Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #51

January 31, 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

  • Why Modern HR Requires Rethinking the Old-school Employee Handbook | Fast Company

  • Fortune 500 Executives Tell Us What Their Post-Covid Workplaces Will Look Like | Great Place to Work®

  • 4 Ways Organization Design Can Enable the Hybrid Workplace | Human Resource Executive

  • Taking a Data-Driven Approach to Workforce Planning | myHRfuture 

  • 2021 Future of Leadership Global Executive Study: Leadership’s Digital Transformation | MIT Sloan Management Review and Cognizant

  • The Pandemic Has Derailed Women’s Careers and Livelihoods. Is America Giving Up on Them? | Fortune

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

For many organizations, the pandemic has placed a spotlight on the critical role of the HR function. And as the function continues to find ways to deliver value for its various stakeholders, this article by Lars Schmidt--who just released his book--Redefining HR, provides a few ideas. He explains how modern People and HR teams are transforming antiquated notions of what HR can be. One area where he sees an opportunity is in his statement: "We work so hard to find exceptional talent for our organizations. Why do we diminish their value and impact with unnecessarily burdensome and complicated processes and procedures?" He speaks of how there can be a tendency for HR to develop bureaucratic processes, policies, and programs that stifle employee innovation and impact. And while many HR organizations have come a long way from the "old school employee handbook," with another segment that is doing innovative and cutting edge work that delivers significant value, there is always an opportunity for us to evaluate and modify how we do things to deliver even greater value for stakeholders. To that end, this article provides a few ideas to consider.

As vaccinations get deployed and firms increasingly envision return-to-work plans, organizations are trying to gain more clarity on when and how they’ll reopen their office. To shed light on this topic, the Great Place Work conducted a recent survey with 79 executives from 56 Fortune 500 companies. A few findings include: 1) When leaders expect a return to the workplace.  52% (7-12 months); 30% (6 months); 13% (13-18 months); 1% (19-24 months). "Hospitality and retail leaders are likely to return sooner, with 78% anticipating a return within the next 6 months." 2) The extent to which the workforce will continue to work remotely full-time. 3 of 5 executives believe up to 25% of their workforce will continue to work remotely. Technology and financial services organizations anticipate the largest remote workforce after the pandemic, at 40% and 35% of their staff remaining remote, respectively. 3) Regarding the degree to which executives believe working from home has affected company culture and productivity. There are mixed perceptions; 50% say productivity was not impacted; 30% believe teams were more productive; 20% say there were mixed impacts on productivity across teams and business units. Other results are provided as well as a few suggestions on actions that can support a successful return to the office.

As remote work becomes more common-place, more firms are likely to adopt a hybrid workforce model in a post-pandemic world. And while the degree to which those models get employed will vary by organization and industry, many firms continue to identify ways to enable and optimize a hybrid workforce model. This article suggests that organizational design (structure, workflows and role design, and networks) provides one source to help operationalize a hybrid model. For example, "a shift to a hybrid workforce is an opportunity to reevaluate roles and the organizational structure that underpins them, rather than only considering which preexisting roles and structures can be done remotely." One interesting idea offered is to increase work location flexibility by shifting to an outcome-based organizing principle. Such an approach shapes the coordination of work by grouping employees and resources into departments, based on "outcomes" to be achieved vs. a "task-based" organizing principle, which groups people doing the same tasks (e.g., marketing, finance, IT). The outcome-based structure model could potentially open up hybrid opportunities for more employees. While moving to a hybrid model is not an easy task, the article offers a few ideas with which firms can experiment. In case you missed it, here is a previous post I made on an article by MIT Sloan Management, Four Principles to Ensure Hybrid Work Is Productive Work.

Workforce planning (WP) as a practice has been underway for over two decades. And while many legacy WP practices have focused heavily or exclusively on role-based WP, business environments of frequent change and disruption (like the one we are now in) have led many firms to embrace a skills-based approach to WP. This article provides a good overview of WP, including leveraging data sources to drive skills-based WP. It suggests that firms can use several data sources for this purpose, such as Recruitment data (resumes, cover letters, assessments, etc.). Career history data: (role titles, job descriptions, project descriptions, awards won, etc.) Learning & Development data: (courses completed, development objectives, etc.). Performance data: (objectives, appraisals, peer feedback, etc.) External data: (professional networking sites, professional publications, patents, blogs, etc.). In terms of how firms can use these data sources to draw skills inferences about their workforce--in an agile and scalable way-- I have been encouraged by developments in artificial intelligence (AI) platforms that infer these skills based on the aforementioned sources. The article discusses other ideas such as scenario planning and the three major types of WP: 1) tactical, 2)operational, and 3) strategic.

Digital forces continue to disrupt and transform every business sector. And with this disruption having far-reaching implications for how leaders lead, this 23-page report explains how digitally savvy workers' expectations are reframing leadership challenges as traditional boundaries collapse. The study, which is based on a global survey of nearly 4,300 employees, from non-managers to CEOs in more than 20 industries, suggests that many global business leaders are out of touch with what it takes to lead in the digital economy effectively. As noted in the report, “for quite a few respondents, top management’s focus on greater agility and efficiency seemed disconnected from enterprise purpose and values. Leaders frequently came off as unaware of how their digital communications style undermined their credibility. Digital talent and digital networks have made leadership more transparent, and this study observes that transparency imposes new accountability and responsibility on top management.” The study reveals 1) Organizations are not offering workers the sense of purpose they crave. 2) Organizations with a clear purpose outperform their peers when it comes to diversity and inclusion practices. 3) Leaders are also failing to invest in and develop their digital competencies. 4) Most companies fail to address the erosion of work/home boundaries adequately. Page 14 provides practical and actionable recommendations for successfully leading in a heightened digital environment.  

I have shared several posts regarding the pandemic's impact on many working women and their careers. One of these posts was a 63-report in October by LeanIn. org, Women in the Workplace study, that showed that one in four women was considering downshifting (working in a reduced capacity) their careers or leaving the workforce due to the pandemic. In this more recent Forbes article, the authors note how "the pandemic has set working women back by more than three decades—to levels of labor force participation last seen in 1988." More specifically, 5.4 million women's jobs have gone since last February—55% of all net U.S. job losses in that time period. Almost 2.1 million women "vanished from the paid labor force entirely." By September, three working mothers were unemployed for every father who had lost his job. Moreover, in December, the U.S. economy shed a net 140,000 jobs, the first such downturn since April; jobs lost by women account for that number's entirety. Simultaneously, the gender-wage gap is expected to continue, and a Payscale study found that women often incur a pay penalty on returning to work after a prolonged absence—earning 7 percent less on average than men in the same position. While it will take more than short-term fixes to address these serious issues, I am reposting a Great Place to Work and Maven report on various practices firms employ to support working parents (many of whom are women) impacted during this time. 

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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