Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #55

February 28, 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 and Priorities: A Summarized View of Nine Sources | Brian Heger | Provides a one-page snapshot of 2021 HR priorities from multiple sources. Includes report links to the nine sources.

  • The Future of Team Leadership Is Multimodal | MIT Sloan Management Review | Suggests four multimodal leadership roles for leaders to adopt as they lead both virtually and in-person.

  • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Have Failed. How About Belonging, Dignity and Justice Instead? | World Economic Forum | Offers an alternative view of DEI as a way to accelerate progress in this area. I also include a link to other resources on DEI practices.

  • Employee Experience (EX) in 2021 and Beyond: Listening at Scale | Josh Bersin Academy via Perceptyx | Provides insights on the impact of various employee listening (EL) channels on EX. Offers a set of questions to consider before determining EL technology needs.

  • Report: Career Mobility: Mindset Over Movement | Red Thread Research via Degreed | A 42-page report that provides ideas on how career mobility has changed in recent years and how it will change more in the future.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

As we close out the second month of 2021, we have benefited from consuming the views of several firms and thought leaders on the trends that will guide HR priorities in 2021 and beyond. These reports and resources are replete with insights and in-depth thinking on how firms can effectively meet the challenges and opportunities ahead. To help HR practitioners and leaders distill these insights into a summarized view, I have integrated the priorities and trends from nine resources into a one-page snapshot. The more commonly mentioned priorities relate to 1) Culture, 2) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, 3) Employee Wellbeing, 4) Employee Experience. 5) Digital Transformation  6) Reskilling. A few distinctions across each report's priorities are provided, such as Human Capital Disclosure Requirements. As we shift the focus from merely trends and priorities to workforce practices, I include a link to a survey for those of you who want to share practices that you are executing (or planning to) in response to the priorities/trends. I will share a summary of those practices if I get enough responses.

COVID-19 continues to spur a shift to hybrid work. And as leaders lead their teams both virtually and in-person, this article suggests four multimodal leadership roles for leaders to adopt 1) Conductor. This role can be mostly virtual and requires leaders to harmonize their team by sharing and coordinating plans, decisions, and information. 2) Catalyst. When teams come together in person, leaders will channel this role to stimulate collaboration, creativity and innovation, and create a shared culture and purpose. 3) Coach. Whether in-person or virtually, this role calls on leaders to work one-on-one with their reports to help them achieve peak performance, well-being, and professional development. 4) Champion. This role requires leaders to advocate for their teams, secure team resources, tap into essential information sources, and communicate team accomplishments. Each of these roles requires leaders to build trust, enabled by a culture of psychological safety. The article also provides ideas for determining team tasks best served through in-person interaction and offers a framework for leading in a post-pandemic world

Despite well-intentioned efforts to drive improvement in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), many measures show the DEI practices have fallen short of their intended outcomes. A recent study by Josh Bersin Academy found that DEI training is one of the least impactful practices, despite the millions of dollars invested. The same research shows that only one in five companies holds themselves accountable for DEI in its business practices. In this separate article, the authors suggest that this area’s progress could accelerate by shifting from DEI to Belonging, Dignity and Justice (BDJ). Belonging is one’s physical, emotional and psychological safety; the indescribable feeling of being welcome. Dignity describes the sacred nature of each individual’s personhood. Justice is the repairing and restoring of individuals. Regardless of the model or acronym to which one subscribes, firms need to identify and execute the vital few practices that drive meaningful progress. Besides the Bersin report, you can check out the Center for Employment Equity Report, Evidence-Based Ideas to DEI in the Workplace, for researched-based strategies and practices. 

Throughout the pandemic, it has been necessary for firms to understand their employees’ challenges and needs quickly and at scale. Many organizations have relied on employee listening strategies to understand these issues and develop rapid responses. As firms continue to refine their employee listening strategies during the pandemic and beyond, this report provides ideas for doing so. Page 5 provides a view of the various employee listening channels such as pulse surveys, email sensing, and exit interviews. And since these tools require technology solutions to deliver at speed and scale, pages 5 and 6 provide a set of questions to consider before determining technology needs. One recommendation is to “consider what your approach is to the employee experience – and what listening architecture supports that.” The table on page 6 provides insights on how technology can enable employee listening at scale in three areas 1) collecting information, 2) analyzing information, and 3) distributing insights and taking action. For additional ideas, you can check out the book Employee Surveys and Sensing: Challenges and Opportunities.

As firms tap into their internal workforce to meet talent demands, many of them are revisiting their career mobility approaches. This 42-page report provides several ideas on how career mobility has changed in recent years and how it will change more in the future. It starts with the premise that there are five approaches to career mobility. Ladder. Employees move from one role to the next, generally up, and generally within a given silo or function. 2) Lattice. Employees move up, around, and sometimes down inside the organization. 3) Agency. Employees move around the firm, based on their skills, knowledge, and preferences.  4) Outside In. Workers with specific skills are brought into the organization to accomplish certain projects or pieces of work.  5) Reset. Employees are reskilled and redeployed into new roles based on the organization’s needs and strategy. The report offers three questions to determine which career mobility approach(es) is best suited for a firm, such as:  Does your firm lean toward roles or skills? Page 17 provides a visual of how each of the five mobility approaches enables specific goals (e.g., succession, retention, etc.) For other ideas on the internal talent marketplace, check out the book The Inside Gig: How Sharing Untapped Talent Across Boundaries Unleashes Organizational Capacity 

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

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Partial View of Recommendations. Click Image to See All Books

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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.