Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #48

January 10, 2021

Welcome to this week’s issue of Talent Edge Weekly—the weekly newsletter for human resources practitioners, bringing together insights about work, the workplace, and the workforce from various sources.

If you find value in this issue or any of its resources, please share them with your network by using the social media icons at the top of the newsletter.

Have a great week, and I look forward to sharing more ideas in next week’s Edge!

Brian 

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 CONTENT

  • 2021 HR Trends Report | McLean & Company 

  • Study: Parents at the Best Places to Work ™ | Great Place to Work™ and Maven

  • Six Ways Your Office Will Be Different in 2021 | The Washington Post 

  • Creating Long-Term Value through Human Capital Management and Disclosure | The Conference Board

  • 5 Key Actions for CHROs on Building a Resilient and Responsive Organization | Gartner 

  • Realizing the Full Potential of AI in the Workplace: Designing Human-machine Collaboration for a Better Future of Work | Deloitte Insights

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

The events of 2020 have fundamentally changed how organizations operate in every imaginable way. As HR organizations help their firms and workforces manage and excel in this new context, this 47-page report provides trends and practices that will reshape HR in 2021 and beyond. These four megatrends include 1) Diversity, equity, & inclusion (DEI) is at the forefront of the conversation. 2) HR's role as a strategic partner increases organizational performance. 3) Remote work redefines the office of 2021 and beyond. 4) Digital transformation accelerates. One perspective I have on digital transformation (which leverages digital technologies to improve the way we do business) is that the conversation needs to expand beyond the technology. While technology is a crucial component, digital transformation is about people and culture since it changes how people work and interact, and what is required of them. HR practitioners play a critical role in ensuring that digitalization is not just about technology by raising questions, such as: How will our operating model and underlying structures change due to the digital enhancements? What will be the impact on the skills required of employees and leaders? Do we have the talent we need to operate in this new environment? HR practitioners who surface and help answer questions like these can enable the successful execution of their firms' digital transformation.

The challenges experienced by working parents during the pandemic have been covered extensively over the past several months. And as the conversation continues to shift from articulating the challenges to finding practical solutions to help working parents, many firms can benefit from understanding the practices of organizations whose support for working parents (and caregivers) has stood out during this unprecedented time. This 34-page report is based on a joint study between Great Place to Work® and Maven, the world's largest virtual clinic for women's and family health. It represents the largest-ever study of working parents, with more than 440,000 parents surveyed at 1,244 U.S. companies. A few of the practices these companies have employed to support working parents and reduce their "burnout" include: 1) Providing academic support: Supporting kids' education through tutors, referrals, college coaches, homework assistance, learning pods, and other academic support. 2) Easing financial worries through "no layoff" commitments and early raises and bonuses. Pages 18 and 19 show other examples. Here is an additional link to the Great Place to Work's Best Workplaces for Parents™ 2020 list, which recognizes the 100 companies whose support for parents has stood out. Topping the list are 1) Cisco, 2) Hilton, and 3) Comcast NBCUniversal. 

Although the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is still underway, "return-to-office" planning has gained heightened attention as vaccinations get increasingly distributed. As firms contemplate what the office's future will look like in a post-COVID-19 world, this article provides six predictions on how things will be different in 2021. They include 1) As recruiting and remote work go national, some salary ranges will too. 2) Video chats will get smarter — and, potentially, creepier — thanks to artificial intelligence. 3) The new "hybrid" workplace will have more time constraints than you think. 4) The social bubble will come to the office. 5) Many employers will ask if workers have been vaccinated — even if they don't require it. 6) Part-time arrangements will make a comeback. Regarding #1, it will be interesting to see how firms answer: * Do salaries need to be adjusted for cost-of-living (COL) differences as workers move out of high COL areas? * As talent becomes more of a national marketplace, will we take more of a "national approach” about pay decisions? * Or, will it be a mix of both? Willis Towers Watson survey data show that 26% of respondents said they would base compensation on remote workers’ location. Although these are complex decisions involving multiple variables, firms' should consider & answer these questions as part of their talent strategy.

Over the past several months, I have shared resources regarding The Security Exchange Commission's (SEC) requirement for public companies to disclose aspects of their human capital management (HCM) in their upcoming annual reports. These resources range from 1) a webinar by Mercer, 2) an article from Visier, and most recently, last week, 3) an article by Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, which examined the HCM themes of the first fifty 10-Ks filed. As I continue to get requests for additional resources on this topic, I wanted to share this excellent 23-page report that was just published by the Conference Board. The report provides several insights that guide senior executives and others responsible for developing, executing, and disclosing companies' HCM strategies. It also offers suggestions on the critical roles that the board of directors can play in HCM, and how firms can effectively communicate and disclose HCM to various stakeholders. Pages 14 and 15 cover a list of HCM information relevant to a company's performance and which boards may be interested, such as workforce capability, diversity, and employee experience. Page 17 provides a few company examples of recent HCM disclosures. For those of you who are members of the Conference Board, they also have an online toolkit with resources that can help guide firms' on their approach to HCM disclosures. 

The pandemic has underscored the need for organizations to withstand and adapt to unforeseen disruption. And as this need has come into sharper focus, many firms have prioritized agility and resilience as an organizational capability. In this 26-page report, five actions are provided to help CHROs and their teams build these capabilities within their firms. They include: 1) Take a dynamic approach to reskilling, 2) Find talent that generates business impact, 3) Redesign work to enable employees to be more responsive, 4) Leverage hybrid workforce models, 5) Adopt agile principles into HR projects and operating models. One immediate action that HR can take is #5, adopting agile principles into HR projects and operating models. As noted on page 22, a few ways this can happen is: 1) select project teams based on insight into the end-user problem instead of subject matter expertise, 2) use short, iterative project cycles instead of predetermined project plans, 3) co-create with end-users throughout, not at the beginning and end, 4) manage HR’s work as an evolving investment portfolio rather than as a set agenda. With this as the backdrop, I offer a call to action: a) at an upcoming HR team meeting, have the team develop 3-5 principles that enable agile HR in support of the firm's business priorities, b) apply those principles to how 2021 HR priorities can be executed c) as priorities get implemented, have ongoing conversations about the extent to which the principles have manifested as behaviors and ways of working; make adjustments in real-time. 

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on work and the workforce has been covered widely. And while the discourse has focused mainly on how AI will "replace" the work of humans', it has increasingly shifted to how humans and machines can function collaboratively. This trend presents an opportunity for firms to reimagine how work and jobs can be designed to help humans complete tasks more efficiently and/or better, create more value for customers, and foster more meaningful work for people. This in-depth article provides ideas on how the promise of human-machine interaction can be realized. It includes practical examples such as customer service roles and chatbots, and radiologists and algorithms that interpret medical images. Although it is tempting for firms to want to roll-out new technologies to leverage AI quickly, it is prudent to make these decisions more deliberately. One place to start is reframing and redesigning work in ways that enable humans and machines to "complement each other's strengths and counterbalance each other's limitations." Such an approach can deliver greater value to customers, shareholders, workers, and society overall. 

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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OUR RESOURCE LINEUP

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​Talent Edge Weekly is a free weekly newsletter that brings together the best talent and strategic human resources insights from various sources. It is published every Sunday at 6PM EST.