary platform-- provides six predictions about the future of recruiting. The predictions range from "virtually recruiting remote workers is the new norm" to "your employer brand will hinge on empathy and actions." In particular, one prediction has the potential to transform recruiting practices in many organizations: Recruiting will hire less, build, and borrow more. As firms move away from "static jobs in siloed departments and toward project-based cross-functional work, where employees will shift to new projects as business needs change" employers will find themselves tapping into their internal talent marketplace to meet talent needs with speed and flexibility. This practice will also require a strong partnership with L&D functions to ensure upskilling and reskilling of internal talent. Other ideas are discussed.

The coronavirus crisis continues to compel organizations to reimagine their talent practices for a new world of work. One talent practice that continues to undergo change is performance management (PM). These changes range from postponing performance reviews, eliminating them for a specific timeframe, resetting goals to reflect a shorter-term time horizon with less aggressive goals, and more frequent performance check-in discussions, to name a few. This article cites a few examples of how companies such as Goldman Sachs, Box, and Anheuser-Busch InBev are altering their PM, with a central goal of making PM less complex. And while simplicity should be a goal of any process (and hopefully PM does become simpler), it should not be the only goal. As such, firms would benefit from applying multiple factors and criteria as they consider changes to their PM. Such an approach can help prevent or minimize unintended consequences of decisions based heavily or exclusively on any single factor. Here is an article by Marc Effron (Talent Strategy Group) that I posted earlier this year and outlines how firms can handle PM in an unprecedented year. It helps organizations use criteria to make PM decisions that fit their situation rather than just adopt what other companies are doing.

People analytics (PA) as a discipline continues to evolve at a breakneck speed as organizations seek to leverage the power of data to make better, faster business decisions. As PA functions evolve, many of them are exploring questions such as: How can I improve my impact? How can I create more value? What should I focus on? In answering these questions, the Insight222 Nine Dimensions for Excellence in People Analytics looks at nine dimensions, grouped into three categories. 1) Building foundations - revolve around having the right elements in place upfront to enable success in the future, before the work becomes too complex. This dimension includes things like governance, methodologies, and stakeholders. 2) Managing Resources- that are needed to develop solutions and deliver impact from PA and include people (skills), technology, and data. 3) Delivering value by impacting workforce experience, business outcomes, and culture. PA functions can use this framework to evaluate their current state and develop plans to evolve. In case you missed it, you can check out my summary of McKinsey's recent article, How to Be Great at People Analytics, which provides six best-in-class practices of PA functions.

THE SOUND OF INSIGHT

In this 75 minute webinar conducted on October 21, 2020, Josh Bersin and a panel of senior HR executives discuss how work has transformed over the past months due to the pandemic and the actions that organizations are taking to enable the needed change. For those of you who found value in the report that I shared last week from IBM and Josh Bersin Academy, Accelerating the Journey to HR 3.0: Ten Ways To Transform In a Time of Upheaval, you will see that at the 19:30 mark of the video, Josh talks about the top 10 HR practices (that enable HR 3.0) that were identified in the report. Please note that you will need to provide a name, email, and some other information to access the webinar, which takes fewer than 30 seconds to complete. After intros and housekeeping items, the conversation starts around the 4-minute mark.

OTHER RESOURCES

Book Recommendations on HR and business topics, such as:

People Analytics

Learning and Development ROI and Analytics

Strategic Workforce Planning

Performance Management

Employee Surveys

Upskilling

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:

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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