Talent Edge Weekly - Issue #66

Covers workforce ecosystems, the shared-services HR operating model, re-onboarding employees, 25 recruitment metrics, and a Josh Bersin wellbeing report.

Author

Brian Heger
May 16, 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

  • Workforce Ecosystems: A New Strategic Approach to the Future of Work | Deloitte and MIT Sloan Management Review | This 43-page report provides insights on how core talent processes, philosophies, and systems must evolve as firms view their workforce as an ecosystem of internal and external contributors.

  • Using Shared Services to Drive the HR Operating Model of the Future | Gartner's HR Leaders Monthly May | Offers a 4-component HR model that further separates operational and strategic work and evolves shared services into comprehensive HR operations and service delivery team.

  • Reboard Your Workforce With Your Culture in Mind | Gallup Workplace | Describes five cultural drivers that firms need to recalibrate as they return to the office and embrace new ways of working, such as hybrid work.

  • 25 Recruitment Metrics for Data-Driven Human Capital Management | Oracle NetSuite | Summarizes common talent acquisition (TA) metrics (e.g., time-to-fill, offer-acceptance rate, interview-to-hire ratio), metrics to watch in 2021 (e.g., net promoter scores), and how to calculate various TA metrics.

  • 2021 Wellbeing Market and Trends Report | Josh Bersin Academy | This 30-page report covers the top 11 employee wellbeing trends in 2021 and provides a comprehensive summary of vendors offering holistic wellbeing solutions.

  • Book: Wellbeing at Work | Jim Clifton & Jim Harter | Gallup | This newly released book offers ideas on 5 critical components of employee wellbeing and shares ideas on how firms can help their workers thrive in each of those areas.

THIS WEEK'S EDGE

Getting work done through various sources — including contractors, service providers, gig workers, and freelancers—is not a new practice for organizations. However, several converging factors have spotlighted the need for firms to view and manage their workforces as an “ecosystem” of both employees and non-employees. And as stated in this 43-page research report, when the workforce changes from being primarily employee-centric to encompassing a diverse community that crosses an organization’s boundaries (i.e., ecosystem), core talent processes, philosophies, and systems must evolve. The report provides insights on how firms can adopt an integrated approach to managing their workforce of internal and external contributors. Figure 6 on page 16 summarizes how seven talent practices must shift to align with this alternative approach, affecting workforce planning, talent acquisition, performance management, compensation and rewards, learning and development, career paths, and organization design. For example, workforce planning could shift from taking a narrow view of employee roles to adopting a definition that includes both internal and external human and digital workforces.

This article (begins on page 15) argues that many operational HR activities that are most suitable to be fully owned by a Shared Services Center (SCC) still fall into HR teams outside of SSC. It offers a 4-component model that further separates operational and strategic work, and evolves SSC services into a comprehensive HR operations and service delivery team: 1) Strategic Talent Leaders — Senior HRBP-level thinkers who tackle the most pressing talent opportunities and challenges throughout the organization. 2) The HR Problem-Solver Pool — A dynamic pool of HR staff deployed to the most pressing challenges of the function based on business need. 3) Next-Generation COEs — A slimmer, more agile group of subject matter experts who facilitate HR projects and provide relevant expertise for solving customer challenges.  4) The HR Operations and Service Delivery Team — a centralized, dedicated group servicing employees and managers with the proper infrastructure and support to carry out their day-to-day challenge effectively. It includes a) human capital intelligence, b) people relations managers, c) shared services, and d) an HR technology team. Other ideas are discussed, and six additional articles on various talent and workplace topics are provided in this issue.

Several articles have been published on hybrid work over the past few months. These sources guide the development of policies that support hybrid work, the technology which enables it, and the jobs/roles that lend themselves to this work arrangement. As firms bring workers back to a workplace that blends on-site and offsite work, they must align their culture to this way of working. This article submits that an employee re-boarding strategy will enable firms to recalibrate five drivers of their culture to align with the new way of getting work done. They include: 1) Leadership and Communication, 2) Values and Rituals, 3) Human Capital, 4) Work Teams and Structures, 5) Performance. Concerning values and rituals, if in a pre-pandemic environment managers exhibited company values by walking around to check in informally with their team daily, how will this happen if members are offsite? If they accomplish this through Zoom or phone calls, how do they do this while not appearing overly prescriptive and upholding the value of “flexibility?” An intentional re-boarding strategy in these five culture areas can help workers adjust to what work and life look like in this new era. 

Talent acquisition (TA) functions continue to adjust their recruiting strategies and tactics to reflect new workforce dynamics and candidate preferences. As TA functions make these adjustments, it is an opportune time to reevaluate the recruiting and hiring metrics used to measure TA effectiveness and return on investment (ROI). This guide summarizes common recruiting metrics (e.g., time-to-fill, offer-acceptance rate, interview-to-hire ratio), metrics to watch in 2021, and how to calculate various TA metrics. Among the metrics to watch are:Candidate Net Promoter Score (NPS): How likely is a candidate or employee to recommend applying to work at your company? To derive and evaluate this measure 1) Askon a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend (your company) to a friend or colleague?” 2) subtract the percentage of 1-6 (detractors) responses from the percentage of 9 or 10 (promoters) responses. Answers of 7 or 8 are passive and therefore not included in the calculation. 3) The candidate’s net promoter score will be a whole number and range from -100 to +100. The guide notes an NPS net positive score is good, and scores of 50% or more are excellent. In case you missed it, here is a post I made on the article 60 Recruitment Benchmarks Every HR Professional Needs To Know | HCMI.

As HR leaders continue to drive employee wellbeing (EWB), this 30-page report provides insights on EWB including 1) a summary of vendors offering holistic EWB solutions, 2) a 4-level EWB model firms can use to assess their current EWB capabilities and desired state, and 3) the top 11 trends in EWB in 2021. Among the trends is #3. Well-being has become an essential leadership capability, where leaders "support personalized wellbeing including paying attention to the individual needs of employees, interest and inquiry into their unique situations and circumstances, and listening for understanding." And as more firms move towards a hybrid work model—where it can be more challenging for leaders to detect employee concerns and issues—this leadership capability is increasingly vital. Whether it is called empathetic leadership or human-centered leadership, this capability will be an important criterion for leader selection, performance, succession, and development.

As mentioned in my article, 2021 HR Trends and Priorities: A Summarized View of Nine Sources, employee wellbeing (EWB) is a priority for many organizations. And while EWB was a priority before the coronavirus pandemic, the crisis has made EWB and work-life integration a non-negotiable for many workers. This newly released book suggests five critical components of EWB - career, social, financial, physical, and community (in that order). It offers ideas on how firms can help their workers thrive in each of those elements while using their innate talents and strengths. The book introduces a metric to report a person’s best possible life: Gallup Net Thriving (GNT). Gallup recommends that every firm immediately adopt this metric, derived from a two-part question: Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. Q1: On which step of the ladder would you say you feel you stand at this time? (0-10). Q2: On which step do you think you will stand about five years from now? (0-10). Gallup suggests that GNT will become the “other stock price” for organizations. I also include here a one-hour webcast where the authors discuss aspects of the book.

MOST SHARED RESOURCE FROM LAST WEEK

Use Stay Conversations to Improve Engagement and Retention | Gartner | Shares suggestions on how firms can conduct effective stay conversations, including a list of work or life events that prompt an employee to reflect on and reconsider their career--such as the workers’ birthday, tenure in role and with the company, and change in manager or responsibilities.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

OUR RESOURCE LINEUP

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