Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #52

February 07, 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 CEO Priorities Study: Find Your Essential | IBM Institute for Business Value | The report is one of the most extensive CEO studies with findings such as empowering remote work was noted by CEOs as their top concern more frequently than anything else. 

  • Work From Home Has the Power to Advance Equality—or Set It Back | Bloomberg Business Week | Discusses how employers that ignore potential pitfalls of remote work could inadvertently intensify office biases.

  • Collaborative Strategic Planning in an Uncertain World | MIT Technology Review Insights Report | Explores how firms worldwide conduct cross-enterprise strategic planning. Includes a segment on workforce planning and scenario planning. 

  • Upskilling Your People: Getting Started with Skill Data | Degreed Blog | Outlines how firms can leverage four sources of workforce skills data to gain insights about the skills within their workforce.

  • HR Competencies for 2025 – A Future Standard | AIHR Digital | Covers four essential HR capabilities needed to become a future-ready T-shaped (both depth and breadth) HR professional. 

  • Webcast: What Issues Are Top of Mind for HR Leaders Heading into 2021? | Cornell Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CARHS) | 30-minute webcast that shares the results of a recent CAHRS survey that asked HR leaders to share their top priorities for 2021.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

This report reflects one of the most extensive Chief Executive Officer (CEO) research projects ever and polled 3,000 CEOs across 26 industries in nearly 50 countries regarding their 2021 priorities. The 56-page report is replete with insights, including that empowering remote work became the No. 1 strategic priority for CEOs–ranking above virtual customer engagement, supply-chain continuity, and even cost reduction. More than half of outperforming company CEOs (those who were in the top 20 percent for revenue growth of those surveyed) said that managing a remote “anywhere” workforce is a top leadership challenge over the next few years. Seventy-seven percent of outperforming company CEOs surveyed also report that they are prioritizing employee well-being even if it affects near-term profitability. These results suggest that surveyed leaders from top organizations heavily focus on their people. This increased focus will likely call for upgraded leadership capabilities--presenting implications for leadership development. As noted in the report, CEOs should continually examine five questions that help them find their essential priorities: 1) What is our essential strategy? 2) What is our essential technology? 3) Who is our essential workforce? 4) Who are our essential leaders? 5) What are our essential risks?

The remote-work (RW) trend continues to prompt discussion on the extent to which RW will decline in a post-pandemic world. And while RW will be limited in many cases (e.g., over half the workforce has limited or no opportunities to work remotely), various data points suggest that there will be a segment of workers and firms for which this work arrangement will be employed on a larger scale. As firms think about their RW plans, this article highlights how RW can inadvertently impede diversity initiatives and intensify office biases if not managed carefully. It notes that "those who tend to work in remote-friendly fields are more likely to be White and Asian, higher-paid, and more educated," --suggesting that it opens opportunities for select groups. Another concern is that RW can widen inequality by reducing opportunities to network, get sponsors and mentors, and land assignments that lead to promotions. And if women disproportionately work remotely over men, as one example, RW could exacerbate bias towards women – where an "out of sight out mind" mentality takes hold. Firms will need to consider these factors to realize RW's potential while minimizing risks.

As organizations reset and adjust business strategies, they are increasingly relying on cross-enterprise strategic planning (CESP). And while CESP was challenging before the pandemic, the increased pace of uncertainty has made it even more so for many firms. This 25-page report is based on leadership feedback regarding how organizations worldwide conduct CESP, particularly in troubled times. Page 13 begins to address workforce planning and scenario planning as ways to identify, counter, or respond to future uncertainties. "Nearly two-thirds of organizations use scenario modeling to do corporate planning, and it's popular in a handful of industries, led by finance (90%)." It is less common in industries such as Retail (48%), Manufacturing (34%), and Entertainment (33%), and is employed more by larger firms. For firms who do scenario modeling, three-quarters worldwide use a timeframe of three years or more when they engage in long-range planning. When organizations use scenario modeling, nearly half revisit and adjust their plans on an ad hoc basis, while more than a third run it every month (Figure 6 on p.17). Other ideas are offered on how firms can drive better business outcomes through collaborative and agile CESP across finance, human resources, and other business lines. 

Previously, I made a post about a report from Degreed that sought to understand how workforce skill requirements are changing. The report organized skills information by country, industry, and job role to identify where skills are becoming more critical-- and are most at-risk of becoming obsolete. As organizations seek to gain skill insights about their workforce, this follow-up Degreed article outlines a few ideas, including four sources of data that can be leveraged: 1)User data - reveals your people’s work experiences via learning profiles, resumes, third-party networking sites, human capital management (HCM) platform, and applicant tracking system (ATS), etc.2) Content data - courses, videos, books, podcasts, or any other materials your people are using to learn, often pulled from a learning experience platform (LXP) or upskilling solution.3) Activity data - covers your workers' daily behaviors, such as logins, views, and completions. 4) Opportunity data - taps into the capabilities needed for projects, stretch assignments, gig work, and other internal career opportunities — the foundation for an internal talent marketplace. While there are AI-based platforms that draw from these and other data sources to infer skills about the workforce, HR practitioners can leverage any of these data elements to understand workforce skills; the resulting insights can help make informed talent decisions and investments that create business value.

As HR practitioners evolve their skills, this article outlines four critical capabilities that any HR professional needs to perform well in their role. It begins with the premise that "most successful HR professionals have a T-shaped profile--where there is a generalist's understanding of the core HR competencies as well as specialist's knowledge. Said differently, there are broad skills (the horizontal part of the T) and deep expertise (the vertical part of the T). The four aspects of the horizontal part include: 1) Data-driven - the ability to read, apply, create, and communicate data into valuable information to influence decision-making processes. 2) Business acumen -  translate the organization's purpose, mission, goals, and business context into strategy, positioning HR policies and activities to serve the organization's best interests, 3) Digital integration - leverage technology to increase efficiency and drive HR and business value. 4) People advocate - the ability to build a strong internal culture, communicate skillfully, get the best out of people, and act as a trusted employee champion. For the data-driven-component, additional behavioral examples are provided. These skills are needed now (vs 2025), and the article provides a useful framework that can aid HR skill development.

In this 30-minute webcast, CAHRS Academic Director and William J. Conaty Professor, Brad Bell, shares the results of a recent CAHRS survey that asked HR leaders to share their top priorities for 2021. Ninety-two HR issues were gathered through the survey, which were boiled down into six themes. The themes in order of magnitude are: 1) Post-Pandemic Work, Workforce, and Workplace, 2) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, 3) Talent Management,  4) Transformation Within and Beyond HR, 5) Culture, and 6) Employee Wellness. For each theme, Brad shares the drill-down of specific issues. For example, for the Post-Pandemic Work, Workforce, and Workplace theme, particular issues are a) return to work plans for post-COVID-19, b) re-architecting the work model, c) managing a hybrid/remote workforce, d) assessing performance and maintaining engagement during and post-pandemic. HR practitioners can use this reference as one resource as they shape and refine their 2021 agenda.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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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.