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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

• This Is How IBM and Slack Are Approaching Hybrid Work | Fast Company | Provides 3 key steps these firms are taking to enable hybrid work, and offers 5 questions that organizations can ask as they migrate towards hybrid work.

• What Psychological Safety Looks Like in a Hybrid Workplace | Harvard Business Review | Offers 5 steps for how managers can create an environment that encourages workers to feel comfortable sharing aspects of their personal situations as it relates to hybrid work.

• Why Organizations are Hiring for Skills Over Experience | Hunt Scanlon | Provides an overview of how some firms are shifting more towards skill-based hiring in order to broaden talent pools and meet quickly shifting talent demands.

• 60 Recruitment Benchmarks Every HR Professional Needs to Know | HCMI | Summarizes the top 60 recruitment benchmarks from multiple sources on six areas, ranging from hiring costs, hiring sources, diversity hiring, to post offer.

• Intentional Learning in Practice: A 3x3x3 Approach | McKinsey Accelerate | Shares tactics for fostering intentional learning by encouraging learners to define 3 development goals, over a 3-month period, while engaging the support of 3 other people.  

• Webinar: How to Crush Bias in Performance Management | Angela Lane and Marc Effron (Talent Strategy Group) | A one-hour webinar that offers tactics on reducing performance management bias, including using process design to remove bias in a more scalable manner.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

This Is How IBM and Slack Are Approaching Hybrid Work | Fast Company 

This article, written by Nickle LaMoreaux (CHRO IBM) and Brian Elliott (Executive Lead at Future Forum and VP at Slack), provides three key steps their firms are taking to enable hybrid work. It starts with the premise that new Future Forum data suggest that most knowledge workers (63%) globally expect a hybrid work arrangement. Among the three recommended steps are: 1) New design principles for how work gets done. Rather than dictate the specifics of what the workweek looks like for workers, the authors recommend leaders need to focus on the outcomes they expect to see and then empower teams to determine the best path for achieving their objectives. 2) Flexible hours to support employees to thrive personally and professionally. As one example, teams at Slack have both “sync hours” when people are available and fully present and dedicated “maker hours” when individuals have time and space for deep, focused work. Other ideas are provided, including five questions that firms can ask as they move towards hybrid work (e.g., how do we apply technology to create digital and physical workplaces that maximize both structured and unstructured collaboration?)

What Psychological Safety Looks Like in a Hybrid Workplace | Harvard Business Review 

In the workplace, psychological safety (PS) has focused chiefly on fostering candor, trust, and transparency on work-related topics. However, as work and life become more integrated, this article suggests managers must extend aspects of PS beyond work areas to include other parts of employees’ experiences. Said differently, previously off-limits topics like child care, health-risk comfort levels, or challenges faced by spouses or other family members are increasingly required for joint (manager and employee) decisions about how to structure and schedule hybrid work. The article provides five steps to assist managers in creating an environment that encourages employees to share aspects of their personal situations as relevant to their work scheduling or location and/or to trust employees to make the right choices for themselves and their families, balanced against the needs of their teams. Step 2: Lead the way focuses on managers sharing their WFH/hybrid work personal challenges and constraints—this way, workers feel they can do the same. Building managers’ capability to create PS can reduce employees’ anxieties about future work arrangements while fostering performance and engagement. 

Why Organizations are Hiring for Skills Over Experience | Hunt Scanlon

While legacy hiring practices have focused heavily on a candidate meeting specific role requirements (e.g., education, job history, etc.), others are endorsing a skills-based approach. Such an approach assesses candidates’ holistic skill set (including adjacent skills across industries) rather than on job profiles with criteria such as industry experience or specific educational credentials. This summary provides ideas on how skills-based hiring can a) significantly expand the talent pool for open roles by reducing or eliminating unnecessary requirements, such as matches to job profiles, past job titles, and education, b) reduce unconscious bias in the recruiting process by leading to a more objective assessment of the relevant skills, and c) facilitate internal mobility and fill talent needs faster. While firms may be shifting more towards skills-based hiring, migrating to this model requires a time investment on the front-end (e.g., deconstructing work into skills) and a mindset and behavior shift within the organization. Some of these challenges can be mitigated with AI-based technologies. Other ideas are discussed.  

