Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #58

March 21, 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:

  • Designing the Hybrid Office: From Workplace to "Culture Space" | Harvard Business Review | Describes how in-person workplace interaction fosters trust, collaboration, and builds and maintains organizational culture. 

  • Internal Talent Mobility: Think Projects, Not Jobs! | SHRM | Discusses how firms should break jobs into projects and then match employees to projects outside of their day-to-day responsibilities–without changing jobs.

  • How to Overcome 4 Key Performance Goal Challenges in 2021 | HR Leaders Monthly March 2021 by Gartner | Provides tactics for adjusting goals in times of uncertainty and disruption, including 5 types of triggers to adjust goals.

  • Podcast: Getting Started with a Skills-Based Talent Strategy (Interview with Karen Powell at IQVIA) | Digital HR Leaders Podcast | Discussion on IQVIA's ongoing journey to use "skills" as the basis for driving aspects of talent strategy, processes, and programs.

  • Your View | Provides results from last week's poll on workforce planning; offers a new question on location-based pay vs value-based pay in the context of remote work.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

As more people get vaccinated against COVID-19, an eventual return to the workplace is in sight. This anticipation has left many workers feeling a range of emotions—from excitement to anxiety. This article shares six steps leaders can take to help manage the emotions workers feel about “returning to the office.” 1) Be transparent, 2) Surface concerns early on, 3) Discuss expectations, 4) Involve your people, 5) Highlight what your teams will gain with in-person time, 6) Present the change as an experiment. Regarding #2 (surfacing concerns), the authors offer five survey questions to understand worker preferences and concerns, such as: What will make the return to the office easier for you? Concerning # 3 (discuss expectations), the article provides a list of five communication norm examples that will support productivity and prevent burnout considering hybrid work, including “all meetings will have a video link to ensure that remote team members can join.” Regardless of a firm’s return-to-work timeline, these steps offer a way to foster certainty about the future while reducing stress and anxiety within the workforce. 

Last week I shared a report by Deloitte containing a section on how the physical workplace will serve a new role. It argued that the office will no longer be a default place of work for everyone but will be reimagined as places for innovation, co-creation, social engagement, teaming, and celebration. Said differently, while remote work will continue to be an effective way for workers (mainly knowledge workers) to carry out tasks or engage in routine meetings, in-person touchpoints serve different purposes and outcomes. This HBR article submits that the office will “become primarily a culture space, providing workers with a social anchor, facilitating connections, enabling learning, and fostering unscripted, innovative collaboration.” It offers several ideas on how in-person interaction can drive innovation and how some firms are “using intelligent, tech-enabled design to turn ergonomic workplaces into socially engaging culture spaces.” Concerning the article’s point on how being in the office triggers chance encounters (e.g., around the coffee machine) that enable collaboration, I would also argue that we need to get creative in leveraging remote work and technology to mimic and prompt serendipitous interactions.  

An organization’s ability to redeploy its internal talent quickly—where and when needed—can provide a competitive advantage. And as firms build this capability, a segment of them is turning to the internal talent marketplace (ITM). The ITM brings together buyers (managers of work within the organization) and sellers (workers within the firm) to satisfy mutual needs. This article summarizes the ITM concept and starts with the notion that every firm has “hidden talent” that can be unlocked to meet talent needs. It submits that firms can break jobs into projects, and workers can be “matched to projects outside of their day-to-day responsibilities–without changing jobs.” While a technology platform is essential when enabling an ITM at scale, an ITM is just as much about a mindset shift as it is a technology solution. It requires firms to let go of outdated career models based merely on linear progression. It also calls for managers to be open to considering “nonobvious” talent for their projects while sharing (vs. hoarding) their talent. If you are considering building an ITM, I suggest developing a set of principles and behaviors that enable an ITM mindset and culture. You can then evaluate your firm on these criteria to determine opportunities for accelerating ITM adoption. The article's author (Edie Goldberg) c0-wrote the recently released book, The Inside Gig: How Sharing Untapped Talent Across Boundaries Unleashes Organizational Capacity, which you should check out if you have interest in this topic.

Many firms continue to rethink their performance management (PM) practices as they adjust to new realities. And one learning during the pandemic is how quickly performance goals can change due to fast-changing priorities. As firms recognize the need for agile PM—including shifting goals and objectives rapidly as needed—this article provides a few ideas. The article (pages 9 thru 14) is one of seven articles focused on managing goals in times of uncertainty and disruption. It outlines four main goal-setting challenges leaders face in 2021 and provides suggestions to overcome these obstacles. Challenge #2  addresses determining when to update goals after they have been set. Table 1. on page 11, identifies five types of triggers to adjust goals, ranging from 1) strategic or financial triggers (e.g., Excellent or poor financial performance, change in market share relative to competitors’ 3) environmental triggers (e.g., Changes in legislation or regulations, customer behavior, and technology), to 5) personal triggers (changes in work settings and family dynamics (e.g., taking care of a sick family member). This framework is a helpful tool for deciding whether to adjust goals and determining the actions that each trigger requires employees and managers to take.

Many of you indicated in my Talent Edge Weekly Feedback Survey (in which you can still take part) that you enjoy podcasts. And given that it has been a while since I shared a podcast resource, I wanted to point you to this conversation between David Green and Karen Powell, Chief Talent and Learning Officer at IQVIA. Among the various points, Karen discusses IQVIA’s ongoing journey to shift to more of a skill-based talent strategy. She notes, “We have got to stop the organization thinking about purely job descriptions and instead how do we break up the job descriptions or the jobs that need to be done, into the skills that we need to do those things.” Karen describes how skills are becoming the lens through which various aspects of talent strategy, processes, and programs are being driven—including workforce planning and the internal talent marketplace (ITM). She uses the analogy that “turning on talent marketplace is like turning up a dimmer, not flicking on a light switch.” This podcast goes nicely with the ITM article in this newsletter issue and offers other ideas on executing a skills-based talent strategy.

YOUR VIEW - Last Week's Poll Results

Legacy workforce planning (WP) practices have focused heavily or solely on role-based WP. And while this approach is effective in stable environments, it becomes less useful in climates of frequent change. This scenario has spurred a debate on whether WP should become more skill-based vs. role/job-based. I asked readers:

While none of the respondents support a job/role-only approach, three-quarters support a hybrid approach (both role and skill-based). Almost a quarter support a skills-based-only approach. Possible reasons could include:

  1. Jobs/roles still serve as the cornerstone of many talent management systems and processes, providing greater availability and convenience.

  2.  There is value in planning for a segment of jobs/roles that is core to a firm’s strategy and operations.

  3. Many firms do not have accurate, up-to-date information on workforce skills; they need time to build this capability to embrace skill-based WP fully.

As jobs and roles continue to be deconstructed into tasks, firms adopt AI platforms that infer worker skills at speed and scale, and organizations leverage their internal talent marketplace to deploy skills when and where needed, I expect skill-based WP to increase.

This Week's Poll Question

With a growing number of firms considering or implementing policies to allow some jobs to work remotely long term, a segment of workers is using this opportunity to move to lower cost-of-living locations. This trend has sparked discussion on whether remote workers residing in lower-cost areas should face a salary adjustment to align with labor costs at their new location. While there are several factors to consider when making this decision, firms must develop a perspective.

Click on image to vote

Upon casting your vote, you can view the most recent results. I will share the final results in next week’s newsletter.

If there is a poll question you would like to see in an upcoming newsletter, you can submit your question HERE.

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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.