60 Recruitment Benchmarks Every HR Professional Needs to Know | HCMI 

As talent acquisition (TA) teams reshape their recruitment and hiring practices amidst a changing labor market and workplace, they are also reevaluating their metrics to gauge TA effectiveness. This document provides the top 60 recruitment benchmarks that can guide and help to adjust recruiting and hiring practices. The benchmarks are sorted by six areas 1) Hiring Costs, 2) Hiring Process, 3) Hiring Sources, 4) Diversity Hiring, 5) Post Offer, and 6) 2021 Hiring Trends. The benchmarks are from various organizations such as SHRM, LinkedIn, Monster, ADP, and Barron’s, to name a few. For example, concerning hiring costs, while the average cost per hire for each recruit is $4,424, the average cost for an executive position is $14,936 (SHRM). Regarding diversity hiring benchmarks, men earn 21.4% more than women. This gap shrinks to 4.9% when factoring in age, education, experience, job characteristics, and other factors. On average, for hiring sources, 74% of open positions are filled externally (SHRM). These and other benchmarks can provide helpful insights into the efficiency and effectiveness of a firm’s recruiting and hiring practices.  

Intentional Learning in Practice: A 3x3x3 Approach | McKinsey Accelerate 

Various workforce reports, such as LinkedIn’s 2021 Learning Report, show that upskilling and reskilling are priorities for many organizations. Simultaneously, talent processes such as performance management — and concepts such as growth mindset—promote continuous learning and development. With these themes as the backdrop, this article by McKinsey provides a framework for how workers can set and achieve developmental goals with intentional learning. Unlike incidental learning, intentional learning is deliberate and focuses on development for a specific purpose. The authors offer a “3x3x3 framework” that fosters intentional learning by encouraging learners to 1) define three development goals, 2) over a three-month period, 3) while engaging three other people to support them in those goals. The framework is based on the premise that the most effective strategy for achieving learning goals focuses on setting fewer concrete goals over a shorter time period while enlisting the support of others to help drive accountability. And while these concepts in goal-setting aren’t new, the 3x3x3 framework provides a simple strategy for professional development and effective learning.

Webinar: How to Crush Bias in Performance Management | Angela Lane and Marc Effron (Talent Strategy Group)

One goal of effective performance management (PM) is to provide objective and fair performance feedback. And while managers seek to achieve this goal, PM is imperfect and subject to bias. In this one-hour webinar, Angela Lane and Marc Effron offer various tactics for reducing PM bias. One tactic is to use process design as a lever for eliminating PM bias. An argument for using processes to mitigate PM bias is that firms have more control over the process than they do over the individual behaviors of every single manager. Said differently, the process can have a disproportionate impact since it can help people focus on1) being aware of how bias can show up in the process and 2) flags when bias might be present. For example, by default, a process leads to “more, diverse eyes looking at something” — meaning the more people who see it, the more input you get, the more likely you can identify outliers and potential biases (e.g., performance calibration sessions). As mentioned by Angela, gender biases can impact the type of feedback, coaching, and performance review one receives. (e.g., women get less feedback.) In case you missed it, you can see my post on Angela’s and Sergey Gorbatov’s article “,The Real Reason Women Aren’t Advancing,”which covers gender bias in performance and development feedback.

POLLING FEATURE MOVING FORWARD

Two months ago I began to introduce a poll question at the beginning of each newsletter issue based on reader feedback. When I shared the poll results, I also provided a few of my insights on the poll topic.

When I introduced the polling feature, I mentioned I would try it for several weeks and then ask for your feedback on whether we should continue this feature and/or change any of its components.

Based on 157 reader responses:

• 95% say to keep the polling feature as part of the newsletter.

• 42% say to conduct the poll once a month, another 42% say once a week. The remainder say every other week.

• If given the choice to have the poll or an extra article/resources, 80% prefer the poll.

• The reasons cited for wanting the poll range from "The poll is interesting and allows me to reflect on my choices versus the other votes" to "Polling enables real-time insights on what my peers are thinking on key issues."

Given this feedback, I will resume the poll feature beginning in May on a once-a-month basis. I will continue it on a more frequent basis if readers (you all) provide me with polling questions of interest.

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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